If you plan on spending any extended time in Ontario Canada, there are a few simple things you can do to greatly improve your stay. I recently had to move to Ontario for a six-month stay because my employer was opening a new branch office in Ontario Canada. I went and found a house to rent for the six-month stay and everything seemed to be fine until about a week into my stay. I have terrible allergies to dust and pet dander but at home, it isn’t a problem because I use special allergy reducing air filters in the HVAC system and I even have a few air purifiers located around the house which also use special allergy reducing air filters to help keep the air quality very high in my home.
The air filters were doing such a good job that I forgot that my allergies were terrible, that is until I moved into the new house for work and my allergies started making my life miserable. Once I realized what the cause of my problem was, I called the landlord and asked if I could replace the main air filter in the house with an allergy-reducing filter. He told me that would be fine, so I asked him what size I needed to get and to recommend a good place to get them. A lot of systems use a standard size filter but it’s not uncommon for them to vary in size and getting the correct size is important otherwise it will not work as effectively.
Unfortunately, he told me that he wasn’t sure where the best place to get a new filter would be and that he had no idea what size filter I needed for sure. So I had to venture into the basement and see if I could find the manual or the dimensions of the existing air filter. Lucky for me the manual was still in a plastic bag taped to the side of the heating system. I figured out that I needed a 16x25x1 air filter for the particular system and because the landlord couldn’t suggest a place to get them, I ordered a few from AirFilterBuy to cover my six-month stay.
I was excited to get them delivered right to my door. I immediately replaced the old normal filter with the new allergy reduction filter I had ordered. Within 24 hours my allergy attacks had significantly decreased. However, it wasn’t quite as comfortable as my own home. I don’t know if the place I was staying at had more allergens in the ductwork or if the particular HVAC system wasn’t as good at filtering allergens as the system I have in my home, but I was still getting slight headaches from my allergy symptoms, so I had to up my game and add a few air purifiers to the rental house.
If you are going to get some air purifiers for your home, I suggest you get the kind that has replaceable air filters. Some places will try to sell you the ones that don’t need filters and will talk about all the money that you will save by not having to replace the air filters but they don’t do anywhere nearly as well at removing allergens from the air as the ones that have actual air filters in them. I have tried many different systems over the years, because of how severe my allergies are and the ones with actual air filters have always, always, always outperformed any other type of air purifier even when they are more expensive than the filtered ones.
Don’t fall for any of the new technologies like ionizers etc. If you want to purify the air in your home, you need something that physically pushes air through a filter. A filter specifically designed to trap all types of allergens. Don’t forget that size is very important. You should only use a filter that is sized specifically to the same size recommended by the manufacturer of the HVAC system that it will be used in. Filters that are too big or too small will not work properly because there will be gaps of air that aren’t filtered or the filter won’t fit properly.