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Comment by schiffern

6 hours ago

Cool! How long did the project take, would you say?

BTW 82% indoor humidity is really high; usually over 60% humidity and you risk mold and mildew growth in localized moisture hotspots. Mold is terrible for air quality since the spores are biologically active, so they effect you more than just the raw PM2.5 numbers suggest. You may benefit greatly from adding a dehumidifier (placed in 'that room' or basement that's dank/musty), even if it only runs in wetter seasons.

You probably already discovered this, but cool mist/warm mist/ultrasonic humidifiers are extremely bad, effectively being purpose-built air pollution generators. I strongly recommend investing in a larger evaporative pad humidifier instead. See Tech Connections video.

For general AQI advice, it's hard to beat just adding an Airfanta 3Pro every 300 square feet with at least one per room (excluding bathrooms). Designed by an engineer, it has the best dollar-to-perf and noise-to-perf ratio of any air purifier thanks to using PC fans and balanced E11 filters[0][1]. The main downside is that some people think it looks nerdy, lol

For a sleek finished look, you could always mount the ePaper display behind a decorative photo frame of your choice, and fit the matte (the white area around the photo) to the screen size. It's roughly 2.5"x4.5", so a 4x6 frame which mattes to 3x5 should work. A local photo studio should do the custom matte cutting at a very reasonable cost, and (considering the supplies and practice needed) it's probably the best option for a one-off project.[2]

Cheers and thanks for sharing

[0] https://x.com/Engineer_Wong/status/1899144721710408038

[1] https://x.com/Engineer_Wong/status/2056588878564442334

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/2ir1tu/matting...

3 comments

schiffern

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shadeless  5 hours ago

Not OP, but thanks for the comment! In my research for cleaner indoor air custom fan-mounted purifiers came up as a cheaper and much more effective alternative to commercial air purifiers, but I haven't seen the Airfanta before.

Regarding humidifiers, do you have any links for further reading on the pollution aspect? I assumed that the distilled water ones wouldn't pollute the air, but I'm now realising I haven't actually checked.

I guess that most of the humidifiers sold on e.g. Amazon are the types you mentioned, do you have any recommendations in terms of brands/models?

  • schiffern  1 hour ago

    Yes agreed, the AirFanta is simply the cheapest among a few similar products, and you can DIY one for pretty cheap too. The AirFanta filters, IKEA filters, and 3M 1900 filters are popular choices for DIY builds.

    Unfortunately even if you only ever use distilled water, crud and dust build up in the reservoir over time, and also start to grow bacteria. Technically the user manuals on these units will say something like to clean them every "use" (ie every day if used continuously), but realistically nobody does that.

    Ironically if you use distilled water (even if you distill at home) it cancels out the up-front cost saving, which is about the only advantage of ultrasonic type!

    Safer IMO to use an evaporative pad humidifier which physically can't atomize trace dirt into tiny pollution particles, then use humidifier drops to protect against bacteria.

    It's so bad that it's cliche in AQI circles to ask "where's the humidifier" when someone complains of mysterious new dust buildup or PM2.5 spikes...

    Tech Connections video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28

    Further reading: https://dynomight.net/humidifiers/

    This storefront seems to have some good options (no affiliation): https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/43E58B1A-6C68-4879-9C38-7...