Need to clean your cabin air circulation filter?

i like the cabin air filter because if im sitting in traffic along with hundreds of SUV's, i dont even want to think about what im breathing.

now i realize that this is only a particulate filter but still makes me feel better anyway. (i usually have it on recirculate anyway otherwise i can almost always smell exhaust)

also, in the area i live in, pollen WILL completely cover my car in a matter of hours. this happens daily. without the filter, it would be all over the inside of my car.

to heck with my lungs, its my Prius i worry about!!

 

cleaned my filter yesterday, thanks for reminding me

 

Check with a trial lawyer. They invented "toxic" mold to rip off the insurance industry. (To the tune of $3 Billion in 2003. At 33% for contingent fees, that's a cool Billion dollars in thier pockets.) Not that I have much sympathy for the insurance industry...


OK, Off topic. I'm sorry.

 

As far as the cabin filter, I saved the filter that I had from October/2004 to March/2005 and slightly under 16,000km of mostly Winnipeg city driving. In a word: DISGUSTING.

I'll vouch for what Frank said, particularly HVAC used in commercial/industrial settings, and more recently in new residences. In the open air, we're bathed in all sort of dust, spores, etc, but this is part of the environment. As long as it's not industrial heavy metals our body appears to accept it quite well.

Older homes were ok to live in too. They were built so loose, often without insulation in walls, with single pane windows, that there was ALWAYS fresh air coming in. Most heating was boiler and radiator, so no breeding ground for icky stuff.

The health effects first started to become apparent with widespread use of air conditioning in commercial office buildings, particularly when smoking was still allowed in those buildings. The evaporator coils usually had poor quality filters or no filters at all, and the dust and oily smoke was allowed to build up on the evaporator coil and condensation drain pan.

The cooling towers on the roof were also poorly maintained. It didn't take long for a particular bacterium - Legionella Pneumophila - to show up in the endlessly recycled cooling tower water system. There are now something like 34 different species of Legionella bacterium, causing things like "classic" Legionnaires, Pontiac fever, flu-like symptoms, etc.

Have you ever looked at the suspended ceiling system of an large commercial office building? Ever peek above to see what is REALLY up there? I had a brief stint running Token Ring cable in an office building in the mid 1980's while putting myself through college.

There is anywhere from a 12 inch to 3 foot "dead" space above a commercial suspended ceiling. The ceiling panels used to be made of things like asbestos board, fiberglass, etc. For "health" reasons - and cost reasons - they started to be made out of cellulose material.

Due to water pipes and flat roofs, you can expect water leaks onto the ceiling tiles. Oh, and the "dead" area above a suspended ceiling is usually used as the return air for the HVAC system. Only very recently was the return air run in separate ductwork.

I've had to wiggle through 3-5 inches of heavy dust (Probably dust from the asbestos tiles and steel truss fireproofing), finding dead mice and rats, and where there was water leakage the area was BLACK with mold, even weird white things growing in it.

When the cost of electricity and natural gas went way up, the limited fresh air makeup system in most commercial buildings was closed and the recirculation dampers were opened wide, to endlessly recirculate the already poor quality air. And folks wondered why they suddenly picked up bronchitis and constant colds that magically went away when they were on vacation.

Now we are seeing very energy efficient new home construction with no thought given to fresh air and indoor air quality. The walls are 2x6 stuffed with insulation or isocyanate foam is sprayed into the cavity. The roof has R40-R60. Interior vapor barriers of 8 mil minimum are used, with Tuck tape to seal the seams and accoustic sealant to seal the vapor barrier to the baseplate.

The exterior of the home has Tyvec housewrap, and the windows are either dual pane Low E or tripane Low E with low-expansion foam sprayed in the void. By any definition the home is "air tight" so how the hell do you exhaust stale interior air and bring in fresh air?

Let's not forget in a new home you will also get a lot of outgassing from all the pretty nylon carpets, vinyl floor sheeting, etc.

Ventilation is usually not addressed at all or poorly addressed. For example, there might be a bathroom exhaust fan, but it will only work if fresh outdoor air can be brought in. You see plenty of "energy efficient" homes around here with windows open even at -40 so folks don't croak.

You can get around a lot of these issues with an HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilator) which uses a heat exchange core to bring the outdoor air to near the interior temperature. This minimizes heating/cooling waste.

Though if you use the chunks of foam that came with the unit, it will also suck in dust and bugs, which will then breed in the heat recovery core, the core drain pan, and the drain tube. You have to retrofit MERV 10 or better filters on the intake to prevent that or minimize the problem.

I don't think anybody has really learned the importance of Indoor Air Quality. Within the past month there was an outbreak of Legionnaires at a Toronto nursing home, Seven Oakes: 16 died and many were sickened, including staff.

It's a fine line between "healthy" exercising of our immune system and exposing us to lethal bacteria and viruses. In a closed system, rather than make us stronger, the effects of constant exposure to Legionella or helcobacter pylori or escherichia coli 0157:H7 tend to make us progressively weaker from debilitating effects.

In cars, probably no more than a handful will ever become sick from their car HVAC, as the car really isn't that airtight and doors/windows are always being opened and closed.

A home or commercial space is a different matter.

 

A scary thought for Halloween: Google "lung fungus".

Since we all have cabin ventilation filters, we might as well keep them clean. I have not seen it mentioned in this thread, but washable electrostatic filters are a reasonable alternative to the Toyota OEM.

 

where is air filter?

 

Behind the glovebox. Access explained in the owner's manual.

 

Two words: Bull and S***.

There are two story homes here in Winnipeg with either Central Exhaust (Required by minimum code) or HRV and they seem to work fine. With a 2 story home you have to pay more attention to dampers and properly balancing the system.

 

I have to make this quick. I've just been invited to some sort of company Haloween shindig and this may prove to be a good chance to get lucky with Brenda in Applied Design.

Anyhoo, I just got back from the condo storage room where I took a picture of the cabin air filter with 5 months and almost 16,000km of Winnipeg city driving. This wasn't in summer, it was from October to March.

I put the used filter on a fairly new white cardboard box to illustrate the contrast.

 

looked just like ours did with about the same amount of murky westcoat muck and filth in it.

 

who cares about the filter?
what happened w/ brenda?

 

actually I've been thinking the same thing.

 

Brenda snores.

Otherwise, two words describe her:

Ya and Hoo

 

Has anyone used anything other than "genuine" Toyota filters?
Good or bad for the cabin filter?

Dealer or Ebay?

 

Washable electrostatic household HVAC filters can be cut to size (20.5 cm square I think) and make fine drop-in replacements. The OE filters are $10 or $12 on ebay, for the conventionalists.

 

I just cleaned mine with a dustpan brush last night. My nose was running with gray soot for an hour afterwards from all the toxic particles in it!
They do have nice after-market HEPA type filters for those with pollen allergies.

 

Unless a filter is washable it cannot really be cleaned thoroughly. The chunks on the surface can be removed, but all the smaller stuff which has sunk down into the filter and is sticking to the fibers is much harder to remove. The little stuff does reduce the flow, even if you cannot see the individual contaminants.

The filters are not that expensive, even from a dealer, just replace it with a new one. If you absolutely must reuse one then blow it out with a compressed air hose, with the nozzle far enough away that it won't punch a hole through, blowing air in the opposite direction of the filter arrow. Do that outside as it will create a cloud of fine dust particles.