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An Affordable Air Purifier For Dusty Computer Labs?
Alcimedes writes "Our lab has a serious issue with dust. I've had a number of power supplies stop working because of dust clogging up the fans, and it's getting annoying. So I'm looking into some kind of small (under $500) air filtration system, and was wondering if anyone else out there has already gone down this road. If so, what did you buy and would you buy it again? I'd prefer something where I don't have to keep buying filters, but that may just be a pipe dream." Anyone with cats knows the feeling. Can you suggest a reasonably priced answer to dust-borne failure?
despite the hype, the sharper image "ionic breeze" actually collects a lot of dust, and doesn't require replacement filters. I have one near my computer at my house, and it definitely collects a lot of dust.
But what about the same type of thing for my PC? Air filtering cases are generally crazy expensive...any cheap alternatives for filtering the air into my PC? Cat hair does short work of fans.
$2.99 about. Pretty cheap and effective.
The Ionic Breeze gets wonderful reviews. A friend of mine uses one in the house. I'm sure a few of them strategically placed could help your dust situation...no filters or bags to be replaced, so minimal upkeep. Link to follow: http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/productv iew.jhtml?pid=175000&pcatid=1&catid=101
I've read about people putting Filters at the bottom of their PCs to keep the dust out...
just buy a metal mesh filter, you can wash those
might want to look into that... of course youd need an intake fan at the bottom too
That's what you need. I work in a cleanroom making IV infusions and we have HEPA filters in the ceilings of the clean rooms. Of course we have HEPA filters else where as well, but it start with the room. That's the expensive option. The next best would be a Dyson vaccum cleaner with a HEPA filter to really suck up all the dust out of your lab.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
There are a few air purifier that might do the trick for not a lot of money. I'd say the few parts you should first look at is WHERE does the dust comes from.
If it's airborne, air purifier.
If it's more like cat hairs (like in my house) simply elevate your computer from the floor. 1ft high and you will get 1/8th the dust you used to have.
If it falls from everywhere, put your computer under something... and a good paint job can help too.
I know it's all common sense, but usually you can remove most of your problems with common sense.
Have a nice evening
Mike
http://www.radioshack.com/Content/Environizer.asp
Suprisingly, for a radioshack product, they really work, and are a lot cheaper and easier to clean than "The sharper image's" ionic breeze thing...
The $199 one should do a medium sized computer room.
My opinion may be nullified by the fact that I work for RS, but I speak now of my own free will.
Sponge!
Since a large portion of the dust that we encounter comes from dead skin cells that are shed from our bodies, a clear solution presents itself:
Convice some of those dirty bastards using your lab to wash once in a while.
Need for air filter: GONE.
The Ionic Breeze from Sharper image is the way to go. I've had one awhile back and it was the best thing. Ever night I would pull the rods to find all sorts of black filth and dust. Just wipe them down and that's it. Not only that, but it gives off ions for that "open window in your house" feel of fresh air. Though, I'm not sure if this would pose a problem for electronics over time. But I doubt it, it's never cause problems with my stuff.
By the way, I don't one anymore because the last model I had would always short out internally. Though, the newer GP model hs been majorly overhauld in design. So I'm sure it's not an issue any more.
In a computer lab, I'm more concerned about the general flatulence and B.O. generated by most computer science majors. On a hot summer day, the smell can peel paint from the walls.
I heard that most dust comes from human skin, so just scrub extra hard in the shower.
Used dryer sheets. Tape them over your inlet vents in your case/power supply/whatever. Watch the temperature.
Scissors only cost a buck at Wal-Mart... Or you could go the more expensive electric haircutter route for about $15. Or, you could actually save money by getting rid of the cats.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
This has already been suggested, but I have to reiterate it. Put filters in front of the intake fans on your PCs, and clean them regularly. That takes care of the dust in the PCs problem, and probably makes the air in your lab a bit cleaner, too. Works great in my personal experience.
I use dryer sheets in my case fans. They work great and make the case smell good for a few days.
You can buy purifiers that use oil to trap particles.
True, you have to replace the oil, but nowhere *near* as often as with conventional filters
As do I!
One or more 20x20 furnace filters, and a box window fan. Some duct tape, or bungee cords.
Should be about $25 at your local mart, in the spring and summer. Hard to find the fans in the winter.
The military's solution is called Preventive Maintenance (or PMs for short - yes, it's real). It basically boils down to wiping off the dust on a regular basis, just like you would with the rest of your house. It's not fun, but it works, and it's well under $500.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Clickable link here, sorry. :)
Sponge!
I avoid trouble by occasionally opening up the computer and power supply and cleaning out all the accumulated dust. It may not be the most convenient option, but it's probably the most effective.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
the link
Get a HEPA filter with a washable dust prefilter. Walmart sells several and you can get them rated for 20X20 foot rooms for $200, if your room is bigger then get two and set aside whatever is left over for replacement filters. Plus if your environment is that bad you should be cleaning the area for the workers sake, equipment is cheap to replace, sick or disgusted workers are not.
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have you tried a doormat?
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Just a thought, but seriously, will reversing the direction of the airflow (reverse-mount the fans) keep dust out? I'm curious, but I don't know a lot about power supplies/fans...
I've had to deal with dust accumulating inside my athlon box, occasionally cloging up the GPU fan.
Here's what you do: "filter" all the intake holes in the side/back of your computer cases with paper towel sheets cut to size (Bounty works great for me, but dust can sometimes be a Brawny mess), both inside and outside wherever feasible. Air still flows through, but less dust comes inside. Haven't noticed an increase in operating temperature.
$cat
will spring for a french maid with a short miniskirt, high heels.
They're only about 6" deep with a front intake and top exhaust so you can push them right against the wall.
List prices in the $199 - $239 range. Check out appliances.com or even better, Froogle for retail pricing.
HEPA filters are great for removing very small particles (like pollen) but they don't do anything for larger crudites. Hair and other dust settles so quickly that a HEPA wont get it unless the wind speed in your room is over 40 mph. And most HEPAs are rather noisy. For cat hair, a simple fiberglass filter near the computer will work fine. And a vacuum cleaner.
poop!
Your HVAC system will continue to supply plenty of fresh dust, so without a large filtering system, it's hard to have much of an effect on it.
I had a similar problem with a dusty store basement, and the solution was (please don't laugh) a chrome air cleaner (sized for a Holley 750 double pumper) attached to the blower fan. The automotive air filter was really cheap, replaceable, and quite effective. They have a big enough surface area that you have very little flow restriction. We did end up using a larger-diameter fan, which had a side benefit of making the server quieter.
I have a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze. For $350 it does a decent job of cleaning allergens and some dust out of the air, but it will NOT keep your home office dust-free.
And its a royal pain to clean.
Also, see if you can talk to whoever in incharge of the heating/AC system in the building to see if there is anything they can do. Maybe Allergy Free has a filter that would work with the system or maybe you could get together the with the other groups of people in the building and buy an electrostatic air filtration system for the whole building. They work great on both dust and allergies. These are just wild ideas from brainstorming, they really aren't that realistic I guess. The first paragraph though will probably work well.
PS: We have electrostatic air filters installed in our house. We also had them installed in the house we had before this one. Our family has allergy problems and when we clean them, you'd be amazed the colors the water turns from what comes off them. They really do catch alot.
PPS: Or you could just watercool everything and run it all through one massive radiator. But this would be a bit more than $500. More pipedreaming.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
IIRC, Consumer Reports gave the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze a hefty thumbs-down.
You might look at air cleaners of the type used in woodworking shops... they'd be a bit louder than the Ionic Breeze (understatement), but they'd actually do something useful for the money spent.
Yes, the Environizer sold by Radio Shack(made by Honeywell) is a pretty good product. There are two huge differences between the two air purifiers sold by RS and Sharper Image: 1. The Honeywell Environizers have a silent fan built in; the SI product does not. Having a fan means you can clean a much larger volume of air. 2. Price. RS has much lower prices, at least $100 less than the competition for a comparable product.
I love my Environizer and recommend it to everyone who wants cleaner air.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Anyone with cats knows the feeling.
Yeah, can anyone suggest a cheap filter to remove cats?
Have you checked walmart or target? The filters will easily last several times as long as the box suggests unless you live in the desert or something. put it by the dust source such as the door or air AC vent.
With the largest percentage of particulates most likely human (dead) skin, you might want to attack the problem directly, instead of trying to deal with it after the fact. Gain more control over reducing the source, and you may find your current filtration system(s) more than adequate.
Get a purifier with an electrostatic filter element. No need to constantly buy new media, just give it a regular cleaning every month. The media should last for years, and most trap down to 0.1 micron size
Reverse mounting fans won't help the problem. I presume the computer lab is using OEM computers or beige boxs, not someones killer 8 fan box with dBs of death. Reversing the fans will make the problem of shorting the PSUs worse. If the air intakes at the front of the case there is more chance for dust to settle on the bottom of the case. If the air intake is at the PSU more dust will settle there, accumulating and then killing the PSU faster.
1 tequila 2 tequila 3 tequila floor
At $499 it is just barely in your price range, but it is one of the top-rated small air cleaners. It is electrostatic like the Sharper Image model, but includes a large fan to move air over the plates, making in much more effective for a lab environment. I believe that it is rated for an area of up to roughly 500 square feet. You can just throw the electrostatic plates in the dishwasher once every couple of months, and you really don't need to replace the charcoal filters unless you are trying to remove odors. I have been using one for 6 months and am very happy with it. The downside is that it is very ugly-- looks like medium-sized pet carrier.
Under $500, takes only a few seconds per machine, and you probably have one laying around: a vacuum.
Air filtration is good and all, but don't rule out the old vacuum. Although I would recommend an industrial strength one or a shop vacuum.
Question everything.
This may sound a bit odd, but I've done it on a few computers (where the case permits) with abnormally good results.
Take a coffe filter, cut to size, and tape it infront of/behind all the air inlets to your case. Even after a year of sitting on carpet in a dusty area, the interrior was devoid of fuzz and dust pup^H^H^H bunnies.
Now, the last time I did this was in the pentium 133 area... Be sure to monitor processor temperatures for a few days to make sure you are getting adequate cooling.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Is the way to go. I never remembered to change the filters. If you can't go for the $harperImage, then here is a link to a 12v one the could easily be modded. http://www.natlallergy.com/allergy/products/cart/s earch/view_one_spread.txt/spreadid/1122
I was also interested in the Ramsey kit.
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce. exe?preadd=action&key=IG7
Gotta Love Ramsey.
Don't know exactly how your computer room is set up, but here's what I did. There are two basic types of "filters" - mechanical and electrostatic. The mechanical filters work by trapping the dirt onto the filter. Throw away the filter, throw away the dirt. The electrostatic filters work by placing a charge on the dust particle. The particle is then attracted onto a nearby surface. This nearby surface may be part of the filter element (like with a permenantly-charged electret filter or a powered electrostatic filter), or it may get stuck to a nearby wall, ceiling, or piece of furniture. This is what happens with a lot of the "ionic" filters. The dust is out of the air, but it's not really removed from the environment. What I have on my central AC unit is a disposable pre-filter (like a conventional AC filter), a high-capacity HEPA filter (a cartridge that looks like a bunch of folded-up paper towels), and a powered electrostatic filter. I change the pre-filters monthly (they're cheap), change the HEPA filters once a year, and wash out the electrostatic element every 3-6 months. This keeps my computer and other electronics fairly clean, even with multiple cats. One way to tell is by the amount of stuff that gets attracted to the TV screen; not much. The only disadvantage to a powered electrostatic filter is the possibility of the creation of ozone.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
You've stumbled across the solution yourself.
Obviously the dust is collecting in these machines. How do you 'remove' dust? You collect it.
So, all you have to do is build a bunch of redundant computers*, and design them with really bad air flow, so dust gets trapped everywhere in them. Once a month, open up these machines and turn them upside-down over a dustbin (outside). Voila.
*Imagine a Beowulf cluster.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I once watched a co-worker use a shop vac inside a very dusty PC. The shop vac sucked a chip out of its socket ....
-kgj
If you're in the Boston area, I'm selling one on Ebay right now.
Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
Try to make sure you don't have negative pressure in the room as this just tends to pull in dust, particularly from above suspended ceilings. As for cats, I'd try Nair. My cats like to nest on the nice warm fuzzy computers (when they aren't walking on the keyboard and/or getting online).
Good Luck,
pts
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
PC Cases for High Dust Enviornments?
Put the cat in a plastic bag.
I've got the Honeywell Hepa (that round thing that makes a lot of noise -- never did replace the main inner filter -- probably distributing around 10 year old cat dander); three Sharper Image ionizers (one for my basement, one upstairs, and, well, one out of commission -- great, but expensive to buy, and cheap to maintain).
I'm currently in the market to find a nice high room volume air cleaner, so naturally, I went to Air Cleaners.com. The guys are funny loons, but they know what the hell they're talking about. 5 year guarantee on the Austin Air series, which is what my company is probably going to pick up (a couple units).
No need to knock Radio Shack. Over the years they have put out some damn fine equipment for cheap. I can remember at one point they had the best (as in fidelity, price, durability, and features) portable CD player on the market, bar NONE. Also, from an audiophile standpoint, you'd be surprised how good of interconnect and speaker cable you can make out of the cable on their spools. :) I just hate the fact I don't have a RadioShack here (I'm in NZ now, and no, Dick Smith's is NOT a good alternative). Ok, done with my ranting... :)
Cliff
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
Hmm... An impartial product testing company that doesn't take advertisements from companies is "shit"?
Bzzzt. Try again.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Why not just put a higher quality filter in your air conditioning or ventilation system? It would probably work better than other filters and probably much cheaper. I have heard good things about aller-pure or something like that, you just have to wash it every once in a while. Or just get those disposable 3M filters. Anything better than the loose fiberglass filters that let everything through will help exponentially.
Your trouble may not be dust. I have noticed that the fans in PS's in the last few years (5-8) to be crap. Myself and a friend Mark go to HAM fests and look for older "quality" fans. Panaflow a Papst seem to be the best although NMB fans also seem to be much better than the new stuff. I have only had one Panaflow go bad in over 15 years and I have never seen a Papst fan go bad despite the fact I have several over 18 years old.
Yeah, they have put out some good stuff. (Heck, we actually got the FCC to approve the FRS radios) But as of late they have thought up some really *DUMB* stuff. Gold plated fiber optic cables for example... The pay is ok if you can manage to sell a minimum of two cell phones and one satelite system per day, otherwise its just another minimum wage job. :-/
Sponge!
Consumer Reports is bunch of shit. Anyone who takes there info seriously is indeed an idiot.
Better back that one up. I suspect you're in the small minority that has that opinion. Without support, I'd say you're the one spewing the shit.
I'm not sure on your lab setup, but if the dust is *outside* the lab, try a pressurising fan setup.
Get a 2 inch outlet cyclonic type air filter, typically used in tractors, bobcats and small motorised machinery.
Hook it to the suction of a blower fan, outside your lab.
Duct the exhaust of the blower *into* your lab.
Try and close as many doors and windows as possible.
The blower will pressurise your lab with clean air, which will try to escape out all the nooks and crannies in your lab, keeping the dust outside.
Don't forget to check the filter every couple of weeks until you get a handle on the maintenance interval required, and don't get a cyclonic filter too big for your fan, as they need high airflow to spin out the dust particles effectively.
This works for a coal lab of ours that is located very close to a 100,000t stockpile of loose,dusty coal. The dust is bad enough that if a blank piece of paper with a pen on it is left outside the "clean room" (still inside the building) you get a "shadow" of the pen on the paper in about 6-8 hours.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Their smaller model will do a small to medium sized room according the specs you can read on the box. The larger one witch I own can do a anywhere from a large room to a whole floor level depending on the size of your house. Plug it in and in an hour or less any odors and dust are quickly removed and you have nothing but fresh air. They work great.
Does anybody have plans to turn a PC into a HEPA filtration device? mine would be great because you would never have to change the filter.
The universe is twice the size now that it once was.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Consumer Reports is the best source of imformation about consumer level products around. They buy everything off the shelf so they don't get tweaked demo units, they do not accept advertising so they can remain unbiased, and they use repeatable scientific methods to test the products. Why would anyone not like them??? Just because you have had some kind of psychosematic aleviation of your symptoms does not mean that scientific principals are suddenly invalid.
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Am I lucidly forcasting the future or did I just see this "ask slashdot" question a short while back? You mean there is so little going on that the eds feel the need to post recent history as news? Or perhaps they didn't feel the question was adequately addressed the first time around? Looks more like a wake up call to see if anyone is actually reading the damn thing (which there is. sometimes. occasionally. ho hum...).
:::Horrendous Experiences Make Amusing Anecdotes:::
The way the ionic air purifiers work, you should move it *away* from the computer to get maximum effect. The way that you are doing it, when the device pulls dust back towards it, some (most?) of the dust will get diverted by the air flow of the fans. In fact, I would suspect that by putting the device *next* to the computer, you are actually increasing the dust flow to the computer.
An ionic air purifier has two parts. One sends out charged ions which collide with particles of dust and impart a charge to them. The other is an area on the unit itself that has the opposite type of charge. I've never used one, so I don't know how effective they are. However, given the way it works, it seems logical to me that the best place for it would be away from the computer. The desired effect of the device is to pull dust into its area. Instead, it might be better to have it so that it pulls dust away from the computer. Besides, I would think that throwing electric charges (which is the basis of the ionic effect) around near a computer would be undesireable.
Here is a link to purchase it: Friedrich C90A
Do not work. They simply collect dust, they do not reduce airborne or other dust, pollen, or dander in the room. According to Consumer Reports it gives the SI unit the lowest ranking in it's group tested. Part of this is because it has no fan so it can't efficiently collect the dust. The Friedrich C-90A unit gets better ratings and has good reviews in many other places as well. We have recently placed this in our lab and it is doing a great job.
--And sektor spoke and said unto the people. Hey, buttwipe hand me the cheezeos.
That's right: filters, like cat, are most often used as part of a pipe.
*ducks*
Take the fans out of your computer, it wo
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I can only echo what I've already read in this thread. You don't specify the size of the room you need to cleanse, and you don't specify if you have any special requirements (allergies demanding HEPA or smokers, or both).
The Sharpter Image Ionic Breeze has been a godsend in my household since 1999.
I bought it because my girlfriend's HEPA filter sounded like a vacuum cleaner 24/7 and I had trouble sleeping with it... for 2 years. When I moved out of the college housing to get a real job, I got one of these that was advertised as "silent" in the hopes that when she followed me 3 months later, she'd not need the HEPA beast. I don't know how close the Ionic Breeze gets to HEPA, but it's close enough for her. After almost 4 years of service, the first one gave up the ghost. I think it was my fault, putting the blades back wet always made crackling noises and bad smells, but I was lazy and water improved the cleaning process. Screw the fact that I had a masters in EE and knew better. Over the 4 years, it paid for itself in the costs of replacement HEPA filters for her original one. Okay, maybe that's a lie... I can no longer find filters for it. But, if they were still available, the original $199 purchase would have been paid back. Anyway, it stopped moving air after all this time and I went to take it apart and broke one of those tiny wires that makes the whole thing work.
Prices have gone up a bit. I just bought my second (and third, they are running a promotion where the second one is 50% off). They have two sizes (smaller than first). I don't honestly know how they work, but it seems like they negatively charge the air with tiny wires and then the air gets sucked to the positively charged metal blades where it leaves off all the bad stuff. It's not silent, but if you have even the slightest background noise, or are more than 3-5 feet away, you'll not hear it.
If your lab is the victim of smokers, no filter in your pricerange will prolong your computers' supplies. Regardless, if it's a problem, taking the computers apart every 6 months to vacuum can cause only 20-30 minutes of downtime apiece and only costs what you put in vacuum electricity.
If anybody cares, and has read this far, aforementioned girlfriend became wife in 2000 and shortly will receive the title "Mom". Not that I'm prouder than hell about it or anything.
Go to cadr.org. They maintain a list of air purifiers and their performance measurements. I ended up getting a Hamilton Beach model, and have been happy with it, but your needs may vary. (Note on cadr.org that the highly-hyped Sharper Image model actually does a very poor job of cleaning air.)
You could also check out sneeze.com. It might be a cheesy name but they do sell good filtration products.
Are there any numbers on the number of square feet these things clean?
Seems like this would be an important number.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
As a side note ionic systems like the one from sharper image has the unfortunate side effect of creating ozone and can cause more harm then the dust it collects.
I noticed some time ago that the spooge on my monitor/keyboard/mouse captured a great deal of the dust in the air. So now I try to keep the general area around my computer nice-n-sticky. Having trouble finding inspiration? Check this out: http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030422/index.h tml
The dust you have to watch out for is when that big iron (several kW in fans) dectects the sheaf of papers you just dropped into the intake; Its comming back at you, NOW, at speed.
you guys have jaycar?
People who spend too much money on a crappy product when they could have bought a much better one for much less money typically have a hard time admitting it.
I know it is hard to admit that you made a poor buying decision, but with time maybe you can come to the truth. In the mean time, being hostile won't help.
Whether that'd do much for more generic types of dust, I can't say.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
It's more of a YMMV thing. once it pulls th ebulk out of the ai rit can clean as much air as you can get in and out of it. If you have really dirty air they'll clean less than if your air is nice and fresh. sort of like an oil filter. If the oil is dirty, the filter isn't goign to last as long as if the oil were clean to begin with.
Sponge!
Most people don't realize that all ionized air filtration systems produce o3. o3 is not safe for humans, the government regulates how much o3 a device can emit (and they base this off of how humans react to a certain dose of o3 during the course of 24 hours) they don't look into long term health side from prolonged exposure nor do they look at the fact that a product that emits o3 has the ability to create o3 that will build up in the closed room or house. o3 is commonly referred to as ozone which can kill just about any living cells (it's like a organic cleanser).
Most people think Ozone is a good thing, well and in a case that is true: Ozone up in the atmosphere is a good thing down here on the ground though it's considered pollution.
Generally ionizers are used in areas like hospitals to disinfect the air, I think living in a closed environment with one of these things is barbaric.
There is evidence to prove both Democrats and Republicans are lying cocksuckers. Vote independently.
I have no doubt that those Sharper Image filters work well, but only with the air that actually manages to get through them.
Think about it like this. Say that filter can remove 99.99% of all the dust particles that enter its intake. That's good, but it won't help if it's only moving a tiny amount of air. It'll clear out the dust in that corner of the room, but it won't affect much of the rest of the space since it can't capture any of the air in those other parts of the room. That's why getting your HVAC system well-filtered is the best way to reduce dust, because it moves the most air.
If you can't get any response from your HVAC guys, you could always try what my mom did in her office at school...put filters over the air supply vents. If you need to get your own air filtration unit, look for the highest CFM (cubic feet per minute) rating, so that it can move the most air, and thus catch the most dust.
Electrostatic filters do work quite well, but they need to have a fan...none of that ionic breeze nonsense.
I know, I know, it's the handyman's secret weapon, but it's really not necessary. I had a dust problem in my basement where my servers hide, and I cured the problem cheaply and easily, no duct tape required.
Get a cheapo box fan, $15-20 at your local wal-mart/k-mart/s-mart store. (shop smart, shop s-mart!) While you're there, look at the furnace filters. Buy the cheapest they have. Stick the fan where you need it, turn it on high, and set the filter on the intake side. Suction will hold it on. You can ignore the gaps around the sides, they really don't require sealing up, although I actually had to go find a little bit of scrap to lean against the filter because it falls off if the power fails. (unless you're puting your fan on the UPS...)
The filter works fine to remove dust, lint, hair, and other sorts of airborn junk. Zero hassel to change the filters, and they're cheap. (under a buck each, usually) Mine require changing about every 2 months. You might want to experiment a bit on fan placement... it's important to find the best spot where airflow is optimal. If you run an AC unit in the room, this will also help cut down on how often you have to clean its intake filter.
I like the Endust idea someone else posted, I'll have to try that. Good advice also to keep the equipment off the floor, setting your box on the floor is the fastest way to fill the case with dust bunnies and sieze up your fan.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
If you've got more outtake than intake, like most generic PCs that have an outtake on the PSU and maybe a second one at the back, you're creating negative air pressure in your case and causing it to suck in dust.
If you only have one fan, the PSU fan, reversing it will keep out the dust, but your PSU will overheat. But if you have, say, 2 intake fans (with filters) and one exhaust, you'll have positive air pressure in your case and dust will be blown out of it rather than sucked in.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
A decent level of humidity can greatly improve dust problems. We purchased a cool-mist home humidifier several years ago (for our home, not a lab or office) and found especially in winter time that dust levels went down. Side benefits include better capacity of the air to store latent heat energy (feels warmer in winter) and much decreased propensity for annoying static electricity.
Of course, there are a whole host of issues with humid air, too: more likelihood of growing molds, better environment for diseases to grow (ever wonder why hospitals are so dry?), higher energy costs in winter (more heat needs to be applied to the air since it now has more capacity to hold it), humidifier filter replacement (once a season), etc. But my wife and I are relatively careful and feel it's a strong net gain.
Second point: you need to check that your building's HVAC systems are being properly maintained. Being in the building design business (A/E), I'd guess only 10% of engineered building systems are properly maintained. Probably the same figure for residences, too. People usually think about vacumming the carpet on occasion, but the 1-5 US dollars required to change your HVAC air filters every month is more important for air quality.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
With that amount of dust *in* the building, SARS has nothing on you. This stuff will kill you.
Jan
I use a Rainbo vacuum cleaner. Runs the air it takes in through a couple of quarts of tap water. I just plug the vacuum hose into the air outlet and use it to blow out the computer. The volume of air it puts out is way more than a can of compressed air produces even if not quite at the same pressure.
You might want to check out an air cleaner used for woodworking. It is all about moving air through it and how many times you can turn over the air in the room. Look to www.woodcraft.com for examples.
Some of the replies are pointing to high-end (sub-micron) filter systems. This is great if you are dealing with pollen in a small room but they don't do well with the larger chunks.
e r=G9956
For this, how about one of these:
http://www.grizzly.com/products/item.cfm?itemnumb
I use something similar for woodworking and have little dust problem in the rest of the house. A bit noisey but you said that this was a lab so that is do-able.
http://saveie6.com/
After doing extensive research on the subject, and looking at tons of stuff that was available, I ended up plunking down $250 last November on a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze, the "Compact" Quadra version.
It hasnt completely reduced dust in our hosehold (we have unstained, un-sealed concrete floors, which are the #1 culprit, plus three cats), but its done an incredible job of keeping nicotine stains off everything in the computer room (my wife smokes). I put it next to her desk, and clean the "blades" every 3-4 days with a handi-wipe.
Definitely worth the money, but they're not the perfect solution for everyone. I'll probably be buying a refurbished full-size version from their online store or eBay soon (I dont see paying full retail price again).
Beware of stuff that is just negative ion/ozone generators - TOO MUCH ozone can be *really* bad for your health. The Ionic Breeze units put out a TINY amount (your laser printer, for example, probably puts out 10x as much), and the amount it puts out is well under federal health and safety standards.
I have one of the ubiquitous antec/chieftec/whatever alienware clone cases. A vent filter for forced air registers fits perfectly in front of the intake fans (they sell em at home depot for like 3 bucks of a dozen). It's an ultra budget solution, but like I said, they fit perfectly, and you cant see it, and it works great.
The exhaust fans have been repinned to run at 5 volts, just to make sure that the air into the case comes through the front through the filter, rather than being sucked through other little gaps (like around the drives).
There's a *lot* of dust around since I've been remodelling the house. I replace the filter whenever it gets dirty, from once a week to once a month depending on what's going on.
I haven't seen a spec of dirt inside this case yet, whilst my 'unfiltered' older machines need a thorough cleaning every other month or so.
I just popped the side off to verify myself, and the HSF on the CPU is as clean as the day I took it out of the box six months ago.
I can also vouch for the steel filters for range hoods, they do well trapping smoke and dust, and you can run 'em through the wash when they get dirty.
You shouldnt be spending 500 bucks to keep dust out of a regular PC, it just seems excessive. You'd be better off to let it clog and die and spend the 500 on a fancy new PC - but that's just the way I think.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Box fan
Duct Tape
Cheap, simple, effective.
hahahahaha
If you are looking for an opinion on Consumer Reports, then Check out this "Consumer Distorts" page. So they do have their non-anonymous critics.
It links to a Lisp website.
.... sorry, couldn't resist.
-... ---
Your lab probably shares a ventilation system with an area that is carpeted and has wood fiber ceiling tiles. Move the lab away from those two dust sources and the filters in the ventilation system will be more than sufficient.
If you can shop for another building, ask existing tenants if they ever notice dust accumulation. Dust is simply not a problem in some buildings.
Also, suicide and murder rates are higher among people who spend a lot of time under ceiling tile.
My freshman year of high school, we couldn't go to computer science because so much dust had collected into a computer, and a fire has been started. I do agree that dust is a serious issue, and as such, do simple things like using compressed air to spray the dust off the components and out of the power supply. If you can get the dust to settle outside of the computer/power supply, its alot better than still having it inside.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
There are lots of air cleaners out there, intended for the woodworking industry. Very small particles of wood aren't good when you breathe them in. Here are a few from Grizzly, there are plenty of other manufacturers:
m be r=G5955
http://www.grizzly.com/products/item.cfm?itemnu
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Just because you have had some kind of psychosematic..
if you're gonna use big words at least learn how to spell them.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Ionic breeze and other "ionic" cleaners are health hazards. They produce a lot of ozone and this is especially bad in confined areas. The side effects are many, but include contributing to asthma and ozone combine with chemicals present to form even more toxic substances. The OSHA site used to carry a technical paper on the ozone producing aspects of these and similar products, but I can't locate it now. Not only that, but they charge heavier particles and makes them stick to surfaces such as your nice white walls and makes them dirtier over time. These are horrible filters and should be avoided.
The best air cleaner by far for home/office use is made by Austin Air. They are pricey, but quiet, efficient and work very well.
All your hair are belong to us?
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Sell the cats to a Chinese restaurant. End of problem.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That is a very unconvincing website. It would be interesting if it provided actual detailed information about the "junk science" that CR purportly uses, but instead we have a number of quotes by people in several different organizations without any context given to make sense of them.
An aside, when CR rated Coors and Budweiser as top beers, I knew they were untrustworthy.
I couldn't find the government page, but here are a couple of links:
o c. html
h ap 4.html#h
http://www.lungusa.org/pub/cleaners/air_clean_t
Specifics of ozone generators:
http://www.lungusa.org/pub/cleaners/air_clean_c
Stay away from ionizing air cleaners....
lovely. More sophomoric humor, please.
You might look into the Rainbow vacuum cleaner. It uses water filtration and is said to be very effective at filtering dust. Apparently, people with allergies like it because you can simply turn it on and just let it filter the air. It may not be as good as a HEPA filter, but it is cheap (~$200) and the filter is trivial to replace: dump the water and fill with clean water!
Disclaimer: I have never used one. Caveat emptor
Don't use electrostatic air cleaners. They produce ozone and are a health hazard indoors. In addition to that, they don't work. The American Lung Association specifically recommends *against* using them:
h ap 4.html#h
http://www.lungusa.org/pub/cleaners/air_clean_c
Buy an Austin Air cleaner and be happy. They work great and are quiet.
First, look at your walls, doors, windows, etc. Are there leaks around them? You might talk to a building energy consultant and get a "smoke" test done to see where air is entering and leaving the space. I suspect that most dust is riding air currents into the lab when the door(s) are opening & closing. Adding an "airlock" chamber would help this (In the past when I designed "machine rooms" (old name for data centers), I almost always arranged the operators office space, lounge, etc. flanking a hallway to the main room(s). Each end of the hallway had reasonably sealed doors.
Second, investigate your existing air flows. It might be that the lab space is acting as the collector for the air return system. This means that it would be at a slightly negative air pressure for the rest of the building. You want the lab space/data center to be at a slightly higher air pressure than the surrounding space. The slight overpressure will tend to move dust & dirt out and away. Just don't go overboard. I've been in spaces were this was overdone. Opening an entrance door meant facing a stiff breeze...
Next look at a large room or shop filtration system. Depending on the size of the space, it will have one or more inlets & outlets. It will be designed to move the dust laden air through a series of filter media to trap increasingly fine grained material. (In a woodshop the first stage is large cloth bags to capture sawdust!) For a computer lab/data center, I should expect the first stage filters to be a fairly coarse media (thing household furnace filters @ $1.00US each. Depending on usage, these get changed every week, every 2 weeks, or once a month (should be part of regular PM...) The next stage will either be a very dense fiberglas media or large pore paper. These get changed out on the order of 1/2 as often as the 1st stage filters. 3rd and 4th stages can vary, either HEPA style paper units, or electrostatic panels. Whichever it is, these stages are responsible for only the smallest air-borne particles. p> Finally, look at filtering air flow through the individual pieces of equipment. Bear in mind that almost all PC type machines will have "inexpensive" fans that quite likely will have problems with the additional load caused by air flow through filters.
Since you are attempting to stay around $500 for the solution (number I saw being thrown around...) I would
All this talk of ionic and HEPA air filters is missing the first question: where is the dust coming from? Maybe you can take steps to reduce the ingress of dust into the lab. Maybe you need to punihs people for leaving the lab room door open to the dirty outside air...
If it's a university computer lab in a realtively modern centrally-ventilated building, it might just be enough to have a positive-pressure airflow of filtered air to push the dust out of the room. You might be able to hang the charge to the Buildings & Ground's account.
This link has more context. To clarify, I don't want to be in the position of defending this site. However, if anyone thinks Consumer Reports is above criticism, then think again. No ads does not equal objectivity. It is their spin, the line they use - like "Hey babe, I'm a doctor". BFD.
I have one too and I agree that they definitely work, but they do come with a warning to clean them immediately if anything burns in the house, food, candles, etc. Otherwise, bad fumes can result. So, I hope you are cleaning them after you burn those incense candles!
One of the guys I know buys some cheap filter paper at walmart (in the section where all the furnace and ac filters are) and just cuts it to size and attaches it to the grill on the power supply. His systems are almost 100% dust free.
Instead of purifying the air of the entire room, you can just purify the air going into your computer(s). The Dirt Bag is a filter bag that fits around a computer.
Buzz
What is is a dirt bag?
In dealing with a lot of dust (wookworking creates a lot of airborne particles of varying sizes...) we've found that the problem needs to be approached on several fronts. Some of your dust is generated in the room (dead skin, dust falling from clothing, etc.) but most is likely coming from outside the space.
First, look at your walls, doors, windows, etc. Are there leaks around them? You might talk to a building energy consultant and get a "smoke" test done to see where air is entering and leaving the space. I suspect that most dust is riding air currents into the lab when the door(s) are opening & closing. Adding an "airlock" chamber would help this (In the past when I designed "machine rooms" (old name for data centers), I almost always arranged the operators office space, lounge, etc. flanking a hallway to the main room(s). Each end of the hallway had reasonably sealed doors.
Second, investigate your existing air flows. It might be that the lab space is acting as the collector for the air return system. This means that it would be at a slightly negative air pressure for the rest of the building. You want the lab space/data center to be at a slightly higher air pressure than the surrounding space. The slight overpressure will tend to move dust & dirt out and away. Just don't go overboard. I've been in spaces were this was overdone. Opening an entrance door meant facing a stiff breeze...
Next look at a large room or shop filtration system. Depending on the size of the space, it will have one or more inlets & outlets. It will be designed to move the dust laden air through a series of filter media to trap increasingly fine grained material. (In a woodshop the first stage is large cloth bags to capture sawdust!)
For a computer lab/data center, I should expect the first stage filters to be a fairly coarse media (thing household furnace filters @ $1.00US each. Depending on usage, these get changed every week, every 2 weeks, or once a month (should be part of regular PM...) The next stage will either be a very dense fiberglas media or large pore paper. These get changed out on the order of 1/2 as often as the 1st stage filters. 3rd and 4th stages can vary, either HEPA style paper units, or electrostatic panels. Whichever it is, these stages are responsible for only the smallest air-borne particles.
p>
Finally, look at filtering air flow through the individual pieces of equipment. Bear in mind that almost all PC type machines will have "inexpensive" fans that quite likely will have problems with the additional load caused by air flow through filters.
Since you are attempting to stay around $500 for the solution (number I saw being thrown around...)
I would
Good Luck!
John Farmer
jfarmer@goldsword.com
Yes, this is an admirable solution. As the supervisor/manager of the largest computer lab in one of the largest universities in America, we have dedicated "porn stations" that could function as dust collectors. Anything to hinder their performance further.
These "porn stations" are not designated as such to the users, but I made sure that every corner computer has the crappiest monitor/video card/default settings, the oldest CPUs, stickiest mouse, brokenest keyboard, etc. etc. So when the fat guy comes in to sit in the back, turn the monitor to the wall, and enjoy his porn, he gets a "quality" experience.
Christ it's funny watching some of these guys try to navigate the web in 32 colors, 640x480 resolution, with a broken mouse, in front of a monitor with rainbows in 3 corners.
Just a thought, but computer power supplies are cheap as all get out. It's going to take you a loooong time to spend $500 on new power supplies. So why blow $500 on an air purifier that may or may not help the situation? You can invest that money and probably pay for new power supples with the interest it makes.
Sometimes we the managers in the business world see things differently than those in the trenches. It's what keeps companies running smoothly and profitably.
The way I interpreted his question is as such. He has much dust, at work, possibly a "workshop" environment. I am thinking manufacturing, and I am not thinking ionic breeze. I am thinking big fans that, serve to keep things cool and also direct dust debree out of crucial areas.
;-)
Sound to simple? It's still expensive, so it just might work!
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
As others have mentioned, you don't state the size or "enclosedness" of your lab, but some thoughts anyway:
1. Most (90%+) dust inside a home or office is generated by the shedding of human skin and hair or our clothing. Hence, most dust is generated within 5 feet of the fans sucking it in to the computer. In these environments you should have at least low density foam filters (think about the one on your hair dryer) on each intake fan. The case fans of your systems should be positively pressurizing the case so that all incoming air passes through a filter, not through any small openings.
2. Try to keep the intake fans on the computer cases as high off the ground and as open/exposed as possible. Ex: don't stick the fan in a corner under a desk, this is where air currents will deposit the most dust. In that same vein, your HVAC intakes should be on the ceiling, not near the floor. Moving them can be quite inexpensive.
3. Don't use ionizers. Ionizers are different than electrostatic filters. Ionizers are designed to change the balance of electrical charge in the ambient air (they spit out electrons). To me that's just a bad thing when highly sensitive electronic parts are about. The more out of balance the charges are, the more likely you are to experience static discharges, and we all know that kills computers.
4. For larger labs/offices I recommend an electrostatic filter that gets built in to the HVAC system. These things are highly effective at removing the lightest/smallest of dust particles. They are a bit expensive to install, and aren't the easiest things to clean, but they do a great job and you probably have a cleaning/maintenance crew. These devices do put out a small amount of ozone but this is usually not a problem with the normal air exchange that takes place in an average building. If you have a VERY high efficiency(tight) building, consider having an indoor/outdoor air/heat exchanger installed, or have the power in the filter unit reduced so ozone production is minimized(this is usually a jumper setting in the power supply). Most U.S. buildings will not require such measures.
5. Don't underestimate the effectiveness of a simple furnace filter at the air intake and/or exhaust points from your HVAC system. Paper is the best filter, but reduces flow the most. Foam filters are pretty good, especially the "charged" ones. The cheap "spider web" filters are useless, don't use them. They'll catch large debris, but not the stuff clogging up you case fans.
6. If this is a very small room, one or more portable HEPA filters will help immensely. I install these in all the smaller server rooms that I work in. Run them continuously(24x7).
7. If at all possible, have your cleaning crew use HEPA filters on all vacuum cleaners used in your lab. Otherwise, a significant amount of light dust will simply be blown out of the vacuum unit and in to the air where it can be sucked in to the computers. Even better than the HEPA filters is to use a built-in type vacuum system where exhaust air is routed outdoors.
In my home, I use central electrostatic filters, a central vacuum, and keep my computers on the desk, not the floor. I have VERY little dust accumulation in my systems (or anywhere else).
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Really nice, thoughtful response. This sounds like the right course of action to me. Especially looking for negative pressure in the machine room; that would certainly account for plenty. If this is a more normal office space, having regular floor vacuuuming is a good idea; those dust bunnies will grow otherwise.
I made it my self. Forget about trying to put a filter over the ventilation holes. There are too many cracks and leaks. Open up the power supply and turn the fan around. Don't just reverse the polarity, turn the whole thing around. You will also need to reverse any other case fans you may have. I also had to cut off and turn over a fan on the processor because of its position relative to some ventilation holes in the PSU. The next thing is to make a filter box to hand on the back of the power supply. I used an 2" x 2" x 6" cardboard box. Then I cut out the faces and hot glued in some panels of open-cell foam. Now you have a positive-pressure case with a filtered air supply. This means that not only will you not suck in a dust, but none can leak in from any of the cracks.
I vacuum the panels around once a mouth for 10 sec. and there is NO dust in the PC. This also will solve the problem of dust and hair getting sucked into the A drive. The only thing you need to worry about is making the filter box large enough so you don't over heat the PC. My 2x2x6 box is big enough. I also made clips out of soft wire and hot glue so the whole thing snaps onto the back of the PC.
Keep a can of compressed air handy. Once a quarter, shutdown and remove the cover from all of your machines. Use the compressed air to remove the dust from the innards, and from the power supply.
About once a month, go thru and use the compressed air to clean the vents of your machines. Shoot the compressed air directly into the power supply exhaust vents -- this will help keep too much dust from collecting on the fan.
Finally, buy Sun equipment. I've seen a five-year old SparcSTATION 20 that had never been cleaned (or even moved!) in the entire time the user owned the machine. The amount of dust in that machine was incredible -- and the machine ran just fine.
Buy quality products, and they'll last longer.
How about cleaning your equipment on a regular basis? Or does that sound too much like work? Just because you have got or are getting a degree, does not excuse you from having to do menial tasks every once in a while.
1) Dust Control / Filtration etc .
SARS virus spreading.
Coincidence?
2) If you let cats in your lab, you are either downright weird, or sick. Most people, inc me, dont let anything at all near my PCs and equipment. Cats are for people who are lonely and have know friends. You have a computer. You have slashdot. You have friends.
I have a Honeywell HEPA airfilter that I have in my dorm room. It works great in filtering out the dust and mold (I've gotten a lot fewer sinus infections since I got it). The great thing about HEPA filters is that the longer you wait to change the filter, the better it is at filtering the air. They aren't that expensive (under $100 for my small one), and they work wonders. I've never had any problems, and the only thing you need to do is to replace the charcoal pre-filter every 3 months, which isn't much trouble.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
Couldn't agree more with the moderator. Why by industrial grade equipment when you can buy toys from "The Sharper Image" or just strap a furnace filter on a box fan. What was this guy thinking!!! -1 : 100% overrated!
The Living air classic is great. We've tried many different heppa filters over the years and haven't been completely satisfied either because of the total cost of ownership or because of the noise.
A friend of mine had been raving about the Living Air Classic for a while so I decided to finally order one to see what the fuss was about. They range in price depending on the size of home you have but the one we have cost us around $400.00 and it can clear a 3,000 sq ft house in a few days. It's quite and doesn't need any maintence.
The site is www.livingairclassic.com
After living in Lubbock, Texas for six years and dealing with the effects of huge volumes of blowing dust in my computers, I finally discovered a solution to all of my dust problems.
I moved to Austin.
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
HEPA filters were originally developed during World War II to prevent discharge of radioactive particles from nuclear reactor facility exhausts. They have since become a vital technology in industrial, medical, and military clean rooms and have grown in popularity for use in portable residential air cleaners. A true HEPA filter is defined as having a minimum particle removal efficiency of 99.97% for all particles of 0.3 micron diameter. The HEPA rating is determined using a test smoke with particles of 0.3 micron average diameter. To qualify as a "true" HEPA, the filter must allow no more than 3 particles out of 10,000 to penetrate the filtration media.
Negative ion generators force high-voltage electricity to one or more needlepoints. Electricity is simply electrons in motion and since electrons repel one another, when they reach the needlepoint, they jump off and attach themselves to the molecules in the air forming negative ions. At that point the allergens and other particles are attracted to grounded surfaces where they can get rid of that extra electron, causing them to settle on , floors, furniture and other grounded surfaces, even on your bed. It's important to remember that a simple negative ion generator doesn't capture or collect the particles in the air, it simply causes them to precipitate out of the air.
Electrostatic precipitators are used to scrub the air coming out of factories, but the same technology has grown in popularity in home ventilation systems and some room air cleaners. They are ionizers designed to charge and then collect particles from the air once they have been charged. First, the air is passed through an ionizer where the particles gain a particular charge. Then that air is passed between plates with the opposite charge that attract the charged particles. Electrostatic precipitators have one major drawback though; they rapidly loose effectiveness as dust builds up on the plates.
They Ionic Breeze is essentially an electrostatic precipitator with no real means of circulating the air past the ionizer and then past the charged plates making it essentially useless.
I run an Austin Air Cleaner in my computer room and it does an excellent job keeping it dust-free. The cool thing about it is that the filter needs to be changed only every 5 years and the pre-filter is vacuumable instead of replacable. I've found it to be a very cost effective cleaner compared to most HEPA-filter based air cleaners where you must change the pre-filters every three months and the HEPA filters every year.
I have a story to tell here... I tried this exact thing a few years ago... Two 12cm fans, holes cut in side of case for them. Fans were powerful enough to maintain positive pressure in case, thus preventing dust from coming in other then through the filter (theoretically).
Now, add tissues over intakes. (masking tape around edges to hold them on). Turn computer on. Worked well for about, hmm, 5 seconds. After that, the fans force stretched the tissues into the path of the blades, whereupon the tissue was shredded into a billion pieces and uniformly distributed into every nook and cranny of everything. I had to take the PC apart to get it all out. And even then, 3 months later when my overheat alarm went off I discovered yet more tissue clogging the CPU heatsink.
BAD BAD IDEA
http://www.3m.com/us/home_leisure/filtrete/
Here's a description of how the filtrete works.
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn03/wn03-1 /wn03-101.html
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Even better and quieter solution would be using large table fan: remove the stand, cut big round hole to the side of your computer case, remove frontside protection crate from the fan and attach the fan on the side of your case to blow air inside the case. You can cover the backside crate of the fan with filtering sheets, use noise killer power unit wich won't use it's fans if there's no heat. Effective, quiet and geeky.
Higher Air pressure inside (blowing in instead of sucking out) you case is better because you have control where air goes in ( with lower pressure air leaks in where ever it can and cases aren't very airtight).
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
...they have anti-allergic filters build-in and should also filter dust.. all you need is to remove the air conditioner from the car.. It will work with 12V
After a comment like that I was expecting a different kind of link to a different kind of inspiration :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Cleans 50,000 square feet!!!* using only 120 volts**.
*assumes 3 inch high ceilings.
**requires dedicated 20 Amp circuit.
First, clean your ducts. Then, start using these babies in your a/c system. Problem solved. Make sure you replace them whenever they need it, too.
Nothing a wee bit of good duct maintenance can't solve.
getting rid of dust is very expensive to near impossible, preventative maintenance on computers is the best solution.
Natural-Selection Be
Why not place a Chux wipe (or similar dish washing cloth with tiny 'breathing holes') over the exhaust fan of the power supply. While your PC is switched on, this hole pushes out hot air, but while your PC is off, it attracts dust very quickly.
The good thing about these wipes is that there is enough room for air to still pass through it, but the dust doesn't.
Cheap, and it works pretty good!
Well under $500 (Send your change to me!)
Note: You may also want to place something similar over the air intakes at the front of your case... Normaly at the front of your case at the bottom. Just make sure you buy the right cloths!!! They're the ones that look almost see through!
...if you're too lazy to clean the inside of your computer, you're too lazy to clean a filter. Blocked filter = fried computer...filters added by you will also restrict flow. Nice way to burn down the house.
Or is that only the ozone generators/electrostatic filters do this? Confused...
I was thinking... you could blow air into the bottom of a barrel of water, let it bubble up to the top and put it back into the room. I know from a really reliable source that water bongs get much of the nasty stuff out of pot and make the smoke much smoother. Of course I've never actually tried to clean the air in a room with one but it seems like it might work.
Natural Light?
...to buy a typical box-fan of the 3'x3' variety at your local WalMart, go to the air conditioning section and buy a 3'x3' inexpensive pleated filter (or two, as filtration is directly related to the square footage of the filter media) and tape one or more in series onto the intake side of the fan. The more filters you put on, the cleaner the air will get, to a point. If you're really nuts, put a HEPA nearest the fan and lower density filters further out, to reduce clogging on the HEPA. Electrostatic filters can work similarly, but require monthly cleansing and re-spraying to add an ionizing charge to the filter.
This is pretty darn inexpensive, even if you count the cost of duct tape. It's guaranteed to clean the heck out of a room, and you can just glance at it occasionally to know if it's dirty.
If you're extremely paranoid about microbes too, you can buy a UV light and hook it to the outgoing side and a shield to block UV leakage into the room--UV will kill anything that gets through the filters. UV lights can run a hundred bucks or so, but is still well under your $500 mark.
That said, real computer labs like those in Motorola's IS department, use laminar flow and raised flooring to force air upward and pull it out through the ceiling, to prevent settling and clogging. Their setups were fantastic for keeping the dust clear even with cramped quarters. That's definitely the expensive way to go, but the best.
I've been tested to have reactions to about 2/3 of the standard tests (I live in Austin, mold and pollen capital of the world--yay!), and this cheap filter has made a real difference with my asthma. Oh yeah, we moved into a house with no carpet--just tile and wood floors.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
I'm sold on the Environizer, but the RS website says the version they sell is 120VAC only. Does anyone know where I could buy this in Switzerland? Perhaps it is sold under a different product name? I did a search with google but could not find anything. Any help would be most appreciated.
Yeah, I'm a grad EE student, and I have made stuff in our photonics lab. It's 100 times cleaner than Intel's clean room/fabrication standards which is neat to boast about.
But if you smoke 1 cigarette inside the clean room, it will take 6 months, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of filters, to get it clean again.
Just thought that'd be interesting to you all.
i have an ionic breeze... sharper image claims it produces ozone, which i kinda believe since it generates a funny smell.
but ive heard some ppl tell me that ozone damages the lungs. so is it actually safe to operate the ionic breeze indoors when people are around? right now, i only turn it on when i leave my room, and when i come back, open the windows.
The water always bent AWAY from my Principal.
paintball
Because to him, he has the choice between believing what he READ from some anonymous user on Slashdot, and what he READ in Consumer Reports.
Now which is more credible?
YOUR personal experiences may be more credible to YOU, but they're likely not very credible to complete strangers.
paintball
Both the Ionic Breeze and HEPA filters have been mentioned. As someone with alergies that has used both, I can tell you right now that there's a huge difference between the two. I'm not sure what the Ionic Breeze goes for, but for a $200 HEPA filter house solution, you fix the air in your entire house - and much better than the IB can in a single room.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
its called a vacuum cleaner :)
be vigilant, be pure, behave
Here, add one of these to your cart. :)
:) Hope this helps.
Yeah, its overkill for a device usign less than 10 watts, but hey, you could plug 3 or 4 environizers into one.
Ok, time for bed for me now, have to open my RadioShack in 5 hours...
Sponge!
Now which is more credible?
YOUR personal experiences may be more credible to YOU, but they're likely not very credible to complete strangers.
And that's why you're reading Ask Slashdot?
My beef with Consumer Reports is their wierd form of objectivity. An air filter can't be rated by the contaminants it removes, because the test is set up to measure volume of air moved. What's up with that? I also don't rate cars based on their number of cupholders.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
I covered up the holes in one of the panels of my ATX case with Aluminium Foil and I haven't seen a lot of dust lately. Also, it makes a good effect with a Cold Cathdote light :-).
Or wait until you remove a reversed LED fan, look at the dust!
I dont have an ionic breeze but my old roommate did, we were smoking in his room and it did pull in the smoke, and the smoke did not come out of the other side. I havnt seen one since I moved out of that apartment, but I figured I would post that little blurb for all the critics out there
If you get too much ozone in your office, you could always release som CFCs, which readily break down O3 and make it harmless.
:) , but this can cause other problems, as chlorine is poisonous.
My understanding is that the CFCs themselves do not break down ozone.
What happens is that, in the upper atmosphere, sunlight breaks down the CFC, releasing, among other things, chlorine (the first "C" in CFC).
The freed chlorine is what breaks down the ozone.
In your room, the CFC is not going to break down (at least not in any measurable amount), and so will not break down the ozone.
OTOH, dumping Chlorox in a pan might have the desired effect
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I know I'm not at all that much of a cat person, but if you're having troubles with cats clogging up your fans, why don't you simply remove the cats? :)
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
Hey! That is what your nosehair is for!
I am not really surprised how many people think that devices without fans or filters work. Wake up people. It is the same physics that make the ions stick to particles that proves that a volume of air is required to pass thru a filter if you want your air cleaned if at all. All scientific studies show that a filter (glass or carbon) must permit some pollutants to pass through in order to work. The larger the volume of air, the harder to filter, the more displacement needed (the bigger the room, the bigger the fan needed). If you have a small computer lab that you need to keep clean, a real hepa filter rated for the volume of air in your room will help. I have a small honeywell filter that was allergist recomended, I also have 4 severs and a workstation always running in my office. They collect dust no matter what. I dust gear once a month. Stay away from fanless devices. It is like filtering your room with a piece of cardboard (i dont know if anyone remembers the N.S.A. scandel that involved air filters) I have to agree with all the posts for cleaning and vacuming. That is where you start. Keep the enviornment and the gear clean first. Filter the air second. Clean again third.
Why ask slashdot? Go off and find yourself catalogs aimed at woodworkers. For under $250 you'll find several options for air filteration (you want an air filter, not a dust collector which would be too noisy). You'll still have filters, but these last a long time. Also google search rec.woodworking for home brewed equivalents. Hint:if "pretty" is not a requirement, find a heating and ventillation contractor, ask them if they have any old squirrel cage fans -- nearly every de-commissioned furnace has one, fasten quality furnace filter in front -- voila air filter for under $50.
The other option is the electrostatic version that goes in-line on a forced air system in homes. They work, but are pricy and you'll get tired of washing them.
I have on of the Electrolux HEPA air purifiers at the house and it is awesome. Yes, it is also loud, but we actually like that because it acts as a white noise generator while you sleep (we keep it in the bedroom).
Our bedroom is pretty big (~900 sq ft) and it does a great job filtering cat hair and other crud. They run around $500.
ULPA (Ultra-Low Penetrating Air) filters are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude more effecient than HEPA (High-Efficency Particulate Arresting) air filters; ULPA is rated to trap 99.999% of particles at 0.12 micron while HEPA filters only catch 99.99% at .3 microns. OF course, for most airborne dust and bacteria, the difference is negligible, since they're in the single-to-tens-of micron size ranges - but ULPA is clearly the superior choice, and not much more costly than HEPA at all. Incidentally, you might want to consider ULPA filters if you make IV infusions - a lot of viruses are small enough to only be trapped in ULPA filters IIRC.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Every lab or datacenter I have worked in was connected to some pretty intense air conditioners with filters that took care of the dust. If you guys have separate air-conditioning in the lab, you should check and see if you can get dust-collecting filters.
Having a fan means you can clean a much larger volume of air.
MORE air yes, but it's not going to be nearly so clean. Longwinded explantion that goes into theory follows:
Ionic filters have a theoretical 100% efficiency for all particle sizes. How these ionic air filters work is an excercise left to the reader (apply - charge to incoming particles with a -1,000V grid, place a +1000V grid close by, all the ionized - charged particles stick to the + grid); there are scientific instruments to select a very specific size of dust particle that work on the same principle. Instead of two charged plates, they use a rod and sleeve electrode system with + in the center, and they have a very small exit slit at the bottom; the voltage across the rods is very carefully controlled along with the carrier gas flow rate (the dust has to be in some medium), and only one very specific size comes out the slit at the botton (+/- 1 nm). (TSI 3080 Electrostatic Classifier)
The theoretical equation for this instrument describes the arc taken between the two electrodes for a given size particle in a given carrier gas at a given flowrate and voltage difference. The carrier flowrate is absolutely critical, a few tenths of a percent deviation will throw your size off by a few *tens* of percent. Assuming these ionic filters are going for 100% efficiency, and they aren't running some insane delta-V like -5000/+15,000, they need a fairly low flow rate to allow all the particles time to drift over to the collector (small particles won't move very fast through dense air in a relatively low electrical field - c'mon people, i know it's early, but think about it - smoke diffuses, water droplets from a spray bottle drops from the air a lot faster) - so to make my point finally, the Ionic Breeze uses the electrostatic air flow, which is actually probably a lot better than a fan-driven filter. The fanned filters can clean more air, but they're going to leave a lot of the smaller crap untouched...I actually wouldn't be surprised if a HEPA filter was actually more effective than a cheap ionic filter.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The contents of the blackhead site would then be mixed with the alcohol, which was easy to eject from the syringe, so I could use the syringe repeatedly. In those days, the plunger was glass too, and made to be used repeatedly. Because I was only pulling suction, I could use the same syringe that I oiled with. The alcohol would readily evaporate if I needed to load it with oil, and any remaining oil did not interfere with the blackhead removal.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I once read somewhere about an insanely simple and cheap solution: cover the inlets and outlets with pieces of your (wife's / sister's/ grandmother's) tights stretched over the in/outlet between the fan and the perforation in the casing. I've experimented with this myself, and although it is quite cumbersome to actually get it done, and more cumbersome having to remove the cloth periodically to clean it (with water and soap), it does actually keep a lot of dust out.
JeR
If you're smoking in your dorm room, a 'oney', or 'one hitter', is probably the least conspicuous means of getting certain psychoactive chemicals into your blood, but the use of the tube as described above need not be limited to such low quantity imbibing. Water pipe, steamroller, Jay or Joint, vaporizer, chillum, blunt, or iBong smoke could also be blown through one of these things and work equally well:)
I'd like to hijack this thread for my own needs.
I have a small basement room in our offices that I would like to turn into a server room. (10x12'). Unfortunatly it has no easy access to an external vent, and putting in the duct work would cost more than the computers it would contain.
Is there an (affordable) environmental control unit that can be used in a space like this or am I trying to find a loophole in the laws of thermodynamics?
-insert obligatory simpsons quote-
Would an evaporative solution work? I'm totally HVAC ignorant.
OK, maybe the oil in the Endust will increase the dust-collection efficiency of the filter, like a K&N filtercharger on an automobile: http://www.knfilters.com/facts.htm
m
But, what about the other components in that aerosol can? Propane, butane, hydrocarbon solvent, METHYL CHLOROFORM (1,1,1-TRICHLOROEHANE). (From the MSDS)
http://www.herc.org/library/msds/endust.ht
"Methyl chloroform is used as a solvent and in many consumer products. Effects reported in humans due to acute (short-term) inhalation exposure to methyl chloroform include hypotension, mild hepatic effects, and central nervous system (CNS) depression. Cardiac arrhythmia and respiratory arrest may result from the depression of the CNS. Symptoms of acute inhalation exposure include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of consciousness, and decreased blood pressure in humans."
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/trichlor.html
I mean, suggesting that another industry has more hardship that IT is reason enough for negative moderation.
what was this AC thinking? didn't he know that that shit don't fly here?
Yeah, i realized (shortly after i posted) that i forgot to point out that this was an advantage that these have over other purifiers. I guess i got too into the article
I don't have one and I wouldn't reccommend one, they're WAY too expensive for what they do/contain.
As someone mentioned, the lack of a fan reduces their efficiency quite a bit.
But the idea of electrostatic air filtering is sound.
My father and I both suffer from pretty nasty allergies. As a result, long ago we installed two electrostatic air filters in our house. The units we have were from Sears (probably OEMed from Honeywell or another one of the major HVAC companies), and install in the furnace ducts after the mechanical air filter. (Ours required the ducts to be cut out to fit the unit. A pain but worth the money and effort.) It's a miracle during allergy season.
You should try to find some sort of electrostatic filter that includes a fan... You can get whole-house furnace filters for less than the $500 of the IB, and they work very well, there are probably intermediate versions good for a single room.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This has all the symptoms of a high-quality troll (starts out with solid points, descends quickly into flames and spelling errors) but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt because I want to say something.
Just because an organization uses "science" doesn't mean it uses good science. If the CR experiment tested the filter in a sealed box with no airflow whatsoever and used those results as an indicator of performance in a home, it is bad science and will give flawed results. In any home, a central A/C or heating setup will ensure a constant air flow between the vents and the intake. (Note, I haven't measured that "scientifically" I only used "common sense" which will get you pretty far, believe it or not.)
Does the Sharper Image thing really cost $500? If so it's overpriced, not because of how well it performs but because of the parts that go into it. The margins on those have got to be huge.
Negative ion generators force high-voltage electricity to one or more needlepoints. Electricity is simply electrons in motion and since electrons repel one another, when they reach the needlepoint, they jump off and attach themselves to the molecules in the air forming negative ions.
Only very cheap, low-voltage filters use needle points. Points allow the minimum amount of current to spill out and ionize the particles, but the area of ionization is a rather small sphere around the needle. Much better is to blast more voltage, say a few thousand, across a flat plate, with a grid collector plate; the flat plate ionizes a lot more particles than a needle and the collector has the most area to catch the crap. But that's more sophisticated, and requires a much beefire powersupply, so it's a lot more $$$ tha the cheapo $100 wal-mart ionic filters.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Check out woodworking air cleaners. They're designed to filter particles down to one micron. Some links:
m v? Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=PSI&Category_Code=A C
& p= 868
http://jettools.com/JETWood/Tools/AFS2000.html
http://www.pennstateind.com/Merchant2/merchant.
http://www.deltawoodworking.com/index.asp?e=136
Rob
I blow the dust out of my computer case once a month. I used to use those little $5 cans of air I would perloin from the office, but they stopped buying them because *everyone* took them home or played with them until they were empty.
So, I now just use my paintball gun. Open case, stand back about 3ft, and shoot at the flat spots that won't be hurt by a little air shock. Cleans out the case good and moves all of the dust bunnies to the floor where I can vacuum them. I know a few people with large co2 tanks ( 6ft long welding tanks, can't remember the proper name for them ) and it only costs them about $20 to fill them from the welding gas place. Either way, my method is practically free, although it doesn't make my environment any cleaner, just keeps the computers from filling up.
That dust is probably just about as flamable as volitile liquids like paint thinner or gasoline. Hopefully, even with hotter processor, nothing reaches the flash point, and there aren't any spark sources.
The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health not attributable to treatment. This effect is believed by many people to be due to the placebo itself in some mysterious way. A placebo (Latin for "I shall please") is a medication or treatment believed by the administrator of the treatment to be inert or innocuous. Placebos may be sugar pills or starch pills. Even "fake" surgery and "fake" psychotherapy are considered placebos.
http://skepdic.com/placebo.htmlWater makes a *great* dust filter. The Rainbow line of vacuum
cleaners runs their output through a water pan, and the result
is a *lot* less dust (if you sweep at all regularly). Now, those
things run a fair penny more than the $500 you were looking at,
but you can probably take advantage of the same principle for
well under $500. You need two things: a system for rotating
the room's air so that any given bit of air makes it to your
filter system periodically, and a filter system that takes the
air and forces it down into a bucket of water. You do have to
change the water, but that's easier and much cheaper than changing
a traditional filter. (In theory you could rig something up to
automatically change the water, but probably not inside of your
$500 budget.) You can tell that stuff is being removed from the
air because the water turns black.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
woodworking websites have you answers. woodworkers need to keep their shops clean of all that sawdust. search the web for woodworking tools & look @ their cleaners. here's 1 of my favorite suppliers: http://www.pennstateind.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv? Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=PSI&Category_Code=A C
A typical woodworking dust collection system, such as the new Jet will do wonders for cleaning the air. Wood dust is now classified as a carcinogen, due to its fine particulate nature. Makes you wonder if standard household dust has similar properties.
These beasites can be loud, so typically you want to install them out of earshot and duct the vaccuum. A regular model will run you $250 so you could do it yourself with the ducting for the $500 you're looking at.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Just believe, damnit! Believe!
I think that an office could definitely benefit from one of these babies! You should see what it does with cigarette smoke! Gone in a flash!
Oreck (the vacuum cleaner people) sell an excellent air cleaner. I've had one for a little over a year and it is amazing what a difference it makes in my house.
The model I have has three filters; a reusable prefilter, a metal collector, and a carbon filter. The carbon filter needs to be replaced every few months (they are fairly cheap, $20-$30). The prefilter just gets rinsed off and the metal collector is cleaned every 4 or 5 weeks. Mine has a fan with 2 or 3 speed settings, at the "normal" speed it is quiet enough to not be noticiable.
I think there are a few new models, but they all operate similarly.
Matt
Below is the correct link to the air cleaners Penn State Industries Air Cleaners
That is a very unconvincing website. It would be interesting if it provided actual detailed information about the "junk science" that CR purportly uses, but instead we have a number of quotes by people in several different organizations without any context given to make sense of them.
I agree. The quotes were all regarding one thing: its alarmist slant on pesticides. And some of the sources are a lot worse than CR could ever be: The Washington Times? Give me a break. It's always complaining about other media sources being "environmentalist" which is WT's highest insult.
Now, it's probably impossible for personal opinions to never end up affecting articles, and CR certainly has less expertise in some areas, but CR in general does a really good job at being fair.
An aside, when CR rated Coors and Budweiser as top beers, I knew they were untrustworthy.
As far as taste tests go: The results are simply a statistical summary of tests taken by randomly-selected double-blind taste testers. You may not agree with the results; you may wish the sample size was bigger; but you can't fault the method.
bp
Check ebay:
m =2318020218&category=20610
Dutch auction, 21 availabe, $195 each:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
Just search for "ionic breeze"
That's a very interesting website... thanks for the link.
I have, on several occasions, noticed the "green" slant of consumer reports when it comes to certain items, like vehicles. They don't seem to like SUVs much, but even some of their points regarding those vehicles are well-taken (for example, how many suburbanites really use/need the 4wd capability of their large SUV? Almost none... one of the points they make). Now, I think people should be free to buy what they want, but everyone else should be just as free to poke fun at them for buying a massive off-road vehicle that never leaves the pavement...
I'll trust consumer reports to tell me what kind of VCR or tires to buy... but I'd be a bit less trusting towards anything with an "environmental" angle.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who's noted this... thanks again for that link.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Yes, I have one (the smaller of the two models Radio Shack offers) in my bedroom, and while I'm unsure what it does for dust, it certainly does a good job of removing cat odors from the room.
Even though the unit has a fan, it's quite quiet.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Look, guy, it's all well and good to believe unbiased reviews and so forth. I'm not saying that I'd consider CR a source of such, but hey, you believe what you want.
However, that's beside the damn point here. The guy has one. He says it works for him. To tell him he's been duped when he's the one cleaning the dust off the blades every couple of days is a bit ridiclous.
That's all people are saying. Nobody's defending a "shiny piece of crap", they're defending the guy who makes personal observations and decides for himself rather than simply believing anyone and everyone else's opinions.
As for "not moving air", you're wrong. You're just simply wrong. They do move air, just not as quickly as one with a fan. You can hold up a piece of silk ribbon in front of one of the things and see that for yourself quite easily. Or if you prefer, blow smoke at it. That works just as well. I admit that it doesn't move 6 roomfulls of air in an hour, but then that's the whole point. Some people need air filtering, but cannot deal with noise. If you need air filtering and don't mind noise, then by all means get a fan system.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Thanks.... for some reasons that just makes me laugh so hard, the image of the little Ionic Breeze pumpin away trying to atack dusk, and there is the dust, gently floating and sitting atop the machine. LOL.
That article is talking about an entirely different type of cleaner. An "ozone generator" is a device that uses ozone as the primary method of cleaning. You find them a lot for industrial applications, to clean large areas of smell when people aren't around.
These devices are "electrostatic precipitators" and are an entirely different kind of beast. They do generate ozone in extremely small quantities, as a side effect. But then again, so does the tube of your TV. So does anything with electrical fields exposed to air and, therefore, oxygen.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Cubic feet would be a better number, as air tends to be three dimensional in housing/office situations.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
... they'd be a bit louder than the Ionic Breeze (understatement), but they'd actually do something useful for the money spent.
For some of us, the silence is more important than how many roomfuls of air it can move in an hour.
Hey, reviews are great and all, but what I do know is that every 2-3 days, I have to wipe the dust off the blades of the Ionic Breeze. So, it seems to be "doing something useful" just dandy, thank you.
It's okay to listen to claims based on authority, but not over the evidence of your own damn eyes.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Years of laboratory tests have confirmed that the most effective dust removal devices are computers, so just build a giant computer case with lots of fans, and watch the dust pile up inside. :)
Dust is a problem in the wood shop, too, particularly with certain more-toxic-than-other wood species. Have a look at http://www.deltawoodworking.com/index.asp?e=136&p= 868
for two air cleaners that address this issue. Certainly fits the $500 criterion; replacing filters is just a fact of life.
yes, but wouldn't the settling of dust make square feet more important than cubic feet?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
when the dust collecter in my father-in-law's workshop broke down, he just tied a furnace filter to a box fan with a rope.
A wood working dust collector, single or double stage, is really intended to collect large particles. What is needed in this situation is an air cleaner, designed for very small particles. Jet makes those too, and they are far more affordable.
If the problem is dust inside of the machine, perhaps that would be the most efficient thing to filter?
I know people who use clipped stretched pantyhose as intake filters on their machines. Not only do they not impede airflow as much as other solutions thereby reducing noise, but they are very budget efficient. On the other hand, while very effective at reducing large particles such as pet hair they would not likely pass the HEPA standard. If noise is not an issue, a standard computer filtration system might be the best option for you and your laboratory. Some are washable / reusable.
Of course, your lab shouldn't get that dirty to begin with. If you have lab attendents, you should teach them regular maintenence procedures during their downtime... such as spraying compressed air through the bodies of the computers and keeping the surfaces of the lab pristine.(refillable compressed air canisters are available for $15 and can be refilled with any bicycle pump) If the computers are outright clogged with dust, they obviously aren't getting even the most occasional of maintenence. There isn't a fire-and-forget solution to the problem of computer dust: Even with a great filter you still have to open them up occasionally and give them a spritz.
The ______ Agenda
Clearly the computers are doing a very good job of taking the dust out of the air. You just need some decoy computers to lessen the dust available for the machines about which you care. You might even be able to get away with a bunch of decoy power supplies instead of whole computers.
Probably the worst environment in the world I can think of is a veteranary clinic.
Back in the days when LANtastic on DOS was a great small business network solution, our shop had a 286 server come that had suddenly halted dead in it's tracks (and it wasn't the power supply)
When the service manager opened it up, the main open cavity was filled with one massive dustbunny (about 8"W x 10"H x 3"deep). Convinced we had horrible thermal problem that stopped the the cpu (or memory or anything), the unit was vaccummed out and restarted - system came up though BIOS but the massive 40Mb drive would not read - though it was recognized and there. Since the last backup wasn't perfect, we really wanted to get the drive back so it was removed and inspected. When cabled up externally the vibration was funny - the drive was not spinning!
Close inspection showed that a very fine horsehair had wound itself around the main bearing until it was so tight it STOPPED the spindle. Fine twiser work pulled off the hair and the drive ran fine (excepting of course, the expected some loose clusters and other drive issues with open files and the sudden shutdown).
I actually use a breeze in the data center with about 20 servers and two full racks of scsi drives, it does great. It captures the dust and is cheap on energy. I don't want another fan in the data center, its loud enough already. I have one in my office, and a few at home. I have no complaints. filters in hepa products have a limit to the particle size it will trap and particles smaller will pass right through. These small particles are easy for an ionic system to capture. No discontinued replacement hepa filters to waste your time searching for.
Siamese cats have a gene that causes their hair to grow dark in cool areas of their body (paws, nose, ears, tail) and light in warm areas (body). To personalize your cat just shave your initials in the fur on its side. The cool air will cause the hair to grow dark. This only works with Siamese.
grep -v -w cats ?
sed 's/cats//g' ?
Just like 1. 2. ? 3. proft!, the trick is in the ?...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> Isuzu might disagree with you
And that is... why? Because Isuzus are crap?
Well, I used to work in a computer lab as one of the technicians. Periodically, we would bring each machine outside, take off the case, and clean them out with one of those vacuum cleaners that have an air-blower attachment. This doesn't cost anything except the time of the lab technician, which is usually fairly cheap (especially at a university ;). Also, you only have to clean out the computers that need cleaning.
IMHO, getting a whole lab air filtration system is going to be overkill. To get to the point where you no longer have to do maintenance on the computers, you would need a very expensive air cleaner. You're running a lab, not a hospital. The hardware can take a lot of dust (a.k.a. neglect) before it fails.
My own computer case, which sits in my dusty bedroom, has a slot for a case-fan in the front, but the front panel is solid. So, I drilled the front panel with holes, and then placed a filter between the fan slot and the case panel. Then I added a fan to blow air into the case through the filter.
Where did I get the filter? I bought one of those 24"x20" home heater filters for 50 cents at the local hardware store. Since the filter is much larger than what I need, I cut out a small piece to fit in the case. I saved the rest of the filter. Periodically, I replace the old filter with a new piece cut from the saved filter.
It's very cheap, and it drastically cut down the amount of dust in my case. I still vacuum out the inside once in awhile, because fine dust still accumulates in it. But this maintenance is infrequent. Adding a case mod like this would save you a lot of maintenance work. I'm sure some other slashdotters know where to buy cheap air-filters for computer cases.
Good luck!
Shailesh
The quantities in question are usually things: How much air (volume), often within a time period (exchanges per hour for a space of X cubic feet), and percent filtration or capture, which can be associated with a particle size or range (i.e. 97% of all parrticles > 5 mucron). The total dust capacity of a filter element before it needs replacing/cleaning isn't usually given, and even settled dust is a three dimensional quantity...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
A short description on filters: There is, roughly, how many particles they catch of different sizes and how much air they attempt to filter. (Back to the ionic breeze later) In general, the latter is actually the dominant force in really helping you.
The HEPA standard is irrelevant (and no longer current) in any case where you might be standing in the unfiltered air. It's designed to keep radioisotopes from escaping laboratories. That doesn't mean HEPA filters are bad - but the HEPA standard is tremendous overkill in terms of what's important to you. A small HEPA filter, for instance, might have filtered 99.97% of very small particles out of 10% of the room air in the time another filter would have filtered out 80% of 90% of the air. (Math: about 10% vs. 72%)
That said, traditional furnace filters still suck :) as they barely do any filtering at all. In fact, I have a box of 20x25 for sale at http://www.xig.net/sale/ near Chicago. Filtrete is a wonderful solution that doesn't cost very much - and while the parent post mentioned this, I'm not sure they put enough emphasis on it. I ended up replacing my furnace fairly soon after moving here for other reasons, and I have a Honeywell F50 electronic filter on my furnace. It's not even a very efficient filter compared to HEPA, but it uses the gigantic fan that's on my furnance, so in the end, it's better.
There is a basic difference between electronic and physical media filters that _in general_ means electronic filters work better on smaller particles and media works better on big ones. The ideal solution typically is to put a large media filter in front of the electronic air filter - which is exactly what my F50 does. (There's a washable metal mesh filter) I believe this is the nature of the Ionic Breeze controversy - that it is ineffective on industrial debris in the air, but effective at pulling out allergen-sized particles. (Yes, allergens come in many sizes. But they're all pretty small. And, you're probably not allergic to dust mites, but to dust mite FECES - just in case you weren't sure it was tiny) I certainly think a fan might help it, but in my bedroom, for instance, it probably wouldn't matter because there's a ceiling fan and quite a bit of airflow (partially from ~ 12 case fans so it varies depending on exactly where...) My supposition is that it was designed with some sort of "average" room air circulation in mind.
If your goal involves making it easier for someone to breathe, make sure you catch those pretty small particles - Filtrete at least, electronic ideally. If you have allergies, there are lots of other things that help tremendously - like (now NOT just plastic!) covers on your mattress, hardwood floors, washing bedding in hot water... (Perhaps I'll turn this page into a webpage. Heh. I'm happy to answer questions, though, in the meantime. If I do, it'll appear at http://www.xig.net/allergy
Disclaimers and notes: I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, I don't have an Ionic Breeze (they cost HOW much?), nor have I read the relevant Consumer Reports articles. I do think CR usually does great work, and I purchased my washer, dryer, and dishwasher from their reviews, but anyone can make a mistake. I do have pervasive airborne allergies, and have made a great many modifications to my surroundings to improve them.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Not sure how small the dust is you are dealing with, or the dimensions of your lab but maybe try what woodworkers use to clean the air of fine dust.
Try looking at something like this that you suspend from the room ceiling. They are usually a squirrel cage blower that sucks the air through a pre-filter to get the big stuff then a second filter to get the tiny stuff and then returns the air to the room. Not the quietest solution (~65dB) but lots of computer labs are pretty noisy. To limit that, put it on a timer to scrub the air during off peak times.
In a 20'x20'x8' room it will change the air over about 8 times an hour, capturing particles down to a few microns. Filters are reusable. All the major wood machinery companies make similar models. Under $250 gets you a unit with remote control (maybe a timer too) or you can get it in kit form where you build the box. A new challenge for case modders out there?
(disclaimer: I don't work for them but like their products)
Check it out .
Unless you are rackmounting servers every single day, there is absolutely no reason for you to be in there. (to do day-to-day administration) Get your company to spend $20k on a Raritan remote KVM switch to control all your servers remotely. You can connect "consoles" up to few hundred feet away and I think there's a module for remote administration (dial-up) as well.
OR
Get VNC software. it's free and it works. AND it doesn't blue-screen your servers.
l8r
During Desert Shield/Storm, we airmen were faced with a similar problem. We also had no access to anything approaching a proper filtration system. However, we could get coffee filters since us zoomies can't be without coffee ('cept myself, the token tea drinker).
We taped the filters over the preferred intake and plugged up the rest of the vents.
Doubtless you may want something more elegant, but hey if it's an equipment room who cares.
--byterbit
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men w
...they use repeatable scientific methods to test the products.
This is a pretty strong statement. Do you really think their methods would stand up to a peer review?
They basically take a few products, look them over, poke at them, collect some "data", and, then, publish it. I agree they sometimes do an adequate job in evaluating something, but to claim they produce real science is laughable.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
It's actual physics, and it definately works. Take a plastic spoon and rub it a bunch of times against wool. Then, go to your nearest sink and turn on the water so that you have a nice, smooth flow.
No, I'd rather observe it to definately move air, just as you have suggested.
Let me give you another example: take two magnets. One attracts the other, right? Yes, and with a force a lot stronger than your spoon attracts the water. Now take a room full of magnets... and brace yourself for a major magnet hurricane!
Both you and I know that won't happen. But, according to your reasoning, that's exactly what we are supposed to expect. How's that?
Jobs? Which jobs?
I look after about 1200 computers in public schools. I suggest you make sure that the computers are up off the floor, the higher the better. Buying computers with decent quality fans also helps of coaurse.
I worked in the nuclear industry for 11 years and never saw an Ionic Breeze. HEPA filters were used exclusively in high contamination areas. Its very easy to determine if any particles get by when they are radio active.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
All,
The ionic breeze is not an air or dust filter... it is an ionic microparticle trap. Pollen, cigarette smoke, mold spores and other very small particles get trapped, according to the propaganda.
If you can see the individual particles with your eye, chances are the ionic breeze won't help, you need a filter.
Wait, if you can't see the dust, and there is no way to tell if it works....
What do we call a machine that works on stuff you can't see, with no measurable result?
Snake oil...
Now if your ionic breeze filter is filthy when you clean it, at least that dirt got trapped. Sort of like compressing air by cupping your hand out of your car window... a little bit of compression happens. With the IB, a little bit of filtering will happen.
I am no fluid dynamics professor, but I know that it is impossible for you get your air filtered and dust free with snake oil.
l8,
AC
Since everyone here seems to be hitting on all of the options (hepa, ionic, hairless cats, etc) I though I would add another option. Last summer my wife and I found a rainbow vac for 60 bucks at a garage sale. Since our hover was getting old we thought we'd throw some money at it and give it a try. 2 weeks after using the normally outlandish priced unit my wife noticed that she did not have to dust as often. The dusting in our home has been cut by at least %50 because we don't have a crappy vacuum spewing dust back into the air. I would never pay the price for a new unit, but this old thing sure beats any of those new vacuums that leak dust from "around" that neato hepa filter.
How about...
All your base are belong to FOR THE LOVE OF GOD stop it's two years old and not funny anymore and everyone's getting really sick of hearing it and I'd really like to be able to use the words "cats," "base" and "justice" without having to hear some dumbass try to jumpstart his comedy career.
General law: when someone prints a joke on a t-shirt, it's time for said joke to go away. Forever. Where it can't hurt people ever, ever again.
... aleviation of your symptoms does not mean that scientific principals are suddenly invalid
His small words could use some help, too.
Despite what some people have said (non-owners of the ionic breeze), the thing moves air without a fan. A filter that relied on natural air movement would be useless in a closed room. But if you hold your hand in front of the thing, you can feel definite air movement all along it. It's not a strong wind, hence the name "breeze".
At the risk of continuing this thread as an ionic breeze ad, I have to say I was skeptical of it too. But I bought one because of my somewhat unique situation. I have pet chinchillas, and they not only shed their extremely fine hairs, but they bathe in a dust bath of volcanic ash. This stuff is super-fine and the resulting dust cloud is crazy. I knew it would kill my pocketbook if I had to buy replacement filters regularly.
So I sprung for it, and man does that thing collect dust! A HEPA filter would likely clear the air more, but I'd go broke buying replacements filters. The breeze moves enough air and traps enough hair and dust that I need to clean it weekly, and all it does is sit in front of the chinchilla cage, blowing fresh air and collecting the what flies around their room.
So all I can contribute is that if you want the dust to go somewhere other than into your computer, an ionic filter will help. It may not be the best solution, but keep in mind it's completely silent and you never buy new filters for it. If that's important, try it out.
I taped paper towels over the air intakes of my file server where the air gets sucked into the machine, so I can see the dirt externally. When the towels get dark, I tape new ones on. Asswipe works well too. Just as long as it's thin enough, and doesn't block too much air flow. (Watch the internal heat sensors)
Computers are basically big vacuum cleaners that are on 24 hours. They suck in air, usually have intakes low on the box, and if the box is sitting on the floor, there really is no difference between it and a cheap vacuum.
Some towels and t/p pass air more easily than others; experiment. If it's multi-ply paper, I usually peel it into a single thin sheet, to avoid blocking too much air flow.
With such filters, the inside of the machine stays pretty clean.
Make sure to filter any sneaky alternate routes air is taking through the machine, such as around poorly fitted spare disk blanks, floppy drive holes, holes in the base of the box, or holes in the back of the box from slots that have no blanks. Put the blanks back, or tape off the hole.
Also, getting the damn boxes off of floor level helps a lot, due to the fact most dust bunny migration patterns involve running across the floor towards the low air intakes on the chassis.
You still need to check the machine for dirt, as really tiny dust particles still get through. But the big nasty stuff will be absent.
There is a VAST difference between air purification and air filtering. The ionic/electrical purifiers cause more dust. Why? They truly are cleaning the air so the variety of airborne particles will drop to the ground, desk, equipment, whatever. It's better breathing, etc. but will cause more dust to settle. The best air filters typically yank about 30% of the air through their systems so you may need several in a room at various point. You will be changing the filters often (if the system is working). The bulk of the "dust" we see is actually skin and other elements from humans and animals and not just things that come in through the air. A combination of both purifying and filtering is probably best for you and the equipment.
It seems to do a decent job of picking up dust, though some of the dust will get through and stick to the wall next to it. Cleaning isn't hard if you've got a bathtub nearby; you just pop the static element out and run hot water on it. A janitor's closet sink should work fine in an office.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Amazon carries several of them (both Jet and Delta priced from $200 up to over $500).
I managed to find mine on closeout for $100 but they are worth the extra money. Several people have mentioned that woodworking dust is now classified as a carcinogen, so they have to work pretty well.
http://www.grizzly.com/products/items-list.cfm?key =570010&sort=price
"Upgrade complete. 386 converted to 486.", and surely it must really have morphed the silicon on the processor given all of those fancy computer-esque terms floating by. I petitioned for the sysop to remove it in an online discussion only to be met by several people fervently advocating that they'd run the program and, lo and behold, it worked! It really did turn their 386 into a 486! Suddenly Wordperfect just "felt faster", and games "played better", and of course, oddly they had "less crashes".
I believe this is known as the "gentoo effect."
That's all well and good, but really, all we need the thing to do is remove dirt faster than dirt is added to the air. That's it. I don't care how many times it swaps the air in the room, as long as it's getting the dirt. Measuring the air-swapping is totally artificial. Hell, the dirt will spread out on its own, so you'll still clean the whole room even if the cleaner never sees most of the room's air! THINK!
If the Ionic Breeze can clean well, be totally silent, and not require replacement bits, it sounds pretty darn good to me. It's definitely still overpriced, but that's capitalism and patents...
I have used both HEPA and electrostatic. For basic floating around dust, they both work, but long term, electrostatic is cheaper- CHEAT-
I did get the sharper image from their returns/refurbs- same warranty, 1/2 cost
screw the 499 model, for dust, who needs a UV light?
The 299.00 modem at 1/2 price does 500 sq feet for 167 shipped..
I do the same thing every year for my allergies and it works pretty well. I have really bad hay fever.
I take a big 30" box fan from KMart ($20), a big 10x15" HEPA replacement filter that goes in a Honeywell ($40-60), some cardboard, and combine it with duct tape to make a giant filter. It works surprisingly well. If I seal off the doors to my bedroom and leave the thing on for a few hours before I go to bed, I can go in my bedroom and my sinuses will clear up in an hour or two.
Best practices I've discovered after doing this for several years:
* leave about 4 cubic feat of air space between the filter material and the fan
* the fan needs to suck, not push the air
* build about another 2 cubic feat of air space out in front of the fan so it doesn't just circulate air in from the corners
* vaccum your room really well, wash your bed, wash your clothes, etc before you crank this puppy up
* pollen needs surface area to collect--minimize the surfaces in your room by not leaving laundry laying around, etc.
--rose@nospam.cafwap.nospam.net
Plus ionic-based filters will probably show in not a so distant future from now that it's harmful for the health. Breathing charged-particle of air must NOT be good in the long run.
:)
I have a ULPA filter (a notch above HEPA) which is "medical-class" filter. It has the Ionize button so that I can turn it on and off. When I turned it on, and blew air at the computer, I was actially getting small discharges when touching the casing. Interresting
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Ahhhh.. ohh man.. pure comedy...
Did you see that part.. where he pointed out how some words were spelled wrong.
Woo.. somebody get this man a medal.
The idea one person had about the cardboard box is very cost effective, I'd be concerned about a fire though.
If you use a large ionic air cleaner, even though the filter will collect some dirt, almost every thing else in the room will have dirt stick to it in the first two to three months operation.
Be prepaired to do some serious filter, room and equipment cleaning until it stabilizes.
It also helps to place wipe mats everywhere you can afford to and have them cleaned monthly or more depending on weather.
You may wish to look at this page, it shows a dirt trap type air filtration unit. They book covers build instruction.
http://www.build-stuff.com/011book.htm
You can purchase an air plenum with a filter slot or make one from flame resistant foil covered insulation. Use a good sharp box knife and foil heat duct tape to construct the device.
You would want some sort of high volume air mover larger and slower is better, faster is not always good if it's a noise problem. Variable speed is a plus.
For critical servers and such you can wall them off and put the air cleaner blowing into that small closet and make sure you do have an exhast opening. You may need to do some calculation to ensure cooling or just strap a 'home' air conditioner in seris as well. That foil tape is marvelous stuff. While the AC would do some dehumidification some extra dehumidifcation would not hurt and may be quite important.
Any hardware store can probably provide all you need. A new blower is very expensive, a furnace fan may be good but is usually noisy. You can try to find a used blower or furnace fan.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I know. apparently I can't get modded down when I'm trying. too bad you don't have points.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Dude that was funny as hell!! Seriously. I disturbed my class by actually laughing. Way to go! Too bad the mods don't recognize. I'd mod you up if I had the points. Peace out!
Too bad.. I had points on Sunday, but I didn't check this article. Ohh well, let this be a lesson to you in any case... Do whatever you want, since the people watching are slackers.
Well I dutifully read Consumer Reports on the subject and followed their recomendation and bought a Freidrich C-90 for $425 (no tax free shipping). Works great, very well made. The first filter cleans with a brush and looks like it will last a year or two before replacement (around $20). The main electrostatic filter cleans in your diswasher and should last indefinately. Why argue over the Sharper image device when this one works really well.
I've been using something called the "Fresh Air Machine" for about 4 months, and it works good for me. Same concept as the Sharper Image, but maybe 1/2 of the price. Actually I think I paid less than that. Before that I had one of those filter units--it was just plain noisy, and the filters cost way too much (like $40 each, and it took 2!). So I'm just happy to have something that doesn't need filters and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I think the web site I got mine from was www.freshairmachine.com--too lazy to check, so if not just do a search for the name. Gets my vote.
The box-fan being the kind people suffer-from^H^H^H^H ..... . enjoy at cottages, the furnace-filter being held-there by suction.
Non-woven polyester filters for low/fine-dust environs, fiber-glass washable filters for coarse/much-dust environses.
Dirt cheap, Quiet, Effective, Good.
Messages to/for me ( in me journal )
Here's a cheap solution... http://www.dirtbag.biz/
OK, so an air purifier would be a nice thing to have. It's also an expensive thing to have.
You should instead be asking, "Why is my air so dusty?" There's a number of steps you can take to keep the air clean to begin with; try them and you just may find you don't need an air purifier after all.
1) Remove the carpeting. Hard surface flooring doesn't create as much dust and it's easier to keep clean.
2) Throw away your broom. These stir up as much dust as they collect. Use a vacuum cleaner with fine filtration; make sure its exhaust directs away from dusty surfaces (try up).
3) Dust surfaces daily with a tack cloth or damp rag. You don't want to stir up the dust; you want to take it away.
4) Put your printers in another room. Paper dust can be overwhelming.
5) Enforce a dress code that prefers the use of low-lint fabrics.
6) Make your users take showers on a regular basis. A lot of the dust in the air is dead skin. Have your users take a shower immediately before entering the computer lab; they should remain completely nude while in the lab to eliminate dust from degrading textiles. For obvious reasons, you may want to prohibit the use of digital cameras in the lab.
7) Change HVAC filters more frequently; use finer filters (the spun fiberglass ones are junk).
8) Get rid of the chalkboard.
9) If you live near a busy street or highway, much of your "dust" may be diesel soot. Take steps to seal up the room, allowing only cleaned air to enter.
10) No smoking in the compuker lab.
11) Have you taken a close look at your users' keyboards? You could probably eat for a week on the spooge that's hiding under the keys. Clean your keyboards regularly.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Probably simpler to save the $100, and remove the fan from the Radio Shack cleaner.
Perhaps Honeywell already thought of this problem, and carefully tuned the fan flow rate.
I wouldn't be surprised if a HEPA filter was more effective than an expensive fan-less ionic filter.
This is sounding like the emacs/vi holy wars...
Has anyone tried the $199 Oreck Air 7? Oreck claims is cleans an average sized bedroom every 10 minutes. It seems a lot better than the Sharper Image models. Fan, filter, ionizer, plus charcoal to get rid of odors.
I'm also considering the Honeywell Environizer (also $199) from RadioShack.
Any suggestiosn?
- Jeff
It goes for >500 (with shipping) Not Only did consumer reports rave about it, but it works so well that I wonder if the Post was baiting us for its recommendation. Fortunately(?) trolling has ruined any chance of product endorsement for a really good product
Until I'm a dealer for the Living Air Classic and other air purifiers made by Alpine Industries. I may be able to offer a free 3 day trial to a couple of data centers in the Midwest (I'm in SE Wisconsin). I'm still learning allot about the products, but one thing that seems to be unique is that these units also use RF to ionize air in nearby rooms through non-metallic walls.
I'd been thinking about putting these machines in a few data centers to combat the dust buildup on CPU, power supply & case fans. If anybody in the midwest wants to give it a try let me know and I'll try to arrange it. Initially, I won't be able to place many units for demos until I build up my inventory.
Some of the profits go to me - A Linux supporter.
Joe Baker
joebaker@dcresearch.com
414-788-8284
Are you joking? The volume of air moved is obviously more relevant to the effectiveness of an air filter than number of cupholders is to the quality of a car. You could easily buy an air-tight box and say it removes 100% of particles from the air. It does you no good if it doesn't work on the other 299 cubic feet of air (and air particles) in the room...
One of the sites at my company swears by using tac mats at the entrance of their computer rooms, keeps dust way down, (a tac mat is a floor mat with layers of slightly sticky plastic that can be peeled off when the stickyness is gone.
Here are some links that people looking for air purifiers might find useful:
http://www.allergy.com.sg/library/MARepo
http://www.allergy.com.sg/airCareFAQ.html
It describes technologies used, advantages and disadvantages; might be biased, but pretty informative.
Best,
R.
Actually, the particular article used three people who were considered beerologists or something; I recall being shocked with the results, and looking at the method. While they may have used blind-tasting, the pool of testers was very small, and not diverse (three white men).