Please help improve air quality

[waki]

Hi, I would like to improve my air quality. I live in an appartment, the appartment is a second floor. My bedroom has very poor ventilation, since my window faces a laundry, where people have their washing machines, AC units, dusty tubes all over.. good stuff.

My bathroom has no window, and the ventilation duct is filled with dust. I don’t know what do with that, since if I put the vacuum cleaner here, aren’t I just pulling in all the dust, potential viruses and stuff stored there? Plus it would only remove it on my end, the rest of the duct on the building is filled with dust anyway, since I doubt people clean it. The ventilation grill is glued there, you cannot remove it. Shouldn’t a company hired by the community do a maintainance and clean the entire thing? They have never done that.

The bathroom also builds up mold, probably after showering due the humidity, it has some mold buildup here and there.

I have been trying to find a good air purifier. I bought a Levoit Core 300, and I have a Temtop LKC 1000S

This is me moving from my livingroom (which has a balcony to the outside) to my bedrom with the purifier at speed 1 (picture 1)

It is successful in lowering pm2.5, but look at HCHO (picture 2)

It’s higher in my bedroom. The Temptop does not have a chart for VOC but it’s also higher (picture 3)

In my livingroom (picture 4)

(I had to put all pics together in one pic because it wouldn’t let me post more than 1 attachment):

While it seems to work for lowering pm2.5, it does nothing for HCHO and VOC. This is quite disappointing considering the marketing these guys have. How are they allowed to sell them claiming it lowers it? Levoit simply told me to buy the smoke filter, but from what I’ve researched, the activated carbon surface is too small on commercial grade filters to lower any relevant amount of these compounds. So basically, I need an alternative to lower them. The question is how?

Im also not sure if the meter is even accurate. I wanted to buy an aditional meter and test. I was thinking of the Airthings 2960 View Plus, it tests radon, PM 2,5, CO2, COV, humidty and temp. Im also interestd in the radon, since I live in Spain near the beach, and in some places there is radon. But im not sure if this is also accurate or not, an some people complained on the app being a bit lame. Can I use this device and collect data while I turn all wireless off at night? Could I just download the data on the computer and check months worth of charts? Since I may need to run it for 90 days to test for radon properly. Other alternatives mentioned I’ve read are the Aranet4 Pro, which measures CO2 (carbon dioxide), temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, so it will be lacking pm2.5, VOCs, and radon. I would need to buy the Aranet Radon one separately, so I wonder if this means the Airthings one will not be accurate.

While I live a building in the second floor, this elevation may lower radon, but I want to double test. This is an old building, I think the components are decaying and leaving particles in the air. My chest feels irritated sometimes, I don’t smoke. I would like to be able to find what’s up with the air and fix it. Please let me know.

[Ethan]

Thanks for joining @waki and great question! This sounds like a tough situation to be in, but I’m sure there are some ways you can improve your air quality.

@waki

I don’t know what do with that, since if I put the vacuum cleaner here, aren’t I just pulling in all the dust, potential viruses and stuff stored there? Plus it would only remove it on my end, the rest of the duct on the building is filled with dust anyway, since I doubt people clean it. The ventilation grill is glued there, you cannot remove it. Shouldn’t a company hired by the community do a maintainance and clean the entire thing? They have never done that.

Yes, I agree. I don’t think it is a responsibility that should fall on you and I also don’t think it would make that much of a difference since other parts of the vent are likely blocked/dirty too. I guess you could try adding a filter at your end, but since it’s quite dusty anyway I’m not sure how great the airflow would be.

@waki

The bathroom also builds up mold, probably after showering due the humidity, it has some mold buildup here and there.

Do you normally run the ventilation system (I’m assuming it’s an extraction system?) or not since it’s dusty? One thing that I used to do in the first apartment I lived in in Korea (similar situation with the bathroom having no windows or an extraction fan) was to keep the bathroom door open at most times so it never got too damp.

Overall, your PM2.5 levels look quite good (but lower is always better!). This brings us to VOCs… which are very tough. In short, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to VOC readings from low-cost monitors unless there is a significant/regular trend. I’ve had quite a few discussions on this topic here already, and I would recommend reading these two posts for more details:

Air Quality Monitors for VOCs

When it comes to indoor air quality monitors, there are generally three pollutants that people care about: Particulate matter (PM0.3-PM10) VOCs (volatile organic compounds) CO2 (carbon dioxide) For some, CO and radon sensors are also important, but I’ve found that most readers ask me to recommend a monitor with the above three sensors. While I’ve discussed CO2 and PM sensors at length, I thought it would be interesting to discuss VOC sensors in air quality monitors because they have a few cav…

IQ Air Multigas Purifier

Hi Ethan and all, I am just wondering if anyone can advise or has any experience with issues we are having with the IQ air multigas purifier. We have a number of the Airthings air monitors and they are recording quite high VOCs in the majority of rooms. All other measurements are generally good. We made the decision to invest in the IQ gas purifier as a result as my son has health issues (big decision as these purifiers are expensive). However when we run the purifier - the vocs spike like cr…

If you’re worried about VOCs and HCHO in particular, I wouldn’t look at air quality monitors, but rather getting a professional test (I discussed that a bit in the thread link above) as they are far more accurate and will likely put your mind at ease. They also tend to be affordable in most countries.

When it comes to radon, then yes, I think a monitor could be a good choice! Since you already have the Temtop monitor, would you be primarily looking for a radon monitor, or would you like an all-in-one device (like the Airthings View Plus)?