My 6 yr old son recently had a blood test to test for allergies. Dust mites was the only positive allergen. My husband and I want to buy a HEPA air purifier (either a "whole house" one or maybe 1 for living and 1 for his bedroom). Anyone buy one of these and notice a difference in either your allergies or your kids allergies? Are expensive ones worth the higher price? We've already steam cleaned all carpets and upholstery, so the only other things to do is get the air purifier! We live in a large city with construction going on all the time, and it's been windy this summer.
we bought one from lowes.com. and it works great. we don't have it on during the summer so much with the windows open it doesn't do any good. but in the winter we have it on 24/7. the brand name of ours is IDYLIS. in fact i need to order new filters for ours!!!!!
I bought a Honeywell unit for my daughter's room a few months ago when her allergies were acting up. We run it in her room when she sleeps and sometimes during the day. It cost maybe $100 or so and we got it from Amazon.com. It has a big internal barrel filter that only gets replaced every few years and a special hepa pre filter that wraps around it to catch other particles. You'd be amazed at what ends up on that filter - yuck. She tells me it helps her. We also run window air conditioners almost non-stop from late spring until early fall. Those have filters in them as well and we change/clean them often.
PS - my daughter's allergist recommended Honeywell, although there might have been another brand she liked, but a comparable unit was maybe $600 or $800. The Honeywell works just fine and it's fairly quiet (gives you a little white noise while you're sleeping).
I tried one with my DD when she was around the same age as your son, but honestly we did not notice it made much of difference. We ended up removing all the carpeting on our main floor (including her bedroom) and refurbishing the hardwood floors. Buying an allergy friendly pillow and covering her mattress with a zip up allergy cover helped. We also removed most (but not all) of the stuffed animals from her room and removed the bookshelf to the basement family roon. She likes to sleep with a fan in her room if she's feeling really stuffy, she prefers that to an air purifier.
I have dust mite allergies and when I lived in NYC, we had 2 expensive units. But they apparently were the wrong kind. They released Ozone? I forget. I ended up getting rid of them.
They did help though.
I bought a new one a few years ago (HEPA, no ozone release) because sometimes there are fires in SoCAL so I need to clean the house air. It totally helps.
I haven't used it years though because I just don't need it anymore.
The best thing I did was invest in expensive dust protection mattress covers and pillow covers. The priciest ones last longer and hold up the best.
I have a weekly cleaning woman and that helps a ton also.
