Review on Nordic Pure 20x20x4 MERV 12 2-pack Furnace Filters by Moises Dzihic

Summary: Got a MERV 12 20x20x4 filter. It appears to be able to do its job but doesn't appear to be removing fine dust particles from the air. In other words, it does not filter/clean the air at PM.5 and only slightly at PM2.5. Almost every filter that is better than a dust filter will outperform this Nordic Pure filter. Details: I have 8 air purifiers at home, including two BlueAir605s and a Honewell HEPA, and I measure them regularly with a Dylos DC1700 particle counter. The two air purifiers I use as extras are 20 inch box fans with 20x20x1 oven filters. It's fire season with an outdoor AQI of 63, but that doesn't matter for this test. My wife burned her breakfast so I took Nordic. Pure 20x20x4 MERV 12 Pleated Air Filters for AC Ovens, 2 pcs in the package, taken out of the box and connected to the fan. Measuring the room air at 5:00 p.m. found 27,000 particles in about 0.01 cubic feet of sample air, which is about right. You can smell burning food. Even on a day when the outdoor AQI is 150, this reading can be similar to that reading (25,000 - 30,000). the same thing. In other words, it doesn't filter anything on PM.5. I've never seen that before! Never! Especially for the MERV 12 filter! MERV 8 can do that much better! I have done this experiment many times. I have two filters side by side. They're not Nordic Pure, they're a different brand: MERV 11 and MERV 14. Both MERV 11 and MERV 14 showed corresponding declines that matched their MERV ratings of 24,000 and 21,000, respectively. That's about right for a smoky room. It won't drop much lower in this situation because the air mixes so much even if you keep it at zero. I later tested it on my HEPA filter and the reading went from 300 to almost zero, so the meter is working correctly. If you have questions about the validity of this type of filter, watch the YouTube video Michigan Medicine, Dr. Terrell, director of the Michigan Sinus Center, "Build your own air purifier for about $25." up to about 600 particles per 0.01 cu. foot air sample. Not great either, but at least it does something. I've seen MERV 8 filters work much better than this one. To be honest, I should mention that MERV 12 is more closely related to PM2.5. It should show a reduction of PM1.0-3.0 of 80%-89.9%, 3.0-10.0 of 90% or more. I measure PM.5 because that's important to us with forest fire smoke, the finer particles; However, I would like to say that ALL other brands I have worked with do an excellent job with finer particles (PM.5), even one of them has a much lower MERV rating. This oven filter should work really well, especially since it's 4 inches thick, but it's not. The smoke disappeared and I experimented again. Nordic MERV12 showed no improvement in PM2.5 or PM. .5. The surrounding numbers are 287 and 17, respectively. Other brands, MERV11 and MERV14, despite being only 1 inch thick, showed significant improvement in both measurements. Even a MERV 11 filter halves PM2.5. To give the 4" Nordic an edge I sealed the areas between the fan and the filter; no improvement. Tried positioning the gauge in different ways, no improvement. I have a different brand MERV 8 4" filter used which worked very well. ; was 20x24x4. It was the only size I could get and was 4 inches larger than the fan. It does not matter. Worked great. I'm surprised this Nordic Pure filter doesn't do much. Smoking and COVID so I have a few other options. at home and visited dozens of different locations during wildfire season to help my friends and the local school reduce their exposure to wildfire smoke. A friend of mine is in the HVAC industry and leads a team responsible for a very large tech city here in Silicon Valley. He is a trained trade unionist with over 20 years experience in commercial HVAC. I review my work with it and we talk for hours about air filtration when using this particle counter. I enjoy working with my particle counter and occasionally use it every hour during the California smoking season. I enjoy adding air purifiers and filters and tweaking everything to get low particle count (clean air). When you hold it in front of the air purifier, the meter responds almost instantly, so with a little experimentation it can really show you what's going on.