We had some wood floors installed in our home and the contractor sanded a product called Duraseal filler that contains 3% crystalline silica as well as talc, and didn’t seal the rooms off. Can anyone recommend me an air quality monitor? Would it even be possible to see if there is silica dust in our air now? Would an air purifier be able to capture all the dust that is circulating in our air if I move it room to room? I have a baby so I’m trying to figure out the best things to do to make sure our air quality is safe and I’m feeling very anxious about it. He didn’t seal off our hvac vents either. We haven’t run the hvac at all and had them cleaned but is this also a concern re recirculating the fine silica particulates?

Source cannot be reasoned with so I'm just holding my breath whenever I have to leave my room. Mobile home. Main concern is the living and kitchen areas. In the evening it's OK as it cools down enough to open windows, but it still smells. During the day it's too hot. Budget is maybe $1-500? I don't really know a lot about air fresheners and stuff outside of basic tower and box fans for cooling.

country: usa

edit: she hasn't peed the carpet but she's peed her pyjamas several times and she refuses to wash them and everything is a fight with her, so she reeks up the area just by being in there.

I’m trying to understand a specific asbestos/HEPA-filter scenario and would appreciate input from people familiar with filtration or asbestos exposure. I used a Levoit Core 400S for roughly two months after it had previously been used in an renovation environment where asbestos-containing material have been disturbed. (didn't know at that moment about content)

My concern is that if asbestos fibers were captured by the filter, could some of those fibers later detach or become re-entrained during normal operation, changes in airflow, low-level vibration, or handling of the purifier? I’ve come across studies reporting re-entrainment from loaded HEPA filters, but the experimental conditions seem to vary considerably.

I’m particularly interested in whether those studies are realistically applicable to a household HEPA purifier operating under normal conditions, and whether fibers that were previously trapped in the filter could realistically produce a meaningful airborne concentration in the room, and if so, what levels could be?

How common or rare is air filtration in buildings? Based on what I saw from my IKEA air quality monitor, the hotel I stayed in didn't appear to have air filtration. Or if it did have air filtration, it was too anemic for the size of the building to keep up with the wildfire smoke outside.

I was in Chicago a month ago during the very worst of the bout of wildfire smoke from Canada. It was so bad that when I took my 3M Aura (N95) mask off to take a few sips of water that morning (and that was before the very worst smoke that came later in the day), I could easily smell the stench from the smoke. My 3M Aura, on the other hand, fully protected me from the smoke. I have great confidence in the 3M Aura mask, because I know from my cheap and informal mask fit testing (sweet or bitter spray of water from a nano-mister device) that it fully protects me from the taste of both the sweetened spray AND the bitter spray.

There were a LOT fewer people out and about than had been the case when the air was cleaner. A significant minority of the people were wearing a mask outside, though I wish that everyone had worn a mask outside.

I hadn't anticipated this nasty bout of smoke, but I was still well prepared, because the same precautions for avoiding infectious airborne diseases also provide protection from smoke. (I didn't have time to be sick, and I definitely do NOT have time to deal with Long COVID.) I had brought plenty of my 3M Aura masks with me on this trip, because I never dropped the habit of wearing a mask when sharing indoor air with others. (However, I have ditched the ear loop masks. Every ear loop mask I ever wore hurt my ears and/or was prone to falling off.) The first thing I did after I checked into my hotel room several days earlier was make a beeline to a nearby Ace Hardware store to buy a Lasko 20-inch box fan and a 20"x20" furnace air filter in order to build a box fan air purifier. I made sure to run it full blast after entering my hotel room. Except when I was using my phone to talk/listen to someone, I made sure to keep my box fan air purifier running full blast.

I had brought my IKEA brand VINDSTYRKA air quality monitor on my trip to Chicago. In the days before the wildfire smoke struck, running my box fan air purifier full blast in my hotel room would lower the PM2.5 particle count from 10 to around 1 or 2 in a matter of minutes. When the wildfire smoke rolled in, the PM2.5 figure was up around 100 even though I had kept my box fan air purifier running all night long. The PM2.5 figure was in the 300s in the hallway outside my hotel room, at around 500 in the hotel lobby, and around 600 outdoors. So my trusty box fan air purifier was working hard but had difficulty keeping up with the smoke.

What do you all make of all this? Did my hotel lack an air filtration system, or was it simply too weak to keep up with the wildfire smoke making its way inside? Do most buildings out there have air filtration systems? Do most of the air filtration systems work well, or are most not effective enough for such a severe bout of wildfire smoke?

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I live in a first-floor apartment and recently bought an indoor air quality monitor because I was curious about the air quality.

- CO₂: 1,500–2,500 ppm when the windows are closed

- If I open a window, it drops to around 800 ppm within a short time.

- As soon as I close the window again, it quickly climbs back to 1,500–2,500 ppm.

- TVOC: ~1.05 mg/m³

- HCHO (formaldehyde): ~0.95 mg/m³

- Temperature: ~80°F

- Humidity: ~64%

I'm not running a gas stove, and there aren't many people in the apartment (usually just me, my wife, and my 2 cats).

Is this normal for a first-floor apartment, or does it suggest poor ventilation or an HVAC issue? Could my apartment simply not be getting enough fresh air from outside?

Thank you so much!

As I said, I live in a small home and the only place where I can put my small gym is inside my bedroom.

For this reason, I need to make sure that the rubber gym flooring I am going to add is safe.

I asked ChatGPT which parameters I should check in this situation and it suggested getting an air quality monitor that can measure VOCs and formaldehyde. It also said that I should look for a monitor using a PID sensor rather than MOX sensors, since PID sensors are supposed to be more accurate for measuring VOCs.

In the end, ChatGPT suggested the Temtop M10 or the Govee Air Quality Monitor.

Are those actually good suggestions for what I need?

If my budget is around 50€/100€, which air quality monitor would you recommend for my case?

We had a new HVAC system installed about a month or so ago (HE furnace, cold weather heat pump, Lennox M40 thermostat) and since then the humidity sits between 68-75% humidity. It’s significant more humid/warmer in the back of my house (which is actually closer to the furnace).
We actually also had some of our flooring buckle right outside our bathroom which from what I’ve read, is a clear indicator of humidity imbalance in the home.

I had the tech out (before the flooring issue) and he said that 68% humidity is normal, in my experience (which isn’t much), 68% humidity means faster mold growth and isn’t in fact normal. We also randomly noticed that our dryer vent wasn’t connected to our dryer so that might have been part of the issue but it’s been fixed now and still hasn’t reduced the humidity.

Can someone please help me explain what’s going on in my home and what I should be asking the techs to look for when I ask them to come back?

Model numbers of the units are Lennox EL18KSLV and Lennox el297v, my house was built in 1975 and is 928sqft.

Thanks!

So i live in Netherlands.

I was 3 months not in my house. When returned last week, it was ok. 26 degreas celcius.

I opened a window in the evening , next morning everything was wet and humidity rose to 60.

Now there is heatwave and everytime i open a door, moist comes in. In the evening every body is cooling their house, and when i try to cool, it gets more warm and wet. What can i do?

Its almost impossible to live here.

None of my neighbours or friends have this problem.

Everybody says: cool your house at night, put everything open. At evening/ night humidity outside goes way up..so it doesnt work.

Mobile airco and dehumudifidr dont help either.

Am i the only one who has this problem?

There is no leak.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can put a humidifier in my room without screwing up my electronics? I have a TV, a laptop & a few other things.

I really nees to put one in my room. My nose is constantly slightly runny & swollen from how dry it is in my room. And it's really exhausting.

Just not sure how I could put one in my room without screwing up my electronics

Be informed that popular air quality monitors use sensors primarily from Plantower or Sensirion. These sensors already measure, calculate and report the sensing elements like PM2.5, PM10, VOC, temperature. etc. on their UART port. The air quality monitors read these values off the UART port and display it on the screen or send it to cloud. So, in essence, they are acting like dumb terminals. Their firmware is just read values and display values or send values to cloud.

Also, be informed that these sensors cannot accurately measure particulate matter of sizes greater than about 6um, so only PM2.5 is reliable.

Tried to find a measurement online but it’s not regulated to be measured. I’m curious. My child is sounding rough and it feels on course with air quality.

I have two dogs that shed all year and I am thinking to get a new high efficiency air filter, I like the idea of better air inside the house and I figure it will catch more hair and dust, I am thinking of getting my filters through cates heating & cooling, I am just trying to work out if that means I will end up swapping filters way more often than the usual schedule, I will probably stick with the same system for a while so I want to buy the right filters from the start and plan for it, for anyone with dogs and high efficiency filters, how often are you replacing them and what schedule works for you? EDIT: Thanks for the replies, I should have mentioned I'm trying to balance better air quality with reasonable maintenance costs.

Hi, I'm Ovidiu. I'm building a startup from scratch and on my journey I want to raise awareness about what I find related to air quality.

I built a portable setup using a mini PC, a router, and some air quality sensors running off battery power. It lets me log environmental data in all sorts of places. I wanted to share some data from a couple of movies I went to recently. This is part of my effort to bring invisible elements surrounding us to the public.

When a crowd sits in a sealed theater for two hours, the air changes fast. Here is what the numbers looked like (I'll let you guess first; tap to reveal):

- Low attendance (10% full): >!CO2 averaged 544 ppm and stayed well below the 1000 ppm mark where air starts feeling stale.!<

- High attendance (90% full): >!CO2 averaged 1246 ppm, peaked at 1312 ppm, and stayed above 1000 ppm for the entire 165-minute screening.!<

Once CO2 crosses that 1000 ppm threshold, we start feeling sluggish, foggy, and sleepy. Add in the fact that temperatures climbed past 27°C (80°F) in both screenings, and your brain pretty much defaults to nap mode.

On the bright side, pm2.5 particulate levels and radon stayed low, so the theater's filters were doing their job. The main issue isn't filtering dust or pollen out, it's bringing in enough fresh outside air to dilute all the exhaled CO2.

If you want to check out the raw logs and breakdowns, I posted them here:

- Movie night - 10% attendance report: https://baseworks.tech/products/risk-assessment/samples/movie-night-few-people/

- Movie night - 90% attendance report: https://baseworks.tech/products/risk-assessment/samples/movie-night-medium-room/

I would love to run more experiments on behalf of the community. What public spaces, events, or transit options are you curious about measuring? Let me know what you want to see!

I have a condo in Denver Colorado. It is an old building, and has a swamp cooler for cooling.

The issue is, there is this neighbor, who smokes. They have always been a smoker, but over the last year, they have started smoking in the house.

We have tried talking to the neighbor, contacted the HOA, bought home air purifiers, vent filters, etc etc. but the smell of smoke still comes through.

In addition to all this, the swamp cooler vent also at times rattles as if there is a screw loose within somewhere.

I want to solve these issues. Any company that can come in and give me a quote? Or any thing I can do to mitigate these issues. Tired of living like this.

Thanks,