Box Fan Hepa Filter Hack

One with the box fan and one with the hepa filter.

Box fan hepa filter hack.

All you need to do is buy what s called a merv 13 or fpr 10 furnace filter and tape it to the back of a box fan. And no box fan is engineered to withstand the extra workload of driving air through a dense filter so we can t claim this won t damage the fan s. The box fan with a merv 13 filter should be a useful tool in the fight against covid 19. But a quick solution as posted by the university of michigan s medical center is to create your own filter using a box fan and a standard hepa filter both readily available in most hardware stores and costing about 25 for everything.

Don t worry if you don t have any tape because the. The diy box fan filter was able to drop pm2 5 particulates down 77 the hepa filter dropped the pm10 down 94 46. This set up was done in 2 rooms. The fan will be noisier.

Making the fan operate in turbulent air flow as opposed to laminar flow has two consequences. Using our lighthouse 3016 iaq laser particle counter air samples were collected for 2 minutes with a 2 min delay. It does not have a clean air delivery rate cadr which is the standard for measuring the effectiveness of air cleaners. No expensive filters or if you like then push the scrubbed air through a final hepa filter which should last a whole lot longer.

The filters sell for about 15. The filters sell for about 15. The efficiency of the fan is reduced. However we don t know whether this effect would be large enough to be meaningful.

To make one start by buying a merv 13 or fpr 10 furnace filter and tape it to the back of a box fan. These can be hard to find quickly with the conditions however. Could start with a 90mm pvc pipe with end caps fitted. In most cases you can complete the initial installation in about half an hour.

The suction from the fan should also make the filter stick to. You should do the same if you try this hack. Putting the filter after the fan means turbulent air from the fan is going into the filter. Once you purchase the fan and filters it will take very little in the way of tools and time to assemble a box fan air purifier.

Later on when you change the filters allow for an additional 10 minutes or so to vacuum out the motor and remove dust from the fan blades. In the absence of other air purifiers you can create your own air filter for less than 20 by using a box fan laying around your house an air filter and some heavy tape via public health seattle king county.