Air quality sensors

Noticed that Ikea do pretty cheap air quality sensors and wondered if they were any good?

Just vaguely curious about particulate levels in the house and wondered how well they worked…

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/vindstyrka-air-quality-sensor-smart-40498234

I’ve a Netatmo weather station with both internal and external air quality sensors. It’s really good. What’s most interesting is the access it gives to the global pool of other user’s data. Some of the London based users can make for interesting viewing on occasion.

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Seems the weathermap is open access. </p>

It needs an account to see anything…

Just has a look at Netamo: https://www.netatmo.com/en-gb/smart-weather-station

Just seems to do CO2, no particulates or VOCs.

Indoor is CO2, outdoor unit adds o3 CO and SO2. But yeah, no particulates. :(

I found the purpleair map interesting when visiting the USA during the forest fires earlier this year. No idea if the sensors are good, bad, or indifferent but it looks like a possible option.

Will they cope with the stw approved wood burner, pizza oven and VW campervan?

Am tempted to buy one and give to my neighbour when he fires his wood burner up

Last winter my wife bought a portable air purifier which has a pm2.5 (I think) meter built in. When we fired up the wood burner, which leaks a noticeable amount of smoke (why she bought it), it reads about 10 or so in whatever units. Maybe as high as 30 when I recharged the stove and got a puff of smoke out. It rapidly goes down to 3 or so afterwards.

When I put a steak on the griddle pan, it went over the max readout of 999.

I no longer worry about the health impacts of the wood burner, but I’m happy I don’t work in commercial burger/steak grilling kitchen!

I’ve got one of those ikea ones.

the ppm monitor seems to be very sensitive, but the voc part always seems to be pointing horizontally, regardless of how bad my cooking is.

I’ve yet to tally it up against this:

Amazon Basics Air Purifier, CADR 400m³/h, Large Room 48m² (516ft2) with True HEPA Filter Removes 99.97% of Allergies, Dust, Smoke, Pollen, Intelligent Air Quality Sensor, UK plug, White https://amzn.eu/d/9xhU5O0

VOCs would be from things like paint fumes moreso than cooking.

Could be something to do with this Indian summer, but the ppm reading used to hover around 3ppm.
Now it’s at 24ppm!

Am tempted to buy one and give to my neighbour when he fires his wood burner up

Mine barely even blips when mine goes on, i get a bigger response from the hob (gas) or the grill (gas), one of which is 10m away and through two doorways and the other is outside…

We’ve a couple of reasonably large AEG air purifiers in the house.

We’ve had doors / windows etc closed downstairs to keep cooler (a benefit for a few days of 3ft thick stone walls).  That’s showing normal / V low on the display/ data for ppm @ 1, 2.5, 10 and TVOC.

HOWEVER the one upstairs is regularly showing elevated figures (windows open upstairs) for the past few days. Mrs has even been questioning it.

I’ve concluded there must be some pollution in the general atmosphere at present – which is no surprise with the high pressure – just as smog sticks around when there’s a high pressure and not much wind

Could it be the Saharan dust that floated over? Tonnes of it came down in recent rain abd would presumably still be airborne.

if you have monitoring externally it’s amazing to see the impact of bonfire night on the readings- just spectacular.

Just checked mine – external readings <50ppm last 30 days (usually quite a bit less), but last week >200. Corresponds with hot weather.

Apparently Saharan dust has been keeping the Amazon Forest going for millenia…

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants

I wouldn’t mind a CO2 monitor for indoors. Apparently as we strive to insulate our homes we can actually be increasing CO2 a lot.

Surely opening your windows to freshen the air sorts that? Even on the coldest days over Winter I’ll now open the windows for a 10 minute recycle of air.

I wouldn’t mind a CO2 monitor for indoors. Apparently as we strive to insulate our homes we can actually be increasing CO2 a lot.

I have one since last winter. I was amazed how much those thin vents at the top of windows do for ventilation. Used to keep them shut all winter. With the CO2 levels I had, I don’t know if I ever woke up properly in the morning and I must have been working from home some days in a state equivalent to having had a few pints. It gets very high before you’d realise just from smell and stuffiness.

Six months or so MrsRNP and I were in Hebden Bridge – she disappeared in a shoe shop so I waited on the pavement outside the Co-op. There’s an air quality machine there that piqued my interest.
Results might be of interest to someone🤷‍♂️

https://dataworks.calderdale.gov.uk/dataset/29wq0/air-quality-monitoring-station-data-air-quality-station-3-market-street-hebden-bridge

I struggle to believe that anything from IKEA can accurately measure particulates in any meaningful way given how much it costs to build a vehicle emissions test centre. I certainly wouldn’t use it to reassure myself that a wood burner wasn’t giving me / my neighbours a real bad time!

It’s actually quite easy.

The air is still, cool and only has limited nasty contaminants to deal with. You can make one yourself with a couple of sensors and a raspberry Pi. Accuracy is good enough (plus/minus 10/15% on amount of contaminant at a guess). Only limitations is that some sensors are quite expensive, so you might not get a full sweep of all potential domestic pollutors.

Exhaust emissions systems are testing nasty, hot, aggressive, corrosive gasses travelling at speed and need to remain accurate over a long period of time and with heavy commercial use.

I’m still waiting for someone to integrate the newest IKEA sensor into smartthings or Matter properly (it doesn’t report out all the comtaminants yet).

@jolsa

Opening a window only let in more particulates.

post-rainstorm, it’s back to 1ppm.