David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 2/16/2010 8:59 PM DerbyDad03 spake thus:

I was looking at one of these "permanent" furnace filters at the Borg
the other day:

http://www.webproducts.com/Detail.bok?no=37

My question:

After you rinse one of these can you put back in while it's still wet
or should you keep a spare "regular" filter on hand while the
electrostatic one dries out?

Dunno, but funny thing: just today I helped a client who had washed out
his electrostatic filter units and couldn't figure out how to get them
back in. But these were the real McCoy, part of a Honeywell
electrostatic unit--you know, like with 20,000 volts and all.

How do these so-called "electrostatic" filters even work? There's no
source of electricity, so they must depend on some kind of static
charge. I can't believe they can be very effective.

By the way, the real electrostatic units held just an incredible amount
of filth. Really black crap. (They hadn't been cleaned in a while.) So
they really work. And since they weren't quite dry, I advised my client
to dry them out first before putting them back in (we used a hair dryer).

As I noted in the other furnace filter post, I don't believe those drop
in replacement "electrostatic" filters are effective either. I suppose
they marginally get away with using the "electrostatic" term in the same
way as those cling film window decorations, but they are not in any way
comparable to a real powered electrostatic precipitator.