Enjoying a sunny, cloudless day. 44F sure feels toasty compared to teens & twenties with single digit wind chills. All but the deepest parts of the snow, & taller snowbanks have melted around my house.
One of my 2 air filters inside to help my COPD just died last night. It had been making odd sounds occasionally for months, that clearly indicated the motor bearings were wearing out. Close inspection of the motor a couple months ago shows the motor bearings were worn down... the rotor had too much play & vibrating around a lot. Repacking the bearings in a heaver grease reduced the problem a bit. But last night it started making loud whirring & vibrating a lot. It hardly spins fast enough to blow anything anymore. So I shut it down. I'll have to shop for a new cheap one someday.
When I got these 2 filters, they had identical specs, but different brands. The one by Holmes, for around $35 is still running like new. The one by Honeywell was $40. It always was noisier, & vibrated more, even new. That's the one that just died 5 years later. They both blow as much air, & inside the design is almost the same. The motors even look very similar. But because the Holmes one was always quieter, it probably had a better motor or bearings... even though it was 5 dollars cheaper.
The replacement filter for either of them, comes in a 2-pack for about the price the whole unit, with filters included costs. So I make my own filters for them at pennies per filter.
These are small units designed for a small bedroom. So for my purposes with COPD, I needed to run both of them on full all day almost every day for the past 5 years. They also help in circulating the air, so it doesn't get stale in one area or corner where I am. With COPD you want fresh clean air & well circulated around.
Outside air, most days make me breathe worse. It has to be filtered, & cleaned. But eventually the inside air gets stale & worse, so I have to let new fresh air in, then let the filters work hard for hours cleaning it before the air is easier to breathe again. Even in winters I have to crack open the windows to refresh the air a little so it don't get too stale or O2 depleted. My gas heating is right inside my small apartment. So even running it, or cooking with gas in a small place depletes the O2 too much with COPD.
Every apartment in the building has it's own gas heating inside. So the whole building is O2 hungry. So even though breathing outside air is rough on me, eventually the indoor air gets worse & has to be refreshed.
With only 1 filter working, breathing inside has been noticeably harder. So much so, that sitting outside didn't make it much worse. So I sat with my morning coffee on my side-step outside enjoying the sun. Then after lunch sat with a coffee out there again. But breathing eventually got worse than inside... even with only 1 filter left, so had to escape into the indoors.
I may make a large homemade filter for my AC unit to use as a replacement until I can scrape up enough to get another filter unit cheap. It will re-circulate air even with the AC function off. There's no room for a proper filter for COPD in it. I'll have to make something with cardboard & duct tape to attach to the intake to make it work. It'll look like hell, but should function for now.
I see tonight it will get back down to a chilling 18F. Tomorrow night 15F. But they say by Friday it will be a very rainy 49F. That promotes a lot of mold & mildew growth outside & in the ground. Very bad for COPD, as is dampness & high humidity too. So any substitute air filter system must be in place by then.
After tonight, no more snow in the long-range forecast. Tuesday it may even hit 50F. But the weather changes so quickly the last few years, this may not be the end of snow. We've seen snow in April the last few recent years.
Betty's Pub 20.1
Topic: Sissy stuff to keep warm with during the "VORTEX"? (Read 98904 times)
