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by KennyBlanken 1482 days ago
It's easy to add "legs" to the C-R device - a few dollars at most in wood dowels and no tools, for example. Maximizing filter area is really important because flow vs static pressure for a fan like this is usually logarithmic...and static pressure rapidly rises as the filters get used (their efficiency goes up, but flow drops.) That's one reason you see a lot of squirrel fans used in air filtration units; they can generate much more static pressure.

In theory, if you mounted it fan-down and placed some towel or blankets underneath, you could also dampen a fair amount of the noise coming from the fan.

It's probably more effective and cheaper to get thicker filters. A 20x20x5 filter has five times the filter surface area of a 20x20x1 filter, but costs $36 - about 2-3x as much as a 20x20x1. Two 20x20x5 filters would provide twice the filter surface area.

But...these solutions were all intended mostly for emergency situations where purpose-built air filtration units were in really constrained supply. Folks should really just buy a regular air filtration unit that uses much less electricity and is quieter, especially if it auto-adjusts speed depending upon need.

1 comments

> Folks should really just buy a regular air filtration unit that uses much less electricity and is quieter

This post is about how one of these made with a ceiling fan can be much quieter than a regular air filtration unit: "Testing my prototype, it has a CADR of ~180 CFM and is only 33dB. By contrast, the Wirecutter's top-recommended air purifier has a CADR of 233 CFM at 54 dB or 110 CFM at 36 dB. With some tweaks it should be able to match the commercial purifier's performance, without being louder."

> especially if it auto-adjusts speed depending upon need

I see how that works for wildfire smoke, but how would it work for covid?

virus in the air is dependent on effective filtration, rather than bulky particulate matter by volume.. the virus is highly contagious (few particles matter a lot)