The air is dirty – fact. There’s a lot of stuff in the air that shouldn’t be, we won’t get into that here. Inside a typical home, it can be even dirtier. For this reason I have a lot of HEPA air purifiers in my home and shop.
If you have sinus issues, asthma and so forth, it is extremely important to clean the air as much as possible.
Why I wanted a DIY HEPA Air Purifier
HEPA air purifiers have gotten really expensive. I looked around for a cheap DIY option and found HRF-C1 filter cartridges are suitable for making your own cheap filter.
Keys to making a good DIY HEPA Air Purifier
The key to making a good air purifier is:
A) Finding a suitable plastic or cardboard box that you can work with (easy to cut, soft but not brittle plastic)
B) Getting a good air seal around the filter cartridge
C) Most importantly, using a centrifugal blower for the filter build instead of a typical muffin DC brushless fan.
Design Details
The centrifugal blower has better performance for high static pressure applications. In my experience that’s usually what’s inside a typical off the shelf purifier.
I made my own filter using a brittle clear plastic case (tough to work with) with RGB LED lighting – as a bonus, it runs off a DC power brick or a solar panel. The filter is still in my shop today and works fantastic.
Video of my DIY build
If you want to see the filter constructed, here is a video of that process below. Thanks for reading!
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