Alrighty, don't a lot of people already do this? Sometimes I'll do both an air purifier white noise and some music or something from myNoise
TedDoesntTalk · 2026-10-23 18:43:41 UTC
The Austin Air HealthMate is great as a noise machine. Very loud. It’s a HEPA filter and lasts 5 years. Never seen any other that lasts that long, but you pay for it upfront. after-market replacements are $250-300 for another 5 years.
kccqzy · 2026-10-23 19:14:50 UTC
I have that machine. It seems better at filtering chemicals and VOCs but not great at filtering particulates. It gets rid of odors very well but my PM2.5 meter barely budges.
jerlam · 2026-10-23 19:29:40 UTC
Yeah, it's a completely different kind of air purifier than the "tape a HEPA filter to a fan" ones, which is why it costs $1,000 instead of $150.
bradknowles · 2026-10-23 20:21:12 UTC
I have IQAir HyperHEPA filters, plus whole-house AprilAire HEPA filters on the HVAC equipment in the attic. I’m fine on particulates.
Where I need extra help is with VOCs in certain locations. Like, in or near bathrooms. Or the cat litter boxes. IQAir does sell their GC line for that, and we have a couple of those. But the activated carbon filter media is super expensive. And these things are huge. Like, bigger than a dorm refrigerator.
So, I welcome an alternative that does VOCs well.
TedDoesntTalk · 2026-10-23 21:16:29 UTC
Which PM2.5 meter do you have? I’ve been looking to buy one and AirThings keeps coming up.
kccqzy · 2026-10-23 22:34:07 UTC
I have a Temtop indoor air quality monitor. The exact model seems to have been discontinued but it can measure PM2.5 and formaldehyde.
omert · 2026-10-27 17:08:39 UTC
I have odak clean air assistant from mountain labs. If you are looking for a device that can handle measurement and analysis all in box without app and subcriptions. You can choose this one.
ungreased0675 · 2026-10-24 00:06:29 UTC
They are truly excellent machines. I’ve used a couple of these over the years, never had an issue.
gopalv · 2026-10-23 18:46:50 UTC
An air purifier is a good addition to a kids bedroom.
I got one during Santa Cruz wildfires in 2020 and now the kids have a pavlovian reflex to sleep once that gets turned on.
Ikea makes an air-purifier table, which is a end-run around it being a useless box in the room when switched off.
It's fairly expensive, not as good as a purpose built one, but it blends into the average room pretty well.
encom · 2026-10-23 18:49:08 UTC
I've considered an air purifier for allergy reasons, but...
>removes smoke and infectious particles
Where do people live that they need to remove such things, 18th century London?
yodon · 2026-10-23 18:50:58 UTC
>Where do people live that they need to remove such things
SF Bay Area during the summer fires of a few years ago
grandpajoey · 2026-10-23 18:55:56 UTC
Anywhere in the US west of Texas and most of Canada.
encom · 2026-10-23 20:02:23 UTC
Infectious particles? In most of USA and Canada? I don't believe you.
grandpajoey · 2026-10-23 20:04:50 UTC
I'm talking about smoke, I don't even know what an "infectious particle" is.
encom · 2026-10-24 07:07:39 UTC
Me neither, and that's why I asked, but it apparently offended the HN commentariat.
BenjiWiebe · 2026-10-24 19:11:25 UTC
Your quote didn't indicate that you were specifically asking about the infectious particles.
So you got responses about smoke and dust which are a very very common air quality problem.
encom · 2026-10-24 23:29:54 UTC
No I specifically said (quoted) "and infectious particles" and compared it to an 18th century city, which predates indoor plumbing.
I guess that's too subtle for HN. In the future I will be sure to emphasise when my ANDs are boolean.
fwip · 2026-10-23 20:21:26 UTC
Yes, there are viruses in USA & Canada.
rootusrootus · 2026-10-24 00:10:15 UTC
I don't think the east coast escapes, they got slammed this year by Canadian wildfire smoke IIRC.
helterskelter2 · 2026-10-23 19:00:27 UTC
Almost anywhere now in North America or Europe during the summer.
jerlam · 2026-10-23 19:27:11 UTC
Doesn't even need to be during the summer.
Wind blows smoke around. There are currently fires in northern Michigan that are affecting the air quality in Chicago, which is 350+ miles away.
My allergies became generally better at all hours just from sleeping in super cleaned air.
Why? Reducing baseline inflammation perhapse? Maybe decreased inflammation during sleep helps too, improved breathing? idk. Whatever it is this organism seems to prefer it.
Even when exposed to allergens during the day the run up to sneezing is much slower or doesn't happen.
yread · 2026-10-23 19:27:38 UTC
I use mine just to purify air for my precious LTO tape drive. My baby doesnt like dust
alnwlsn · 2026-10-23 20:04:43 UTC
This is approximately what it looked like near my area in mid July for a few days.
It just looks like fog, but it is smoke, and the sky has an unusual orange color. Smells and tastes like you are standing in the path of a campfire, but you can't move out of the way. It irritates your eyes and throat if you spend more than 20 mins out there. You can go inside, but if the building you are in is leaky, it will smell like smoke inside there too.
The actual fire was hundreds of miles away. You can try driving in any direction for hours and not be clear of the smoke. Still, compared to other areas, this is barely worth complaining about.
tredre3 · 2026-10-23 20:57:27 UTC
Allergens are likely considered "infectious particles" for that particular sentence.
weird-eye-issue · 2026-10-23 23:24:19 UTC
Most of the world, unfortunately. Just look at an air quality map.
gib444 · 2026-10-24 07:52:47 UTC
I live in an area where many of my neighbours can afford log burners and who don't care about the pollution
senderista · 2026-10-24 17:53:16 UTC
Obviously wildfire smoke, but also obnoxious neighbors who feel compelled to burn all their refuse instead of disposing of it properly.
dekhn · 2026-10-23 18:53:05 UTC
I bought a large soldering iron air purifier and it turns out to be great; it has a continuious speed selector, easy to replace filters, and very pleasant spectrum. I like it better than the air conditioner, which cycles on and off noisily.
Those fans will not have sufficient static pressure to be useful. These makeshift purifiers may be great in a pinch (wildfire season and stores are all out), but far from the best.
jerlam · 2026-10-23 19:33:50 UTC
The linked PC-fan purifier has been tested and shown to purify air faster than the conventional alternatives, and are not makeshift, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.
kube-system · 2026-10-23 19:36:37 UTC
From the specs it looks like they are probably closer to higher-static-pressure server fans, the CADR is a few hundred CFM and it pulls 30+ watts. And as with many of these designs, you can compensate for low pressure performance by increasing filter surface area... the greater the surface area the lower the pressure drop. Of course, the problem with this is you are just spending more money on filters, which is the expensive part.
schiffern · 2026-10-23 19:55:32 UTC
>Of course, the problem with this is you are just spending more money on filters, which is the expensive part.
For up-front cost, this is true.
For cost over time, twice the filters means twice the replacement interval, so the additional filter cost cancels out.
kube-system · 2026-10-23 22:44:08 UTC
But since you bought mostly media, you didn't get a housing that hides the media, and you get to look at any collected dirt for that longer interval as well...
I'm sure it works but like any engineering decision it has pros and cons.
schiffern · 2026-10-23 23:18:33 UTC
>you get to look at any collected dirt
If that's your biggest worry in life, seems like a high-class problem! Many people are satisfied 'just' protecting their heart and lung health.
However, if you really don't want to look at it, you can always flip most DIY designs inside-out so the fans blow in and dust collects on the inside instead of the outside! This doesn't clean the room quite as efficiently, but if the appearance of dust is a major concern that should be a fix.
kube-system · 2026-10-24 00:16:57 UTC
Yeah it’s functionally fine but I would opt to buy a more polished product for the above reasons. Probably would be great for a shop or similar, which is where I’ve done DIY purifiers myself. My personal favorite for cutting down on dust during home projects is a 20x20 furnace filter slapped on the intake side of a box fan. It requires zero extra parts or assembly.
Flipping the fans isn’t great because then you have to clean the fans, this is why draw-through is the standard configuration. Also many designs like this rely on negative pressure to seal properly or even stay together. You might just have the lid take off like a helicopter.
jefftk · 2026-10-24 00:53:04 UTC
It just looks grey, but the housing is also grey, so I don't think it generally reads to people as dirty.
jerlam · 2026-10-23 21:37:04 UTC
The filter cost for the AirFanta 3 doesn't seem particularly high? In fact it seems cheaper than competitors.
All the purifier companies realized they make more money selling overpriced filters, so $60+ for the OEM filters is common nowadays. Despite it just being a standard HEPA filter cut to a specific size.
Airfanta 3 Pro filters (four) - $57
Coway Mighty Filter - $60
Coway Mighty2 Filter - $70-$80
I'd be concerned about the availability of filters after a few years. Some of these companies have been changing their models and filter type every year to add some nebulous feature. Others just go out of business.
kube-system · 2026-10-23 22:31:50 UTC
Yeah, the retail prices of filters is all over the place because of the popularity of razor/blade model of pricing. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the BOM itself -- this device is using 4x the filter media of comparable filters, which would typically have one filter that size.
HEPA media itself is a commodity and aftermarket filters (and the BOM cost to the OEM) tend to level out at whatever rate is minimally profitable per area of filter media.
The upfront cost of this device is high for what you get, because you're mostly buying filter media. The device itself is not much of a polished product. I'm sure it works fine but I wouldn't want one in my living room.
I leave them on setting 2 (unless someone is sick or we're having a lot of people over), and we get ~425 CFM for about $40/y in power (~5W each).
Nukit · 2026-10-24 06:10:47 UTC
There's an Open Source tool for building your own that does all the calculations for you: https://filterboxbuilder.com
schiffern · 2026-10-23 19:50:18 UTC
This is indeed the "conventional wisdom," but if you do the math it turns out this is incorrect.
The trick is to use high-airflow MERV 13 filters (ideally 3M 1900, which has high pleat count and low resistance) instead of high-resistance HEPA filters, so axial PC fans can generate enough pressure.
bradknowles · 2026-10-23 20:10:40 UTC
At that point, you’re not doing any actual air filtering. Just use them as fans instead.
gpm · 2026-10-23 20:25:14 UTC
Merv-13 means it filters at least 75% of the particles passing through it.
For a standalone air filter which is pushing the filtered air into the same room its drawing from, we can assume reasonably good mixing of the intake and exhaust air. Thus to be equivalent to a HEPA-filter it only needs 1/3rd more airflow... Which really isn't much.
This doesn't follow for a a fancier setup where you're taking dirty air and blowing it into a cleanroom or something... but that's not how we're typically using household air filters.
CoffeeOnWrite · 2026-10-23 23:22:47 UTC
Is it safe to assume all particles are equally as likely to be filtered, or are there particles that HEPA will filter that a MERV-13 will never filter no matter the number of cycles?
schiffern · 2026-10-24 00:11:45 UTC
75% refers to the Most Penetrating Particle Size (MPPS), so they intentionally measure at the worst-case size so you don't have that problem. All other sizes are filtered at a higher percent.
Der_Einzige · 2026-10-24 11:24:21 UTC
Go look up MERV ratings there’s several in between HEPA and MERV-13. The stuff right below HEPA like MERV-15 gives best of both worlds.
bradknowles · 2026-10-25 04:32:36 UTC
They only measure down to 0.3 microns in size, and MERV-13 only does 75%. A proper HEPA filter does 99.97% at that size.
And that really does make a huge difference to someone who has allergies.
IQAir does HyperHEPA, and they go down to 0.003 microns (so, a hundred times smaller, down to the size of viruses), and they capture 99.5% at that size. That’s why they’re used in hospitals.
Der_Einzige · 2026-10-24 11:23:25 UTC
You want at least MERV 15 so that virus sized particles get filtered in meaningful amounts, but yes the guy above you is wrong and choking on dirty air
mattlondon · 2026-10-23 20:29:34 UTC
Why is this so expensive? It's literally 4 PC fans and some plastic trays? I presume you bring your own filters.
mfkp · 2026-10-23 20:56:00 UTC
Filters are included, as well as high quality fans, AC/DC converter and speed controller, and the portable/collapsible enclosure. It's really not that expensive vs trying to put together the parts yourself, and it's tested to work very well compared to other more expensive filters.
patrickk · 2026-10-24 09:03:01 UTC
You can make your own to save money, I made this project for example. I paired it with an Air-1 sensor and home assistant to ramp up and down the downs in real time according to the live air quality readings.
If you were actually looking for an answer, the AirFanta's creator Adam Wong recently answered a question about this:
Production costs include raw material procurement (my fan and filter suppliers are happy, since each machine requires four fans and four filters—more than they supply to other brands) and labor assembly costs. In addition, there are shipping costs from China to the US, Europe, and other regions, warehousing fees, and last-mile delivery fees. For what it's worth, in the US, shipping this 17 lb box already costs about $18. Also, Shopify and credit card channels take just under 5%. We also hope to promote on Amazon in the future. Estimated advertising costs are 20%, and Amazon charges another 15% in fees, so that adds up to 35%. If you're not in this business, it's normal not to know these expenses. But I have to say, the costs are much higher than they appear on the surface.
Yes I appreciate fees etc, but the component parts are available on Amazon individually for way less.
120mm high static pressure fans are £7 (so £28), an AC power-supply fan controller £11. IKEA filters are £3 each, so £12. So we're looking about £50, be generous and chuck in another tenner for 3d printed ABS and screws etc. £60 all-in at 1x retail/Amazon prime prices, delivered to my house.
If I was doing this at scale I am sure I could get lower than the retail Amazon prime prices. But even if I couldn't this is about half of the £130 RRP. Yes there are labour costs to assemble this but this is not exactly a swiss watch and looks like it comes flat packed anyway?
schiffern · 2026-10-26 00:43:25 UTC
yes! Many people make these DIY filter boxes themselves, usually called CR boxes[0], which come in (quiet but pricey) PC fan and (louder but cheaper) box fan flavors.
Do note that the AirFanta uses 140 mm fans, and IKEA filters are E12 vs E11 so the airflow would be less optimal[1], but hey who's counting. ;) Also I envy how cheap your IKEA filters are; in the US they're $18 & $25 now.
Does that mean your air doesn't get filtered if you stop or decide to turn down the white noise?
I prefer having quiet air filters that I can run all day (based on air quality) instead of noisy ones I only use at night.
kube-system · 2026-10-23 19:23:03 UTC
Many air purifiers are silent on lower settings and louder on higher settings. If I want noise I turn mine up. If I want less noise I turn it down.
alistairSH · 2026-10-23 19:31:56 UTC
If you turn it off, sure.
I have one in the bedroom. On low, I barely hear it during the day (extra ambient noise from outside) but at night the white-noise is subtle but effective. That said, I don't like "loud" white noise, just a quiet hum.
schiffern · 2026-10-23 20:00:30 UTC
YSK on low you won't be getting much air cleaning power. All air purifiers are rated based on their top fan speed.
Housefresh, which is a criminally underrated review channel btw, recently did a comparison of PC fans for this purpose. The Thermalright TL-14C family came out strong in the "Silent" category, with the best ultra-quiet 24/7 fan speed performance. This comes at the cost of slightly worse max speed CADR vs the venerable Arctic P14.
For air filtering, you want big fans that move relatively slowly. At least, at lower settings.
I still haven’t seen anything else that can compare to IQAir HyperHEPA filters. They use these things in hospitals.
turtlebits · 2026-10-23 20:58:16 UTC
All my air filters are sized to clean air while being quiet.
Turning them up to med/high would just cause too much airflow.
jefftk · 2026-10-24 00:58:07 UTC
IQAir HyperHEPA is substantially worse than the AirFanta 3Pro. The 3Pro gives you about 10x more clean air per dollar (2 CFM/$ vs 0.2 CFM/$), and 2.5x more clean air at a given noise level (45dBA: 213 vs 86 CFM).
I agree big fans moving slowly is better all else equal, and something AirFanta-like that used a 12" fan could be even better.
senderista · 2026-10-23 19:28:12 UTC
An air purifier is the best noise machine for me, much better than the white noise machines with the tinny speakers. Even the brown noise setting on those isn't nearly deep enough to let me sleep.
simonbuilds · 2026-10-23 20:15:13 UTC
Yea, having it and using it at max just as I go to bed just makes me feel much better for the air I'll be breathing while sleeping. I also used to always fall asleep to some noise or music, so this is such a nice replacement
kazinator · 2026-10-23 23:18:58 UTC
You can easily send white noise to good speakers, if you have any. There are free apps for it, not to mention hours-long YouTube videos with white/pink/brown noise.
rootusrootus · 2026-10-24 00:03:55 UTC
Totally agree. I've never liked the speaker generators. The old school DOHM models are way better because they do not use a speaker, they have a fan inside.
eli · 2026-10-24 00:17:17 UTC
The Comega air filter is nicer sounding (and at “high” louder) than Dohm IMHO
olyjohn · 2026-10-24 00:09:17 UTC
The bigger the fan the better, IMO. I really love those cheap square box fans... It's hard to beat that deep, low hum that small speakers and small fans just can't replicate.
cosmic_cheese · 2026-10-24 00:31:15 UTC
Now that I think of it, back when I was a kid in the 90s, there was a circa-70s oscillating fan that my family kept in the living room during the summer, and the noise it made was quite pleasant. The oscillation added a gentle rhythmic quality that made it even nicer.
I’d never put two and two together until now, but that fan had to have been a major factor in some of the unexpectedly great naps in that room.
dylan604 · 2026-10-24 03:05:20 UTC
We had a circulating fan from the 50s that had very little in way of a cage with metal blades. The fan was heavy as you might imagine from the time period. It worked great. It was definitely something we were repeatedly warned about it as kids to not put fingers/hands in it. The house was a pier&beam with the AC vents in the floor. The fan sat on the floor next to one of the vents to blow towards the couch. I'd agree that it had influence on naps as well
dylan604 · 2026-10-24 03:07:05 UTC
There are 20" square box fans that have a built in slot for a 20x20x1 filter. It's advertised as having a slightly more powerful motor. It is a good noise machine while also getting the added benefit of filtered air instead of just noise
itintheory · 2026-10-24 12:06:44 UTC
Any recommendations? I'm finding a Lasko that looks fine but is out of stock everywhere.
The one I have is a Lasko picked up from Amazon several years ago. Maybe it's been discontinued since???
Melatonic · 2026-10-25 07:39:00 UTC
Get a box fan with the widest (largest depth) frame. Air King is technically a separate brand but I think maybe a Lasko. Would recommend
matwood · 2026-10-24 09:48:01 UTC
I just run a fan and point it towards the wall. I have never liked any of the speaker-based noise machines.
cassepipe · 2026-10-24 13:12:50 UTC
Now imagine you put a filter and instead all of the dust the fan stirs up in your room, you now breathe a particle-free air ? Who wouldn't want that ?
brokensegue · 2026-10-23 19:57:46 UTC
Air purifier is gonna use a lot more energy than just a small speaker. The energy cost swamps everything long term
paimapi · 2026-10-23 20:08:24 UTC
this feels like a 'dose makes the poison' scenario. you're talking about maybe $10 of difference annually if both were run continuously. and that's only if you bought an inefficient air purifier - if you elected to use, for eg, four Arctic P14 PSTs in a CR box then that's maybe double the kWh. this ends up being a couple of bucks more annually for the added benefit of having better air quality
brokensegue · 2026-10-23 21:23:18 UTC
I think $10 is too low an estimate.
jefftk · 2026-10-24 01:00:37 UTC
An AirFanta 3Pro on low (2) is 5W, which is $10 on average (but more like $15 in high $/kWh places like MA and CA).
andrew_eu · 2026-10-24 10:45:30 UTC
Some people are paying north of 0.50€/kWh (after tax), so this amounts to 22€ annually.
The point stands. If you care about this, it's a personal choice whether that comfort is worth ~20€. I would wager many people say it is.
rootusrootus · 2026-10-24 00:07:02 UTC
If you want the better sound but don't care about the purifier, then get a DOHM sound machine. It uses a fan and sound great, and I'd guess the energy consumption is pretty trivial.
snarfy · 2026-10-24 01:22:15 UTC
swamps everything except for the health benefits
jsLavaGoat · 2026-10-23 20:11:23 UTC
I prefer pink noise.
Terr_ · 2026-10-24 05:40:39 UTC
Agreed, possibly because it's spectrum distribution is a lot closer to natural sounds, like flowing water.
amelius · 2026-10-23 20:16:00 UTC
You can use them as random number generators, to replace your lava lamp for example.
Comments
Where I need extra help is with VOCs in certain locations. Like, in or near bathrooms. Or the cat litter boxes. IQAir does sell their GC line for that, and we have a couple of those. But the activated carbon filter media is super expensive. And these things are huge. Like, bigger than a dorm refrigerator.
So, I welcome an alternative that does VOCs well.
I got one during Santa Cruz wildfires in 2020 and now the kids have a pavlovian reflex to sleep once that gets turned on.
Ikea makes an air-purifier table, which is a end-run around it being a useless box in the room when switched off.
It's fairly expensive, not as good as a purpose built one, but it blends into the average room pretty well.
>removes smoke and infectious particles
Where do people live that they need to remove such things, 18th century London?
SF Bay Area during the summer fires of a few years ago
So you got responses about smoke and dust which are a very very common air quality problem.
I guess that's too subtle for HN. In the future I will be sure to emphasise when my ANDs are boolean.
Wind blows smoke around. There are currently fires in northern Michigan that are affecting the air quality in Chicago, which is 350+ miles away.
https://data.usatoday.com/fires/
My allergies became generally better at all hours just from sleeping in super cleaned air.
Why? Reducing baseline inflammation perhapse? Maybe decreased inflammation during sleep helps too, improved breathing? idk. Whatever it is this organism seems to prefer it.
Even when exposed to allergens during the day the run up to sneezing is much slower or doesn't happen.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wildfire_smoke_Wyand...
It just looks like fog, but it is smoke, and the sky has an unusual orange color. Smells and tastes like you are standing in the path of a campfire, but you can't move out of the way. It irritates your eyes and throat if you spend more than 20 mins out there. You can go inside, but if the building you are in is leaky, it will smell like smoke inside there too.
The actual fire was hundreds of miles away. You can try driving in any direction for hours and not be clear of the smoke. Still, compared to other areas, this is barely worth complaining about.
For cost over time, twice the filters means twice the replacement interval, so the additional filter cost cancels out.
I'm sure it works but like any engineering decision it has pros and cons.
However, if you really don't want to look at it, you can always flip most DIY designs inside-out so the fans blow in and dust collects on the inside instead of the outside! This doesn't clean the room quite as efficiently, but if the appearance of dust is a major concern that should be a fix.
Flipping the fans isn’t great because then you have to clean the fans, this is why draw-through is the standard configuration. Also many designs like this rely on negative pressure to seal properly or even stay together. You might just have the lid take off like a helicopter.
All the purifier companies realized they make more money selling overpriced filters, so $60+ for the OEM filters is common nowadays. Despite it just being a standard HEPA filter cut to a specific size.
Airfanta 3 Pro filters (four) - $57
Coway Mighty Filter - $60
Coway Mighty2 Filter - $70-$80
I'd be concerned about the availability of filters after a few years. Some of these companies have been changing their models and filter type every year to add some nebulous feature. Others just go out of business.
HEPA media itself is a commodity and aftermarket filters (and the BOM cost to the OEM) tend to level out at whatever rate is minimally profitable per area of filter media.
The upfront cost of this device is high for what you get, because you're mostly buying filter media. The device itself is not much of a polished product. I'm sure it works fine but I wouldn't want one in my living room.
I leave them on setting 2 (unless someone is sick or we're having a lot of people over), and we get ~425 CFM for about $40/y in power (~5W each).
The trick is to use high-airflow MERV 13 filters (ideally 3M 1900, which has high pleat count and low resistance) instead of high-resistance HEPA filters, so axial PC fans can generate enough pressure.
For a standalone air filter which is pushing the filtered air into the same room its drawing from, we can assume reasonably good mixing of the intake and exhaust air. Thus to be equivalent to a HEPA-filter it only needs 1/3rd more airflow... Which really isn't much.
This doesn't follow for a a fancier setup where you're taking dirty air and blowing it into a cleanroom or something... but that's not how we're typically using household air filters.
And that really does make a huge difference to someone who has allergies.
IQAir does HyperHEPA, and they go down to 0.003 microns (so, a hundred times smaller, down to the size of viruses), and they capture 99.5% at that size. That’s why they’re used in hospitals.
https://makerworld.com/en/models/2470181-nukit-tempest-euro-...
If you were actually looking for an answer, the AirFanta's creator Adam Wong recently answered a question about this:
[0] https://reddit.com/r/crboxes/comments/1x3vnyn/i_just_launche...120mm high static pressure fans are £7 (so £28), an AC power-supply fan controller £11. IKEA filters are £3 each, so £12. So we're looking about £50, be generous and chuck in another tenner for 3d printed ABS and screws etc. £60 all-in at 1x retail/Amazon prime prices, delivered to my house.
If I was doing this at scale I am sure I could get lower than the retail Amazon prime prices. But even if I couldn't this is about half of the £130 RRP. Yes there are labour costs to assemble this but this is not exactly a swiss watch and looks like it comes flat packed anyway?
Do note that the AirFanta uses 140 mm fans, and IKEA filters are E12 vs E11 so the airflow would be less optimal[1], but hey who's counting. ;) Also I envy how cheap your IKEA filters are; in the US they're $18 & $25 now.
[0] https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/
[1] https://twitter.com/Engineer_Wong/status/1899144721710408038
I prefer having quiet air filters that I can run all day (based on air quality) instead of noisy ones I only use at night.
I have one in the bedroom. On low, I barely hear it during the day (extra ambient noise from outside) but at night the white-noise is subtle but effective. That said, I don't like "loud" white noise, just a quiet hum.
Housefresh, which is a criminally underrated review channel btw, recently did a comparison of PC fans for this purpose. The Thermalright TL-14C family came out strong in the "Silent" category, with the best ultra-quiet 24/7 fan speed performance. This comes at the cost of slightly worse max speed CADR vs the venerable Arctic P14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlz37IdCcIE
I still haven’t seen anything else that can compare to IQAir HyperHEPA filters. They use these things in hospitals.
Turning them up to med/high would just cause too much airflow.
I agree big fans moving slowly is better all else equal, and something AirFanta-like that used a 12" fan could be even better.
I’d never put two and two together until now, but that fan had to have been a major factor in some of the unexpectedly great naps in that room.
https://valuecrateaz.com/products/lasko-air-flex-2-in-1-box-...
https://bigbargainmart.com/products/lasko-air-flex-2-in-1-bo...
https://ruralkingmarket.shop/product/lasko-air-flex-2-in-1-b...
The point stands. If you care about this, it's a personal choice whether that comfort is worth ~20€. I would wager many people say it is.