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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
None of those seem particularly concerning. We have a gas range, and 15 min past the end of cooking everything is fine. I must imagine that most people don't live right next to the freeway so they probably have even better air quality except during wildfire season.
CO2 - I'm thrilled with anything less than 800 ppm (half justified by being the lowest number I've ever seen a study suggest might have health effects, half justified by being at a point where I personally don't notice that I'm more drowsy).
PM2.5 - My impression is the health risks here are more cumulative exposure (and include things I'd like to go without in my life, like alzheimers) and a pretty straight line of "lower is better all the way to zero". The WHO's guideline is mean exposure of 5 µg/m³ so I guess I'd adopt that if I had to put a number on it. (But it's a mean, I wouldn't worry about briefly exceeding it)
PM10 - No real opinion (I'd rather worry about PM2.5)
VOC index - I'm not sure this is a standardized thing, but the version I've come across is an index relative to the average that particular sensor has seen in the last 24 hours. So there's no standard possible here.
---
As for a gas range I would worry about NOX considering the studies with them causing and aggravating asthma. That said your CO2 levels are low so I suspect you might have sufficient ventilation that this isn't a huge issue for you (especially if that ventilation is in the form of a fume hood over your stove that you actually use).
CO2 by itself doesn't appear to be a problem until some truly absurd levels are somehow achieved.
CO2 is usually a proxy for air quality because outside is usually something consistent like 400 therefore deviation from that figure indicates staleness.
I don't have the list of relevant studies I've read on hand atm but there was at least one where they simply pumped in CO2 (or didn't) and had an effect showing pretty directly that CO2 itself is problematic at reasonably low levels - as well as potentially being an excellent proxy for other air quality issues. Problematic in a "makes you drowsy/stupid" type of way - not a "kills you" type of way. Though there's also at least one correlative studies suggesting it might have long term health effects (which really wouldn't be surprising if it has any short term effects).
Besides which, proxy or directly high CO2 means you should ventilate...
the military has conducted studies where submariners were exposed to a PPM of 1000s with no ill effect. I suppose they were trying to determine how hard they need to scrub.
having said that, it's possible they omitted what other gasses and %s they used for advantage. there could be some mitigation possible there.
VOC index means literally nothing. (I've read the datasheet, implemented some kludges to log raw data, and contemplated the formulas. The data is high-pass filtered. You literally cannot conclude anything about a single measurement if you assume the sensor is somehow magically perfect. You might conclude that there is more VOC (or less -- not all VOCs have the same sign in their effect) when cooking than when not cooking.)
I target 0 PM2.5, but this only necessarily makes sense as a target if you have the ability to filter your home's supply air. And a good vent hood should be able to avoid any detectable bump while cooking (although a vent hood without filtered makeup air may cause a bump due to increased infiltration of exterior air).
What sensor, exactly, are you describing here? Different VOC sensors have different gas sensibilities, as well as different algorithms to interpret the gas sensor raw data.
The instrument is pretty crappy - it has basically no calibration or, AIUI, long term stability. So you can’t really use it to characterize the chemical content of the air. What you can do is observe changes. I’m guessing the manufacturer wanted to avoid people getting confused by the absurd raw reasons, so they came up with a formula called “VOC Index” that HPFs the data. It will average 100 IIRC. You’re supposed to use it to notice events that cause changes - if it hits 170 every day at 2 PM them you can guess that something’s happening at 2 PM.
None of this is in the chip. It’s implemented by the driver. There’s an implementation in esphome, for example.
>you can’t really use it to characterize the chemical content of the air
correct, that's not VOC sensors do. you need specific sensors for different gases for that. All VOC sensors are metal-oxide (MOx) sensors, i suggest reading on their supposed applications and uses.
What I mean is: the MOx sensors, in theory, measure some function of the concentrations of various gasses in the air. The datasheets even give you some flavor of this function for some of the sensors.
But the actual behavior, at least for the SGP4x series, is so outrageously unstable and path dependent that you still can’t learn the value if that function of the gas concentrations. At best you get changes on timescales of minutes to a few hours but not on timescales of days.
>you get changes on timescales of minutes to a few hours but not on timescales of days.
again, correct. That's how they're supposed to work. If the air is very slowly getting worse, MOx sensors might not catch it.
That being said, what "very slowly" means depends on the sensor. For example, for Bosch BME680 (very good with 'organics'), you can set the tracking interval between 4 and 28 days (i use 28). Sensirion SEN66 (very good with 'chemicals') can have a tracking interval of up to 1000 hours.
pm10 is the mass concentration of particles with aerodynamic diameters up to approximately 10 µm, including PM2.5, so Jefftk's analogy was right. there must some kind of typo or measurement error
Depending on the month, my kitchen AQI averages between 1-4, representing PM2.5 values of 0.1 - 0.8 ug/m^3. Bedrooms are likely better as they don't have the gas stove.
CO2 while occupied is generally under 750; I'd prefer to keep it under 700 but we also balance that with energy efficiency for that make-up air; I don't have an ERV, so we suffer a little there.
(We don't live by a freeway but - (a) Pittsburgh's air isn't great; and (b) the canadian wildfires were pretty bad here at times this summer, and that was what caused that 0.8 ug/m^3 pm2.5 spike).
We have, um, a lot of air filters left over from covid, though, so we're a little spoiled in terms of being able to manage AQI easily.
senderista 1 day ago
rootusrootus 1 day ago
eli 1 day ago
olyjohn 1 day ago
cosmic_cheese 1 day ago
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 1 day ago
dylan604 1 day ago
itintheory 20 hours ago
Melatonic 46 minutes ago
bookofjoe 19 hours ago
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dylan604 17 hours ago
kazinator 1 day ago
simonbuilds 1 day ago
matwood 22 hours ago
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arjie 1 day ago
gpm 1 day ago
PM2.5 - My impression is the health risks here are more cumulative exposure (and include things I'd like to go without in my life, like alzheimers) and a pretty straight line of "lower is better all the way to zero". The WHO's guideline is mean exposure of 5 µg/m³ so I guess I'd adopt that if I had to put a number on it. (But it's a mean, I wouldn't worry about briefly exceeding it)
PM10 - No real opinion (I'd rather worry about PM2.5)
VOC index - I'm not sure this is a standardized thing, but the version I've come across is an index relative to the average that particular sensor has seen in the last 24 hours. So there's no standard possible here.
---
As for a gas range I would worry about NOX considering the studies with them causing and aggravating asthma. That said your CO2 levels are low so I suspect you might have sufficient ventilation that this isn't a huge issue for you (especially if that ventilation is in the form of a fume hood over your stove that you actually use).
teravor 1 day ago
CO2 is usually a proxy for air quality because outside is usually something consistent like 400 therefore deviation from that figure indicates staleness.
gpm 1 day ago
Besides which, proxy or directly high CO2 means you should ventilate...
teravor 1 day ago
having said that, it's possible they omitted what other gasses and %s they used for advantage. there could be some mitigation possible there.
eastbound 1 day ago
phyzome 1 day ago
pythonsnake 1 day ago
https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/the-other-side-of-co2
schiffern 22 hours ago
Let's just say, if you look closely at the meta-analyses, all the effect size goes away if you omit one certain author....
If true, SAT scores should systematically vary by hundreds of points depending on which room you take it in. This is not observed.
amluto 1 day ago
I target 0 PM2.5, but this only necessarily makes sense as a target if you have the ability to filter your home's supply air. And a good vent hood should be able to avoid any detectable bump while cooking (although a vent hood without filtered makeup air may cause a bump due to increased infiltration of exterior air).
GeoAtreides 1 day ago
amluto 18 hours ago
https://sensirion.com/media/documents/296373BB/6203C5DF/Sens...
I’ve personally played with the SGP41, but I’m guessing the poster I replied to has the SGP40 because they didn’t mention NOX Index.
idiotsecant 1 day ago
amluto 1 day ago
The instrument is pretty crappy - it has basically no calibration or, AIUI, long term stability. So you can’t really use it to characterize the chemical content of the air. What you can do is observe changes. I’m guessing the manufacturer wanted to avoid people getting confused by the absurd raw reasons, so they came up with a formula called “VOC Index” that HPFs the data. It will average 100 IIRC. You’re supposed to use it to notice events that cause changes - if it hits 170 every day at 2 PM them you can guess that something’s happening at 2 PM.
None of this is in the chip. It’s implemented by the driver. There’s an implementation in esphome, for example.
GeoAtreides 17 hours ago
correct, that's not VOC sensors do. you need specific sensors for different gases for that. All VOC sensors are metal-oxide (MOx) sensors, i suggest reading on their supposed applications and uses.
amluto 4 hours ago
But the actual behavior, at least for the SGP4x series, is so outrageously unstable and path dependent that you still can’t learn the value if that function of the gas concentrations. At best you get changes on timescales of minutes to a few hours but not on timescales of days.
GeoAtreides 50 minutes ago
again, correct. That's how they're supposed to work. If the air is very slowly getting worse, MOx sensors might not catch it.
That being said, what "very slowly" means depends on the sensor. For example, for Bosch BME680 (very good with 'organics'), you can set the tracking interval between 4 and 28 days (i use 28). Sensirion SEN66 (very good with 'chemicals') can have a tracking interval of up to 1000 hours.
jefftk 1 day ago
(Equivalent to saying you have more people under 2.5 years old than under 10 years old.)
arjie 21 hours ago
OsrsNeedsf2P 23 hours ago
handwoven 23 hours ago
kj4211cash 1 day ago
dgacmu 1 day ago
CO2 while occupied is generally under 750; I'd prefer to keep it under 700 but we also balance that with energy efficiency for that make-up air; I don't have an ERV, so we suffer a little there.
(We don't live by a freeway but - (a) Pittsburgh's air isn't great; and (b) the canadian wildfires were pretty bad here at times this summer, and that was what caused that 0.8 ug/m^3 pm2.5 spike).
We have, um, a lot of air filters left over from covid, though, so we're a little spoiled in terms of being able to manage AQI easily.