Upgrading our Airstream AC System With A DustGUARD Air Filter - DYI Series

The Dust Guard is a brand new product for us. We're going to be bringing out for both the replacement filters for the Dometic and Coleman filters that you normally use. We'll have four different sizes, bringing out in four packs. So you'll be able to four pack the better value overall. And for the Airstream customers, we actually have a cut to fit. And so you're able to take this and basically be able to cut this to size that you actually need. Hey everybody, welcome back to Suffolk Travels. I have a neat new product I want to share with you that our friends at Clear 2.0 just came out with. And this is the Dust Guard filter system. And this is kind of neat. This is a filter system for the air intakes on your air conditioner. They do offer pre-cut filters that will fit certain air conditioners, but our AC intake on our Airstream is like this. And as you can see, this is the filter that Airstream puts in there. It's just a very thin piece of foam. It does catch some of the dust, but not all of it. And I'll show you a little bit of that inside the trailer when I go to install these. You can see there's some dust coming out of the vents. There's also some dust in the duct work that we'll have to address at a future date, but we're not going to do that today. But this is a cut-to-fit filter, and I'm going to open it up for the first time, take a look at it. A couple things to note, if you're technical, this is a MERV 6 filter. And the size on this is 20 inches by 17 inches cut-to-fit. And per the packaging, it says it's engineered specifically for the RV lifestyle. They're high-capacity air filter, improves indoor air quality, helping you and your family to breathe easier, sleep better, and feel more refreshed wherever your adventures take you. These are designed to catch pet dander, dust, pollen, mold spores, common irritants that compromise the air inside your RV. Now, when I talked to Keith at the RV show, when he introduced these, he mentioned that this blue coating on here is designed to catch dust. And each one of these has a tackifier layer as well as a regular filter. So in doing so, it's going to trap all the dirt and dust. So it is part of the design of this that even though the filter is actually much better than this, as you can see from the edge, but it's also designed in such a way that this will collect the dust in the air. So the idea is you would cut these to fit. I'm hoping to be able to get at least four out of here, possibly more. Yeah, it looks like I can probably get two rows of them that way and then go... I can probably get six filters out of this for us, which would be great because that would give us two to put in right away and four more to have for the future. Now, if I was at home and I had all my tools, I'd have a straight edge and a razor blade, and I'd lay this out and cut it with that. But I'm just going to use scissors, which I think is the way most people would do this. And so we're going to just cut these. I think what I want to do before I do make any cuts, I want to get the other filter and put it here just to make sure I have enough space to put two of these side by side. Here, I'm going to tilt this down a little bit. And it looks like I can easily get two of these out of here. This is 20 inches. These measure about nine and a half, so I have plenty of space that way. Now, if I look at it coming this way, how many can I get total? There's two, three, not quite going to get four. So I'm definitely going to get three, which I think is pretty good. So I guess the first thing to do is to actually just cut this in half and get the first two out of this. So if I cut it right there on that line, and I'm sure you don't have to be super precise with this. Because, you know, you've got a little bit of leeway, but you definitely don't want to undercut them. Then they won't fit around the grills the way they should. We'll set this aside. Now here, I'm going to cut one right here. And I'll cut the second one right here. Now I've also got to notch them here. So I'm going to do that. There, now if I take my grill and I just set it on here, you can see it looks like a really good fit. It's over all the grill area, so I like that. Trim one more. Now you want to make sure you put the blue side down. So, well, the blue side is what you want the air to hit first, which is how I got these. So we're going to take them inside and install them. Like I said, I definitely have enough here to do at least, yeah, I can't quite get two out of this piece. If I can get one more out of here and three out of this piece over here, which would be awesome. So we'll be good for, you know, if I change these on a monthly basis, we'll be good for the next three months. Where's my head? So if I change these on a monthly basis, I would be good for the next three months. So that is good. So I'm going to take you inside, we'll pop these into place, and I'll show you the dust that we're getting currently. And what I'm hoping this will fix, but I don't think it's going to fix it right away, and I'll show you why. But I do believe this will definitely be a vast improvement over what we are doing today. So let's go inside. Okay, this is the AC discharge vent. If you can see right around here, there's dirt coming out of these vents. And that's because it's getting sucked up as the AC runs. Not too bad on this one over here or this one. But if you look in here, so these are the intakes where the grills go. And if you look in there, you can see all the dust that has been picked up by the system. And that is actually, you know, just being transported down the ductwork and back through everything. So I'm hoping that these new filters will stop that dust from going in there. Now we do have an issue where I really need to probably try to figure a way to clean that out. I don't have the equipment here to do that. But I'm pretty sure what I'm going to need is probably put a shop vacuum on one side and an air hose and loosen the dust up with an air hose on the other side so the vacuum pulls it out. That way it doesn't end up all inside of here. But I don't have the tools and equipment to do that right now. So we're just going to put the filters in, let them do their bit. We're going to clean around the discharge vents, and we'll watch it from there. All right, so my filters just go in like this. I'm trying to do it one-handed. I don't really want to see the filter, but, you know, this is being something that I cut myself. I can't fault anyone but me. I think I need to trim just a tiny bit off these to make sure they fit better. I did bring the scissors in. No, I didn't, so we're not going to. I don't have the scissors, so we're not going to trim. Yeah, we got to. We're going to have to trim that a little bit to make sure that fits better. But it definitely will work. Just need a little bit of trimming. I'll do that, and then we will be firing this thing up. All right, so I've got the filters in place. I think we're in good shape. I'm going to fire the air conditioner up. First, I'm going to wipe down the discharge areas where the dust is so that we can see if we're getting less dust out of it. Like I said, I'm not confident that it's going to completely take care of all the dust issue because there's enough dust in the ductwork right now that I think that will be an issue for a while until we figure out a way to clean them. We're now about three weeks into the future from when the video was first filmed, and these filters have been up and in place working for the past three weeks, and I thought I'd take a moment and pull the cover off one of these and show you how well they're working. One thing we have noticed is that if I go over here to where I was showing you the dirt before around this discharge, I don't seem to have as much, though there is still a little bit. But I'm not surprised on that because, as I showed you in the video, there's a lot of dirt in my system. And so if I had these filters probably sooner, I would have less dirt in the system. But I do think these are working pretty well, and I want to pull that one filter down and show it to you. So let me get my little tool. By the way, if you own an Airstream and you don't have one of these little bone tools, that's what they're kind of nicknamed, it's actually a trim removal tool for automotive. This thing works great to get underneath something, and it doesn't scratch. It's smooth, it's plastic, it's not hard, it won't scratch the aluminum. But for getting up into these filters and pulling them down, they work perfect. Now I'm going to have to use two hands to do this, so I'm going to set the camera down for a minute and take that down and then bring you guys right back. I have the filter down, here it is. And if I pull it off the grate, you can see the level of dirt that it's caught. And it seems to be doing a pretty good job. I also noticed, if you look at this, there is some dust on here. Now, I'll be honest with you, I'm not the best at pulling my filters out and cleaning them. I think I'll get better now that I have these filters. I'm going to swap them out probably about once a month. So these need to go for probably another week or so, and then I should swap them out and put another set in there. But they seem to be doing a pretty good job. I mean, that is definitely catching dirt, which is exactly what you want. So I'm very pleased, and we'll jump back to the video for the closing. I hope you found this video informative. And if you want to try these filters, there will be a link in the description of this video. And there's also a discount code. So if you order them, use the discount code Zephyr Travels, and you will receive 10% off your order. So definitely hope you try that. So until the next time, guys, I will see you all down the road. I think I'm going to sit here and cut some more filters.