Air Scrubber Plus®: Does it Really Work?

As heating and air conditioning professionals, we run into a lot of products that make some pretty incredible claims. It’s our job to sift through all of them and find the ones that we believe in and that we can recommend to our customers without reservation. After all, the reputation of our company is at stake!

We have tested a lot of products, and most of them haven’t made the grade for a variety of reasons. Maybe they don’t work as well as they claim, or maybe they do work, but the cost is higher than the value we believe them to have for our customers. With that in mind, I wanted to write about an indoor air quality product we recently came into contact with, the Air Scrubber Plus® by Enviro Professionals.

Portable Air Scrubber Plus®

When I first heard about the Air Scrubber Plus® I was intrigued yet skeptical. Enviro Professionals made some incredible claims about the capabilities of the scrubber. Here is a list of some of them:

• Actively cleanses the air and surfaces throughout your home
• 9% reduction in surface micro-organisms in your home
• 90% or more reduction of airborne micro-organisms
• Large reduction of airborne dust and particles
• Removes Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) from indoor air
• Destroys odors
• Reduces allergy symptoms

I really wanted to find out for myself if these claims were true, so I decided to do some more research. It turns out that the Air Scrubber Plus® is one of the only indoor air quality products we’ve seen at Evergreen that has been scientifically tested in peer-reviewed studies. A peer-reviewed study has passed the scrutiny of fellow scientists, providing a high degree of validation for the results. Most products that claim to be scientifically tested are not backed by peer-reviewed studies, calling into question the results of these privately funded studies.

These studies were convincing enough that I wanted to take an Air Scrubber Plus® home to see if it could help with some problems in my home. Evergreen Home Heating and Energy was kind enough to provide a portable Air Scrubber Plus® for me to take home and test. Keep in mind, the model I took home is the portable version of the Air Scrubber Plus®. For homes with central ductwork, there is an Air Scrubber Plus® designed to be installed right in your ductwork that will scrub the air in your entire home.

Air Scrubber Plus® whole house model

I have several issues at home that I wanted to use as tests for the Air Scrubber Plus®:

Finished Garage With No Ventilation

My home has a laundry/storage room that was once a garage. When the previous owners finished the garage, they did not extend the home’s ductwork into the room, meaning this room is cut off from the rest of the home and has no ventilation. I have two medium-sized dogs, and they hang out in the laundry room during the day when no one is home with them. As you can imagine, this room smells strongly of dog if we don’t air it out regularly, which is a problem in the fall and winter time when it’s cold outside. I was anxious to try the Air Scrubber Plus® in the laundry room, to see if the manufacturer’s claims about reducing odors are true.

Frequent Illnesses in the Family

My wife and I have 3 young children. All of them go to the same daycare and frequently bring home illnesses, such as common colds or mild flu viruses. Because the manufacturer claims that the Air Scrubber Plus® removes viruses and bacteria from the air as well as cleansing surfaces, I wanted to see if the Air Scrubber Plus® has any effect on the overall health of our family.

Allergies

My wife suffers from seasonal allergies. If Enviro Professionals claims about the Air Scrubber Plus® are true, it should help reduce my wife’s allergy symptoms.

Putting the Air Scrubber Plus® to the Test

The biggest problems with odors and lack of airflow in my home occur in the laundry room/finished garage, so that is the place I decided to start. I wanted to see how well the Air Scrubber Plus® worked to reduce the strong dog odor in the room. I am fortunate enough to live a few minutes from work, so when the Air Scrubber Plus® arrived in the morning I decided to go home for lunch and set it up in the laundry room. After about ½ an hour, I noticed a significant reduction of odor in the room, but I needed to get back to work. I left the Air Scrubber Plus® on in the garage and left. A few hours later when I arrived at home, the smell was 95% gone. By the next morning, I couldn’t detect any dog smell at all in the room. My wife, who has a much better sense of smell than I do, also commented on the lack of dog smell!

The smelly culprits!

I decided to test the Air Scrubber Plus® in other areas of my home, so I removed it from the laundry room that next morning. The dog odor remained undetectable for another day or so before slowly returning over the next couple of days, as my 2 smelly dogs spent time in the room.

A few days later, one of my dogs developed an intestinal issue and had an accident on the floor in the laundry room. The smell was totally overwhelming! I cleaned up the mess, moved the Air Scrubber Plus® back into the room and turned it on a higher setting. By the time my wife arrived home from work about an hour later, the smell was totally gone! It was at that point that I was truly sold on the Air Scrubber Plus®.

Onion Odor

One day my wife decided to cook pinto beans and onions in a crock pot in the laundry room. It was a very strong onion smell for that entire day as the crock pot did its work. I decided to take this opportunity to test the Air Scrubber Plus®. I put the scrubber right next to the crock pot to see what effect it would have. Because the crock pot was actively putting off a very strong odor, the room as a whole continued to smell like onions throughout the day. However, if I put my face right in front of the Air Scrubber Plus®, I couldn’t smell any onions, showing that the Air Scrubber Plus® was doing its job. Once the source of the onion smell was removed from the room, the smell quickly went away!

Onions and beans next to the portable Air Scrubber Plus®

Illnesses and Allergies

I can report that in the month we’ve had the Air Scrubber Plus® in my home, none of members of my family, including my 3 small children who all go to daycare, have suffered from any sicknesses, including colds or the flu. My wife’s allergies have also not acted up during that time. This, of course, is totally anecdotal and not necessarily attributable to the presence of the scrubber. My wife’s allergies tend to act up more in the spring. After we’ve had the Air Scrubber Plus® for a few months I’ll post an update here and let you know if we have noticed any difference in our health.

The Bottom Line

Odors, while subjective, are the easiest thing to test with the Air Scrubber Plus®. I can say with absolute certainty that the Air Scrubber Plus® removes the worst kinds of odors from the air, even in an unventilated room. It’s been a very positive experience so far. After I’ve had the Air Scrubber Plus® for a while, I’ll update this blog with more info about my experiences with it.