LESLIE: Dorothy in Pennsylvania, you’ve got The Money Pit. What’s going on at your home?
DOROTHY: Yes, I have a situation in my living room, that’s been going on since June, where when it’s humid inside the house we seem to itch.
LESLIE: Hmm.
TOM: Hmm.
DOROTHY: We’ve been to the dermatologist. We’ve had a tree cut down. We’ve gotten rid of furniture. It’s just a mystery.
TOM: Huh. What kind of an HVAC system do you have? What kind …?
LESLIE: Do you have forced air? Duct work?
DOROTHY: Radiators.
TOM: Hmm, so …
DOROTHY: Hot water.
TOM: Hot water radiators. So are you doing any kind of air filtering?
LESLIE: Yeah, have you tried one of those portable air purifiers?
DOROTHY: No. Now when I run the air conditioner or when I run the fan it’s not an issue.
TOM: Well, when you run the air conditioner you’re recycling air.
DOROTHY: Right.
TOM: Now what kind of air conditioners do you have?
DOROTHY: Central.
TOM: You have central air?
DOROTHY: Yes.
TOM: Oh, well alright. Here’s a solution.
DOROTHY: OK.
TOM: Your central air conditioning system is going to have a blower somewhere and right at the location of that blower you can install something called an electronic air cleaner. Now, probably one of the best ones is made by Aprilaire and I think it’s the Model 5000. That takes out virtually all of the dust, dirt, dust mites, virus-sized particles that are in the air.
LESLIE: You know, microscopic-sized particles are going to get trapped into this filtration system and the filter itself only needs to be changed once a year; not like those filters at each register that you need to change monthly. And the filter is so dense in its filtration that it really attacks everything in the air; so you’ll probably see a big difference, number one, in the air quality and how much you need to clean as far as what dust you see around the house and it’s probably going to kick this problem in the living room.
TOM: And Dorothy, in times when you don’t need to run the air conditioning, you could just run the fan for the air conditioning system without the compressor and that’ll scrub the air because it’ll basically run it all through the filter again.
DOROTHY: OK, great. I’ll try that. Thank you so much.
TOM: Alright, Dorothy. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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