cecil

unless you have a full understanding of the maintenance/cleaning procedures and are willing to follow the schedule precisely along with accepting the small amount of ozone into your home(which all EACs produce and sometimes can be an irritant), then I would go with a good 4-5" pleated media filter cabinet where changeout normally can last up to one year. EACs burn electricity while the pleated media cartridge do not. I subscribe to the KISS policy-Keep it simple stupid.

IMO

i have the aprilaire 5000 and love it. the ozone talk on these is much ado about nothing. plus, the electrostatic part is only 24v, so power use is negligible. hope this helps.

jmcqueen, can you tell me what kind of difference you think the Aprilaire gives you over just a filter. does the air seem cleaner, less dust. how is the maintenance on it. The website says simply replace the media filter 1x per year or two. That is the same as just using a filter without the EAC. Thanks

Our system initially had an EAC, which worked well, although it didn't eliminate dust in the house. Cleaning wasn't too big a deal. When it stopped working ( no more "zapping" sound) I discovered a new board would cost $400.00, with a limited warranty. The HVAC installer had put a media filter into HIS home! So I followed suit, no regrets. The filter changes would depend on your conditions, IMO. Once a year doesn't sound unreasonable though. Changing the filter is a five minute job.
And yes, there's still dust in the house (but not the ducting). Forced air will always exaggerate lack of housekeeping skill.

This technology has been around for years Power Plants use them to collect particulate. They are called Electrostatic Precipitators or ESP for short.

This is how they work there is a the wire between the plates with a negative charge which give particles that will take a charge a negative charge. The plate are positively charged the negatively charged particles act like a magnet and go to the positively charged collector plates. Some of the benefits of this technology is virtually no pressure drop.

They are coming out with new technology that uses a filter and a charged wire to give the particles a charge since all the particles have the same charge they push away from each other (not packed together tightly) to help reduce pressure drop. I am not sure if this will ever make it to a consumer application but it really neat technology.

"jmcqueen, can you tell me what kind of difference you think the Aprilaire gives you over just a filter. does the air seem cleaner, less dust. how is the maintenance on it. The website says simply replace the media filter 1x per year or two. That is the same as just using a filter without the EAC. Thanks"

cecilt, the 5000 is actually a wire system and not a plate system which is commonly thought of whenever one says EAC. the pleated filter in the 5000 is 5" and we have no dust and because of the 24v wire grid, there is no zapping or noise. it is a wonderful system. get the 5000 with the module and make sure you wire it under diagram 4 in the installation manual. there are 2 models (with or without module) and you want the one with the module. you can get them on auction sites for about 1/2 of retail.

Reading Aprilaire's website, I see " the Model 5000Âs media needs to be changed only once a year".

So, it consumes electric power and requires the media be changed vs. just changing media.

The ionizing wires need cleaning too. Thin and fragile, about $14 ea. if they break ( How many to do the whole unit?). Can't find a price on the control, I assume it isn't free.

What are the other advantages?

our 5000 has been in for 3 months, so we haven't had to change the filter yet, but the 2-pak of replacement filters (#501) are approx $50 on the auction sites so no worries there. the wire grid appears to be durable enough and aprilaire recommends that they simply be wiped down when you change the media. we also run 2x60w UV above the AC's a-coil and our home air is rain forest fresh. keep in mind that the 5000 cabinet is 12" wide, so you need to consider this for the install (possible duct work, which ain't cheap). all the above said, the 4" merv is a great setup and maintains excellent throughput of air volume and considerably less expensive. it really depends on what you need and how pure you want your air. the 4" merv should remove 90%+ of contaminants from the air. the 5000 will remove 98%+. we thought the additional cleaning % was worth it. either unit would be a HUGE improvement over the standard 1" filters most people use.