3M Filtrete FAP02-RS Ultra Clean Air Purifier
- Cleans rooms up to 160 sq ft – Bedroom Size
- Advanced Filtrete filtration equipment effectively captures 99.9% of airborne particles and allergens
- Design allows more clean air to flow through your room
- Silent surgical procedure
- Filter change indicator senses the particle accumulation on the filter, taking the guesswork out of filter change
Product Description
The Filtrete Ultra Clean Air Purifier is the perfect complement to any home comfort product set. Until now, consumers had to choose between bulky, noisy HEPA purifiers, or silent, but much less effective, smaller designs. Now 3M has developed an air purifier that delivers maximum efficiency in one silent, stylish, compact unit. The key to this delivery system is the combination of Filtrete filter equipment and cutting edge design. This Filtrete(TM) Air Purifier offers more Air circulation and a higher dust and pollen capture rate than a comparable HEPA Air Purifier. For rooms 160 sq. feet. or less.
Buy Low-cost 3M Filtrete FAP02-RS Ultra Clean Air Purifier
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The filter seems to catch a lot of particulate, yet it seems like the fan is making very small suction. It seems like the fan and housing is constructed such that it puts out a lot of air* but barely feels like it’s sucking in any.
I can’t afford to do a methodical test on this, but if I could…
3M makes Filtrete filters in manifold sizes, so I would get a fresh replacement for this unit, as well as a large HVAC filter that I would tape to the back of my huge box fan, measure with an airflow meter, vacuum each filter into a empty bagless canister after 2 weeks of runtime, and compare the volume of particulate each pulled out of the air.
My hypothesis is that the box fan would be more effective at cleaning the air in the same amount of time.
As far as noise, I am a professional voice-over actor and I had to turn it off during recording.
*It blows so hard it severely irritated my ear canal from the difficulty when I left it in succession in my bedroom overnight. I wouldn’t have left it on, apart from the air quality was really terrible that night.
Rating: 2 / 5
The humming is so loud and obnoxious, it completely negates any usefulness the filter may have.
Rating: 1 / 5
The room air filter market is full of bunco. This one is no different.
3M is notorious for selling high filtration replacement filters for return-air registers on residential central HVAC systems. Most homeowner purchasers are not aware that the restrictive filter more than doubles the static difficulty drop and will nearly always exceed the specified limit of the system unless a second or third return air catalog is installed to double or triple filter surface area.
The bunco with room air filters is their pitiful capacity given the amount of noise they make. 3M claims this one works for rooms up to 160 square feet but they don’t claim how many cubic feet of air the unit moves per minute (CFM). Most manufacturers who do claim CFM use the rating of the fan and motor without the filter media attached.
A 160 square foot room is about 13 x 12 feet — a typical bedroom. With 8 foot ceilings it would have 1280 cubic feet. To attain five room air changes per hour, the unit would need to go about 107 CFM. Five air changes per hour is a rule of thumb — keep in mind that the unit will not have a laminar air flow and some of the room’s air will remain unfiltered while other air will be recycled through the filter many times.
To achieve 107 CFM through the filter media, the fan would really need to be rated closer to 200CFM. This is the equivalent of four typical bathroom fans. It would be about the same as a low-cost kitchen range hood (the kind that are under the microwave over the oven) on the high setting. The bottom line: even the highest quality 200CFM fan compact enough to fit in this unit will be so noisy that it will interfere with basic conversation. Remember that you cannot get far away from this unit either — because it filters rooms 12 feet across, you’d need to be no more than a few steps away receive any benefit.
Because people crash the filter media fills up with dust, isn’t that surpass than no filter at all? No. The unit’s ciculation of the air really stirs up the dust it catches in the filter. Without the blowing, the dust would settle to the ground where it could be picked up with a mop in a few seconds without blowing it up in the air. If you have carpet, a quality vacuum with an efficient filter (Miele) would work best.
This type of unit (or more typically a box fan with a low-cost kiln filter) does have an application in source control — for model in a room where you’re sanding the dry wall after taping or a shop where saw dust is being produced. But for continous surgical procedure it is not practical or beneficial.
The aptly way to keep your home’s air clean is: source control, ventilation, filtration (in that order). If you have a mess in your air, fix the source of the problem initially. Then ventilate your home because fresh air is usually surpass and always far simpler to take than filtered air. Filtering dirty air is far more hard than just blowing it out — it’s comparable to trying to filter your effluent instead of just bringing in some clean water. Moreover, when you realize that ventilation should provide as much as 1 air change per hour, it should hurt to realize how that precious, expensive filtered air is just going to be blown out nearly as quick as you can make it.
Rating: 2 / 5
I had a honeywell purifier before this one and finished up persistent it. The honeywell had a reusable filter which will save a lot of money, but what i didn’t like about it was the noise. Even on the low setting, it was on the loud side. The filtrete is much quieter. On the high setting, the noise level is about the same as the honeywell on the low setting. The filtrete seems very well made. The fan is balanced, and the unit operates without trembling. I really like the indicator lights that tells you when the filter needs changing. I’ve added a pre-filter on my unit to help extend the life of the filter. The pre-filter I bought is also made by filtrete, but it was intended for use in air conditioners. The pre-filter comes in a 8″x24″ which is huge enough to be made into 3 pre-filters for the purifier. It will add some flow restriction, but not enough to set off the indicator lights. By using the pre-filters, your main filter should last you a lot longer. I would certainly recommend this purifier.
Rating: 5 / 5
The FAP03 is silent and collects most of the pet hair that used to get into the computers.
It has a pleasing air flow sound.
Model number: FAPF03
UPC Code: 051111542941
I did find it frustrating to locate a filter. They are sold here at Amazon, but I wanted to pick one up locally, so I started at the 3m site. The official list of resellers from 3M is incorrect. One of the resellers (krogers) has no filters of any kind for sale on their web site. Other locations like Lowe’s and Home Depot do not have the FAP03. The Target website shows they are unfilled in the store near me, but there were none, the girl there couldn’t find them in the computer.
I can get them online for now, and I’m still pleased with the FAP03.
Rating: 5 / 5