I promised you some feedback regarding the furnace filter after 1 year:
1) I do feel an improvement with my eye allergies. I have only had to use my steroid eye drops a handful of times this past year. Those times that I had to use them were when I came in direct contact with a chemical on my hands or in the air that I knew would cause a reaction. Typically, I would need to use them for a week or more at a time especially during spring and fall allergy season. I would also have random reactions to indoor chemicals. I still have some swelling and itchiness after being outside, however, if I wash my face and take a 24-hour allergy pill when coming inside they have been manageable. I used to have to regularly take Benadryl during the day and at night to keep my eyes from a more severe reaction – in addition to all the other allergy medications I took. I now only take a minimal amount of allergy medication only during my outdoor allergy seasons- and even then I have reduced the amount of medication I need to take to avoid reactions to my eyes. I did not take regular allergy medications during winter this past year!- at all! I still suffer in Spring with dry sinuses and mild sinus pressure headaches.
2) The kid’s dust allergy symptoms have been better this past year. I do not notice excess tissues in their bedroom wastebaskets unless they truly have a cold. It used to be common through the winter months to have full wastebaskets full of tissues from allergies.
3) I’m not confident in reporting whether we were less sick with colds/flu or not, as I didn’t document things to have a comparison. I did end up with Pertussis this past year (even though I had a booster shot in 2016). Two of the 3 boys each missed one week of school this winter (end of Jan/early Feb) with fever/flu symptoms. I do not recall anything else worthy of reporting in terms of sickness. If I had to report by memory, I would say they have been sick less but when they did get sick they went down hard- So days missed from school looks the same, however, it’s likely they were sick less often.
4) One thing that surprised me the MOST was when the neighbor girl asked if she and some friends could use our oven to bake cookies for a school bake sale. I was not home at the time. They put cookies in my oven, set a timer and went back to their house. When they came back the house was full of smoke, the alarms were going off and the cookies were burned!! They tried opening the house to clear the smoke but I returned home to a smokey and very smelly house! I was certain we would need a professional cleaning service to come and get the smoke out of all our furniture and upholstery. It was terrible!!
I put the furnace filter immediately on 100% and ran it on full power. We woke up the next morning and I could not believe it – the smoke smell was gone!! The cloth furniture off the kitchen didn’t even smell like smoke! That morning a friend came over for coffee and I asked her if she could smell anything in the house (I thought maybe we were just used to the smell). She looked at me puzzled and said she didn’t smell anything!! I could not believe it and I’m sure she thought I was exaggerating as to how bad the smoke was – but I wasn’t! It was unbelievable!! I thought for sure I would need a professional cleaning service to get rid of smoke damage – the smell was completely gone by morning!!!!!!
