If you’re concerned about your home’s air quality, having an air scrubber installed can be one of the most effective options for lowering airborne pollution and keeping your home’s air fresh and clean. Most indoor air quality equipment like filtration systems and air purifiers only clean the air that flows through your home’s ductwork. Air scrubbers are different as they will not only eliminate pollutants, allergens and other contaminants from the air inside your ducts but instead work to clean the air in your entire home and even eliminate pollutants from all the surfaces in the building. Today we’re going to explain exactly what air scrubbers are and how they work, but first let’s quickly look at why indoor air pollution is such a serious issue.
Understanding the Problem of Indoor Air Pollution
Indoor air quality probably isn’t something you ever give much thought to, but you may want to start considering that indoor air pollution is a major problem that affects virtually all homes and other buildings. EPA studies have shown that the air inside most buildings typically contains at least three to five times as high of a concentration of various airborne pollutants, which is quite concerning considering that most people spend around 90% of their time inside.
All homes generally contain lots of allergens like dust, pollen, mold spores and dust mites, all of which can trigger allergy symptoms and asthma attacks or worsen any respiratory or breathing problems. An even bigger issue is that most homes also have a high concentration of harmful pollutants including volatile organic compounds or VOCs. VOCs include substances like formaldehyde, benzene, xylene and methylene chloride, most of which are naturally released into the air by your home’s building materials, furniture, cleaning products, etc.
The issue is that many VOCs are potentially carcinogenic, and constantly breathing them in can result in an increased risk of certain types of cancer as well as asthma and other health issues. While there is no real way to prevent allergens, VOCs and other contaminants from being inside your home, an air scrubber is an extremely effective option for eliminating them and quickly improving indoor air quality.
How Air Scrubbers Work
Air scrubbers are installed inside your existing ductwork system and work in two different ways. Firstly, the unit emits powerful UV rays that instantly damage organic molecules like mold spores, bacteria and viruses. When these particles encounter the UV light, their DNA is altered so that they can’t reproduce, spread or cause infection.
Air scrubbers also use a special process called photocatalytic oxidation, which releases millions of negatively charged ion oxidizers into the air. The unit sends these ions out into the ductwork, and the ions are then circulated into every inch of the home by your HVAC blower. Most allergens and pollutants are positively charged, which means they are attracted and stick to the negative ions released by the air scrubber.
When the ions meet these pollutants and allergens, they oxidize and damage the particles so that they can’t make you sick or continue to spread. When the ions stick to airborne particles, they also make them heavy enough that they fall out of the air or increase the size of the particle to where it can then be trapped in your HVAC air filter.
The fact that your HVAC blower circulates the ions throughout your entire home means that this process continues to work even when your heating or AC shuts off. Most other purifiers and filtration systems only work when the HVAC system is currently running as they rely on the blower to draw air into the unit. This is what makes air scrubbers so much more effective as the ions are essentially “scrubbing” your air and surfaces clean constantly to remove most allergens and other contaminants.
At Home Comfort Services, we’re your local indoor air quality experts and we offer a range of different solutions to help keep the air in your home clean so you can breathe more easily. Our technicians have years of experience installing air scrubbers as well as other IAQ units like humidifiers, dehumidifiers, UV lights and air purifiers. We also specialize in a full range of heating and air conditioning maintenance, repair and installation services as well as residential plumbing services for customers in Grand Junction and the surrounding areas. For more information on air scrubbers or our other IAQ services, contact Home Comfort Services today.
