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Old 05-15-2006, 01:43 PM   #1
tornado
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Clean your smoke-eater/HEPA filters, save $$$

This weekend it was time to change out the HEPA filters on my air filtration unit that I keep in my office for smoking cigars. My unit has 3 filters and they run about $20 apiece, at 6 month replacement intervals, that's $120 a year in filters. This time, I decided I would try to clean them rather than replace them. Worst case scenario is that it fails and I throw them away anyway, right? I thought about the best way to clean them, then it dawned on me. I use a soaking solution to clean my hot tub filter, which is basically a larger version of these HEPA filters. I bought a bottle of spa filter cleaner at Wal-Mart for $4.00 and soaked my HEPA filters for 3 hours. It worked like a charm, the water was completely black with all the dirt and smoke residue that had been removed. After thoroughly rinsing the filters in clean water, they looked brite white and completely new, and fully odor free. I dried them out and put them back in and it's like having brand new filters for $4.00. So for anyone in a similar situation, save yourself some money and try it out. I see no reason that I can't clean these several times and get years of use from the same set.
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Old 05-15-2006, 04:51 PM   #2
danm.528i
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Thanks for the great info! Our little way of "sticking it to the man".
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Old 05-15-2006, 05:58 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by danm.528i
Thanks for the great info! Our little way of "sticking it to the man".
But Dan, aren't you "The Man?"
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Old 05-15-2006, 06:14 PM   #4
Peterg
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great idea. my question though, how well do these work? does it still smell like smoke for a while after you're done smoking??? i'm trying to convince my family to let me smoke inside once in a while. maybe this will help, lol...
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Old 05-16-2006, 05:21 AM   #5
CSMAnderson
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I always heard if youi soak hemp filters it would ruin them. This is reat news. Keep us informed as to if they work as well as new ones.
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Old 05-16-2006, 10:50 AM   #6
Roscoe
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I'd be interested also. We just bought three commercial smoke eaters for our private cigar club. Yearly replacement filters are about 250 per unit. Our Hepa filters are framed with pressboard or a melamine type of material. Don't know how the soaking would affect it.

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Old 05-16-2006, 01:00 PM   #7
tornado
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Roscoe
I'd be interested also. We just bought three commercial smoke eaters for our private cigar club. Yearly replacement filters are about 250 per unit. Our Hepa filters are framed with pressboard or a melamine type of material. Don't know how the soaking would affect it.

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http://www.metrocigar.com
My filters were framed with plastic, so I had no concerns there. I ran it all day yesterday and so far it seems to be working perfectly. There was no degradation of the filter material itself. I generally leave my spa filters in this solution overnight, but for these I erred on the side of caution and only soaked them until I saw that they were getting prettly well cleaned up, which was just short of 3 hours. I think your best bet is to wait until you need to replace them, then try it. If it doesn't work, you haven't lost anything.
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Old 05-17-2006, 05:43 PM   #8
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Awesome, thanks for sharing the tip!
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