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First clean water, now clean air

finmoorhouse.com

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reme Halo is what you want. That's what I put in when I installed my ERV. Reme uses UV against titanium dioxide which releases airborne peroxides which takes out bacteria/viruses/yeast/mold This is the same tech used in self-cleaning concrete -- just add titanium dioxide and let the sun do the work

> Reme Halo is what you want. That's what I put in when I installed my ERV. Please view the video. The interviewee: > Jeffrey Siegel, Ph.D., is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto and a member of the university’s Building Engineering Research Group. He holds joint appointments at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences. He holds an M.S. an…

You might actually want to do some research on these first. These have been installed with great success at Chipotle stores, meatpacking plants, hospitals, veterinary hospitals, hotels, schools (Chicago Public Schools 138), universities, Office Depot's corporate HQ, the IRS facility in Austin TX to name a few...

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#102
post #83

I bought a CO2 monitor, and although the effects of CO2 in cognition and energy levels are debatable[1], it shocked me and raised awareness to how poor my indoor ventilation is. We live in a small apartment, and just being 30 min with 2 people in the room raises the CO2 ppm from 400 to >1000. Opening a window quickly lowers it. Never-mind doing some light activity like yoga or similar. So if we want to do something,…

I think the first step would be to buy a second monitor, ideally from a different manufacturer, and verify that your readings are actually correct. My experience is that cheap monitors are basically random.

At least one (Big Clive pulled it apart I think?) had an Ethanol sensor in it.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reme Halo is what you want. That's what I put in when I installed my ERV. Please view the video. The interviewee: > Jeffrey Siegel, Ph.D., is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto and a member of the university’s Building Engineering Research Group. He holds joint appointments at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences. He holds an M.S. an…

You might actually want to do some research on these first. These have been installed with great success at Chipotle stores, meatpacking plants, hospitals, veterinary hospitals, hotels, schools (Chicago Public Schools 138), universities, Office Depot's corporate HQ, the IRS facility in Austin TX to name a few...

How is that 'great success' measured and verified?

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#104
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Victorian-era sewage systems described in this article are actually one of the key reasons that sewage is ending up in rivers and the sea in the first place. Notice how they worked: sewage was collected, pumped, and dumped downstream of London. It was not treated. Most of the UK's sewage treatment is retrofitted to sewage systems that were never designed to have it. This causes various problems, the main one bein…

To be fair, while all of those things are true (and in fact the poor state of many rivers is more due to farming and to fully consented but still high-nitrate effluents from waste water treatment than to CSOs) the industry has really not even bothered to defend itself here. It's like they're just cowed by the criticism.

Or will get paid to clean it up, so why try to stop it?

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#105

I don't think the clear water and clear air analogy works very well. They seem to be very different cases. Keeping clean and dirty water separate is trivial and requires no more advanced technology than plumbing. Keeping clean and "dirty" air separate is impossible. We will always breathe air that includes pathogens. That isn't to say there should be efforts to improve air quality, but I think a lot of times analogie…

It's a good analogy. Invest in infrastructure to extract dirty air and deliver clean air into living spaces. Provide suitable standards and technologies to do so.

It would be cheaper than the infrastructure to extract dirty water and deliver clean (treated) water because we don't need to transport the air anywhere near as far and air treatment is simpler.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#106
post #35
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I'm not changing my very leaky and drafty windows - I don't want to live in a hermetically sealed Tupperware container. Once I install an HRV system then I'll do the windows!

Or you could save $2k on materials & labor, and put in a filtered vent fan. You only need around 15CFM per resident. Household HRVs & ERVs have suspiciously low heat efficiencies for their costs.

Does this "filtered vent fan" exchange air with the outside? If not, Im not interested.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#107
I wish more of the funds that were allocated to combat Covid were used to install better air handling systems in public areas here in the US. The education side received billions of dollars, which if used for better air would help keep kids more kids from getting sick and then bringing it home to families.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opening a car window or running air not on recirc immediately drops the readings to safe levels. I also noticed when in the Uber returning from the airport, the air was in the high 3000's and I explained to the driver, he opened all the windows and I think I scared him a bit.

Note that, to minimize pollution from vehicle exhaust, you want to set your air to "recirculate" . Unsurprisingly, the roadway is where vehicle pollution is most concentrated! https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-xpm-2013-sep-1... Usually what I do is set it on recirculate, and then every ~10 minutes I periodically "flush" the CO2-laden interior air for a minute or so. Ideally, I'm able to do this "flush" wh…

I always crack my sunroof an inch and pull the shade forward go get some fresh air in recirculate mode so I’m not picking up crap from the engine bay.

How does the fresh air mode on the car not pull in CO gases from the engine bay? Surely a pleated cabin filter is not enough to stop it? Or does the air come from the manifold air intake?

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… and people make joke about us Germans need to do „stosslüften“ (opening all windows in parallel to get fresh air in fast). also, are there really people that can (or even prefer!) to sleep with closed windows?! Only with AC blasting, right?

I can't sleep with either AC, simple ventilation or windows open. Too much noise. In rural environments too, just a single cricket is capable of keeping me awake. Sometimes in very hot weather I do leave the windows open at night but it's due to heat, not air quality.

Try sleeping with earplugs. I started doing it out of necessity, and it was awkward at first, but once I got used to it was really life-changing. Sleeping with plugs in feels like being embraced by silence and darkness, so much so that you can sleep the whole night through and feel more refreshed in the morning.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#110
post #93

I don't think the clear water and clear air analogy works very well. They seem to be very different cases. Keeping clean and dirty water separate is trivial and requires no more advanced technology than plumbing. Keeping clean and "dirty" air separate is impossible. We will always breathe air that includes pathogens. That isn't to say there should be efforts to improve air quality, but I think a lot of times analogie…

"Cleanliness and modern plumbing" include massive water treatment facilities, digging up every street, laying billions of miles of pipe.

The main effort is separating drinking water and waste water. Keeping them as far away as possible and preventing contamination. There is no way to do that with air. The air we breath in and the air we breath out will always mix. The best we can hope for is some amount of dilution with fresh air/filters, bit at the end of the you are never going to be able to achieve the same thing with airborne viruses that we did with waterborne illnesses. The flu, covid, etc are with us for the long haul.
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