Advice from HDOH to West Hawaii to mitigate effects of vog and your own plans/measures taken (Hilo: house, construction)

[HonaunauCountryGirl]

Aloha folks,

If anyone here attended the informational meeting about vog at Konawaena Wednesday evening, I'd appreciate hearing more details other than what was reported by West Hawaii Today. Was the best solution offered by HDOH officials really to "stay inside" on voggy days? It just doesn't seem to be a practical solution for most people.

I'd also appreciate hearing about what you folks may be planning to do to try to deal with the increased level of vog and what you might have done already. Have you already constructed a "clean air room" (sealed, installed air purifier and/or AC) inside your home as advised by HDOH? If you've done research on air purifiers with HEPA filters recently, would you share some recommendations?

Mahalo.

[terracore]

Air filters can't remove acidic gasses, a HEPA filter isn't going to help other than removing secondary contaminants out of the air. The two things that do work are to remove the humidity or neutralize the SO2. The cheapest solution is to get a 20" box fan, they are about $20 at Walmart. Dissolve some baking soda in water, soak a towel in it, and then wring out the towel as best you can and drape it over the fan. As the fan pushes the air through the SO2 will be neutralized. Keep it damp if it dries out. I've heard first-hand stories of people living in Leilani a few weeks ago that claim it clears the SO2 from a closed room out of the air very quickly. The other option is to use a dehumidifier or air conditioner to pull the moisture out of the air. A dehumidifier will warm a room, obviously an air conditioner does the opposite. (If using AC make sure its on recirculation mode if it has that option. Most window units without that option are always in recirculation mode). Apparently the SO2 binds with water molecules in the air so when you remove the water you remove the SO2.

We are about 10 miles from Leilani and have only had very bad air twice. Both times we closed up the house and that was enough. It was at night, and cooler, so it was okay. Since then I have installed two window AC units so that we don't have to be uncomfortable during the day if we need to close the house up. My hybrid solar power system can power one of them if its mostly sunny, so when we can run it for free when there is enough sun it's an added benefit to our comfort even when there isn't any bad air.

Below I'll paste a link to the AC unit we bought. It is "energy star" and had the highest energy efficiency of anything else I could find in it's size / price range, has a very high dehumidify rate, and it has a remote control. It draws less than 500 watts which was important for my solar power. It cools/clears/dehumidifies the air in our bedroom in just a few minutes. In the larger living area of the house it takes longer to cool but it removes about 25 ounces of water from the air each hour and that alone makes it much more comfortable.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...d7f9e53e1a0105

[skygazer1]

Is HDOH going to pay for your air-tight "clean room" construction? Best and most cost-effective solution is get a half-mask respirator with dual cartridge (multi-purpose chemical + P100 particulate filters) for each member of your household. This will protect from practically everything bad in the air. Use it as necessary.

[HonaunauCountryGirl]

Mahalos to you both.

Terracore, I actually have a box fan and baking soda at home. I'm definitely going to set it up. I have only jalousie windows of various sizes in my house. Do you think I can install a window AC somehow or am I stuck with the much less efficient and much more expensive portable AC?

Skygazer1, HDOH has not offered to pay for any type of vog mitigation (were you just joking?). I've been wanting to get some type of a respirator mask in case things get that bad. They seem to be very expensive so I've been trying to research as much as possible before actually pulling the trigger.. .

Mahalo.

[Arktikos]

Originally Posted by HonaunauCountryGirl

Skygazer1, HDOH has not offered to pay for any type of vog mitigation (were you just joking?). I've been wanting to get some type of a respirator mask in case things get that bad. They seem to be very expensive so I've been trying to research as much as possible before actually pulling the trigger.. .

Mahalo.

No, they're really not. The mask is 10-20 bucks and the filter cartridges are around $20. I brought this set up along on my last trip. Winds were blowing trades so not called for in Puna unless you're around ground zero. I offered to help someone evacuate but it didn't work out.

[terracore]

Yes, you can install a window air conditioner into your jalousie windows. There are videos on youtube. This is by no means recommended as the best video on there, just a random sampling that I grabbed:




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S88RmF9ZTLQ


The odd thing is that the affordable window air conditioners are all made for windows that open/close vertically, and as far as I know the majority of windows sold in recent time slide horizontally. They do make window units for them, but they are at least 2x as much and not as energy efficient. It was not difficult to install a vertical unit onto horizontal windows but it did require thinking outside the box.



And you are right, the portable units use at least twice the electricity to deliver half the cooling. In my opinion really not an option for anybody with our electricity rates unless its for an emergency.

[Open-D]

Originally Posted by terracore

Air filters can't remove acidic gasses, a HEPA filter isn't going to help other than removing secondary contaminants out of the air. The two things that do work are to remove the humidity or neutralize the SO2. The cheapest solution is to get a 20" box fan, they are about $20 at Walmart. Dissolve some baking soda in water, soak a towel in it, and then wring out the towel as best you can and drape it over the fan. As the fan pushes the air through the SO2 will be neutralized. Keep it damp if it dries out. I've heard first-hand stories of people living in Leilani a few weeks ago that claim it clears the SO2 from a closed room out of the air very quickly. The other option is to use a dehumidifier or air conditioner to pull the moisture out of the air. A dehumidifier will warm a room, obviously an air conditioner does the opposite. (If using AC make sure its on recirculation mode if it has that option. Most window units without that option are always in recirculation mode). Apparently the SO2 binds with water molecules in the air so when you remove the water you remove the SO2.

We are about 10 miles from Leilani and have only had very bad air twice. Both times we closed up the house and that was enough. It was at night, and cooler, so it was okay. Since then I have installed two window AC units so that we don't have to be uncomfortable during the day if we need to close the house up. My hybrid solar power system can power one of them if its mostly sunny, so when we can run it for free when there is enough sun it's an added benefit to our comfort even when there isn't any bad air.

Below I'll paste a link to the AC unit we bought. It is "energy star" and had the highest energy efficiency of anything else I could find in it's size / price range, has a very high dehumidify rate, and it has a remote control. It draws less than 500 watts which was important for my solar power. It cools/clears/dehumidifies the air in our bedroom in just a few minutes. In the larger living area of the house it takes longer to cool but it removes about 25 ounces of water from the air each hour and that alone makes it much more comfortable.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...d7f9e53e1a0105

To me, AC is one of the great inventions of mankind - the great civilizer. Instead of living coated with a layer of body fluid oozing from every pore, you are swaddled in cool, light, crisp dehumidified air. You live better, sleep better and feel better. The only downside is when you go back outside and get slimed by a humidity-wrap, it sucks even more.

If things get real bad, you may want to de-humidify, spray some water from a mist bottle to cleans more of the SO2 and dehumidify that moisture out thereafter.

Stay safe and healthy.

[davephan]

Two-stage central air-conditioning does a better job. Several years ago our old central air-conditioning unit failed and had to be replaced, since it was not economically viable to repair the unit. It was about 20 years old at the time. We also replaced our furnace with a high efficiency system at the same time, the old furnace worked OK, but not as reliable as we wanted.

The two-stage air-conditioning automatically alternates between dehumidification and cooling. It does a much better job of removing excess humidity without making the air too cold. Single-stage air-conditioning sometimes makes the air too cold to get rid of the excess humidity. We just leave the central AC run all summer. We almost never turn it off. On sunny days, the sunshine heats up the house a lot more than the outside, so AC is needed. Opening the windows lets in a lot of pollen, so we rarely open the windows. The electricity is 13 cents a KWH, excluding the 'junk' fees, so we don't even think about the cost to run the AC all summer. We also have a "Saver Switch", which allows the utility to cycle the AC on and off, which saves us about 25% on all our electricity used during the summer months, not just the electricity consumed by the AC unit. The utility very rarely cycles the AC, but even when they cycle the AC on and off every 15 minutes, we don't notice the effect.

If you concentrate on investing in yourself, educating yourself for a high income career, you can make more money, and save more money. Then you don't even think about spending some money on dehumidification and cooling of the house, while you're working, or while you're retired. Of course, in Hawaii, the electricity costs are much higher, so you'd have to invest in a large enough PV system to run the whole house, or just live with forking over more money every month to the utility. Installing a PV system in Hawaii is a no-brainer decision because the break-even time is so short, if you have the front-end money to throw at the installation cost, and a PV system is a viable option where you live.

Do people on the north side of the Big Island ever experience the VOG? We didn't experience in the VOG in Waikoloa Village or around Honokaa when we visited the Big Island.

[Arktikos]

Originally Posted by davephan

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Do people on the north side of the Big Island ever experience the VOG? We didn't experience in the VOG in Waikoloa Village or around Honokaa when we visited the Big Island.

Not usually, but with this recent eruption Waikaloa village has had it when the prevailing trade winds are blowing. Driving the saddle road from Hilo to Kona airport revealed this. It was even voggy way up the road, while Hilo side was clear. I heard Honokaa got some when the wind briefly shifted to the south, but it was a minor event.

As Terracore suggested, home AC is really not needed for cooling on the East side so very few people have these units or are familiar with them.

[Open-D]

Originally Posted by Blind Cleric

Not usually, but with this recent eruption Waikaloa village has had it when the prevailing trade winds are blowing. Driving the saddle road from Hilo to Kona airport revealed this. It was even voggy way up the road, while Hilo side was clear. I heard Honokaa got some when the wind briefly shifted to the south, but it was a minor event.

As Terracore suggested, home AC is really not needed for cooling on the East side so very few people have these units or are familiar with them.

Perhaps it is time to adopt, at least part of the time when conditions warrant, a closed box with AC/dehumidification approach. Keep out the "bad" air, and work to make the air already inside as "palatable" as possible.