Home Air Filter Solutions

Ron

Ron

Dum Spiro Spero
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Joined
Apr 16, 2005
Location
Sharon, SC
Background
Our house has a basement that is not climate controlled, yet houses a game room, bar, home office and my 2 labs...al in about 1600 square ft.

Despite regular cleanings and such there is just a metric shit ton of dust and cobwebs etc down there.

Anyone have any experience with any large scale air filter that wont break the bank but still circulate sufficient air?

The down stairs air handler is located in the basement and has a hard duct main trunk ran the length of the house for both the supply and return...Ive kicked around the idea of adding a return register with filter into one trunk and a couple of duct heads with manual shut offs in the supply head to provide some climate control and also add the filter abilty. This will naturally decrese the temp control efficiency on the main level and increase power bills, but seems like it would filter the air and add temp control to the basement...

Any other ideas before I start hacking a duct?
 
Ron said:
Background
Our house has a basement that is not climate controlled, yet houses a game room, bar, home office and my 2 labs...al in about 1600 square ft.
Click to expand...
Tell me more about these labs. Have you been watching too much Breaking Bad?
(I have nothing else useful to add :lol:)
 
One is black named Swamper the other Chocolate named Bella. Bella is a moody bitch but very smart. Swamped is her son. Dumb as dirt but so sweet.
 
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jeepinmatt said:
Tell me more about these labs. Have you been watching too much Breaking Bad?
(I have nothing else useful to add :lol:)
Click to expand...

damn Matt beat me to it.
was gonna say "Pssst, you're not supposed to talk about the labs in public buddy."
 
So is this all one giant space?

Sounds like what you need is just a big fan or two w/ a filter on it.
How is overhead space? Enough to add a ceiling fan or two?
 
What is causing the dust, carpet? ceiling tiles? I can't believe the dogs would be the problem, I thought Labs don't shed alot?
 
Hm, how is the humidity? Do you have access to a drain?
If you get a good de-humidifier, it will have a filter AND a thermostat. May be able to kill 3 birds w/ 1 stone?
 
I'll tell you right now... We have two labs in a smaller footprint, with all of the return air getting picked up in the middle through a 14x30 return grille... And it doesn't pick up anything. It'll catch the occasional tumbleweed, but it's not a vacuum cleaner. If you have any bare concete, it's probably sloughing off more crap than the HVAC could pick up.

You can get some conditioning... Likely at the expense of the upstairs space... But you're not going to get much if anything in the way of dust control.
 
@shawn
2/3rds of the space is bare concrete (everything but the office)

Its all open space.
Open ceiling, no sheetrock.
No carpet. No Ceiling Tile...bare block...

The dust level is bad. I'm not sure how to quanitfy it but its bad. Like 1/16th inch thick in a week on a flat surface bad.
I wipe everything down (the A/C Ducts, air handler, bar top...etc) with wet rags weekly and it usually takes 4 or 5 hand towel sized rags to dust with and they are pretty much trash after 1 use.

So what about any large air filters? I dont need HEPA and breath quality just somehting to knock the dust out some. Any ideas?
Would finishing the space off make a substantial difference?
 
I guess the question is where is all this dust coming from? Is it coming off the cement slab? (?) Is it somehow dust from the house that is settling down there?

All being a big open space makes it hard to create any real vacuum aside from right in front of a vent/filter unit.
 
Something is obviously sloughing off, maybe the dogs nails scratching the concrete floor or the block walls. A sealer or paint on the block might help if it's bare block and low carpet on the floor might solve the excessive dust problem, w/o filters it sounds like you'd be changing constantly if the dust keeps falling.
 
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