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If you are like me, you are probably frustrated by the hundreds, perhaps thousands of air purifiers or air cleaners on the market. I bet many of you have tried all sorts of air purifiers to remove smoke from your home with moderate to horrible results. Am I right?

How do I know? In my business, I talk to about a dozen people a week, mostly regarding smoke removal and tobacco problems in their homes. Grandma is coming to stay and smokes a bunch. The husband wants to smoke cigars in the den, basement or garage. Your texas Hold 'em games are getting you booted from the house? Yep, I've come across all of these situations.

So what do people say? They've tried the Oreck and the Sharper Image and they don't want to get burned again. So what are the choices?

Sure, you could get a HEPA air cleaner. They're pretty cheap at home depot or Wal-mart. Problem is they are noisy, the airflow doesn't circulate fast enough and they have NO capacity to deal with the thousands of gases and fumes from the smoke. Yeah, they can grab the smoke particles, but they clog up quickly and the filters are pretty expensive. Especially for heavy smokers. And odors? No effect at all. They just won't work. Why? Gases and fumes pass right through a HEPA filter.

How about the electrostatic type of air purifiers? Oreck or Sharper image. They charge the particles as they come through then attract and capture them on a metalic tray or plate. But what happens when a layer of smoke gets on the collection plate? Yep, the smoke goes right through the machine. Messy cleaning, insufficient airflow, poor efficiency. Not a great choice. Oh yeah, and no capablility to capture the odors.

UV or Ultraviolet air purifiers? A partial solution and better than some choices. UV air purifiers clean the air through the release of ions, hydroxyls and ozone. The ozone is a very effective tool against the myriad of chemical fumes, gases and odors. So, these units like the Biozone or Air Oasis will actually make things smell better. But they have NO filters - so they can't capture ANY of the clouds of smoke. And the ozone CAN be an issue. People with chemical sensitivities should stay away from air purifiers that use ozone. The other catch is that too powerful of a machine in too small of a space will work, but may trade one problem for another. You may not smell the smoke, but now you could end up with too much ozone which can be equally unpleasant.

So what does that leave us with? A few hybrid models that combine effective filtration for the clouds of smoke with carbon media to absorb the chemical fumes, gases and odors. Are there any worth checking out? Absolutely! The IQ Air Multigas. I don't sell this unit because it's price is a little over a grand, its noise level on high is 72 db which is pretty loud and for a moderate to heavy smoker the annual filter cost is about $400 bucks. It's a VERY capable machine, but for these reasons, not my top pick.

The AllerAir is again a decent machine with a bunch of carbon. Very capable as far as removing the various problems caused by smoke. But again not my top pick. The fan speed of 400 CFM is reduced considerably when you factor in the amount the filters will slow the air flowing through the machine. It's appearance is a bit like a garbage can and requires expensive filters. The filter usage of 3-5 years is for normal household use. I can't seem to find any details on what the filter usage is with moderate to heavy smoke. I'm sure it is MUCH less.

In my next post, I'll be talking about a product discovered quite by accident that has consistently given me the best results with my customers for home smoke removal.

Questions? Comments? Please post them below and I'll be sure to get in touch.

Dan Buglio, The Air Quality Guy