Anyone know about air purifiers?

[Broomjockey]

Random question, I know, but the knowledge base on this board is incredible, so here we go.

Most of the summer, I've kept my windows open. Fresh air, keeps it a bit cooler, etc. However, it's going to start getting cooler soon, and I'm kinda worried. Once my windows close, most of the air circulating is going to be from the halls, and sometimes it seems like most of the people in this building smoke, and not always just cigs. The smell's horrific to me, so I figured I'd be proactive and get some kind of filtration thing. Then I started looking and found out that there's 50,000,000,000 different kinds of filters/stats/etc etc.

So the question is, really, what do I absolutely need to look for, what are the bonuses to have, and what's the "don't bother, it's a rip-off" stuff? Like ionizers. Important? I dunno. You tell me! And thank ye kindly in advance

[Dave1982]

Well, I've read that those Ionic Breeze air purifiers - while expensive - do work well on smoke odors, even if it's not just cigarette smoke......

However, I can not back that up with personal experience, so I don't know if it's true.

[HYHYBT]

I don't remember what it was called, but someone once lent Mom an "air purifier" that was basically an ozone generator. Stay away from those; ozone smells nice in small doses but it's worse for you than anything it might get rid of.

[Mr. Rager!]

We've got this in my home. http://www.aliveair.com/

9 stages vs the average 2. It's amazing. Before we got it, I'd sometimes wake up with a stuffy nose. Not now. And the people in my house have been getting sick a lot less since we got it.

[LionMan]

I have the 3M filtrete air purifier. All it really is is a fan with an air filter covering the air intake. You can make a very simple filter just like it using a regular air filter and a fan if you want to be cheap. Make sure when buying one find out how much extra filters for it cost. In my case, they want $20 for a filter and they are a special size filter tough to find. Naturally, I just vacuum out the filter and reuse it. It does work nice though.

[smileyeagle1021]

We've got this in my home. http://www.aliveair.com/

9 stages vs the average 2. It's amazing. Before we got it, I'd sometimes wake up with a stuffy nose. Not now. And the people in my house have been getting sick a lot less since we got it.

wow, smiley knows where his next tax rebate is going

seriously, living in one of the dirtiest cities in the western United States (three years in a row Salt Lake has made the top 10 list), that would be very helpful for me.
Broom, to answer your question, I've had good luck with the ionic breeze for dealing with pet smells and cooking smells... but I've no experience with how well it deals with smoke.

[Broomjockey]

Not now. And the people in my house have been getting sick a lot less since we got it.

Hmm, you've got it, say it works well... Currency conversion doesn't work out to be too damaging... including shipping it costs about the same as the random ones I've seen in stores... stats say it should work for my size of apartment... I think we've got a solid choice!

One question though, how hard is it to get the replacement filter/UV bits? Is it possible to get them somewhere besides through them?

[draftermatt]

I had an Orkin one, and I loved that thing. But it was noisy. Then is stopped turning on.

So my mother bought me an Ionic Breeze. It works well at cleaning crap out of the air, but the room is no where near as "fresh" smelling as it was with the Orkin.

[Mr. Rager!]

One question though, how hard is it to get the replacement filter/UV bits? Is it possible to get them somewhere besides through them?

I always just go through the filters because it's really quite easy.