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Based on personal experience, HEPA isn't even necessary when you're filtering that much air.

My house downwind of a freeway and a wilderness area, lots of nasty black tire dust mixed with allergens. It did not come with A/C. I had HEPA air purifiers around the house that I would leave in auto mode and they would run for a few hours a day based on the air quality.

Then I got central A/C installed with a standard 1" MERV 10 rated filter on the intake. Just running the blower for 10 minutes every hour is enough to keep the air quality in every room below the level where the air purifiers would kick on. I've given most of them away.

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100%. Understanding your air quality is important, since it can vary greatly based on so many factors, some other ones can be location, home type (condo, house), occupant types (seniors, small humans), health conditions (allergies, etc), homes don't always share the same kind of air circulation.
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HEPA is less important in most scenarios than "something that on a few passes will catch everything", which MERV-13 will do. Not all systems can handle the pressure drop of a MERV-13 but many can, and there are some pretty low-drop options out there if you search for them.
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13 is better obv, but merv-8 is a great drop in for most systems, and it makes a huge difference. my system runs the fan for an hour every evening, and that also has been an improvement.

i have to do a major upgrade next month (30 year old gas furnace!) and i will need to do some research, but i would like to even ascend to true HEPA if it's feasible

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Mismatched merv levels between some heating systems (ie., forced air) and what they were designed for can also create strain on the system and premature failures.

Also, in new homes, beware of undersized heating systems that will fail prematurely.

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Had Claude build a Home Assistant integration for my Rheem furnace which exposes commanded ECM CFM, actual CFM, fan RPM, static pressure (among other things) via Bluetooth Low Energy.
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We don't have central air in our new home and man oh man does it get dustier. I did not appreciate the power of those cardboard filters.
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This is not a good choice for everyone. Before greatly increasing the load on you HVAC blower motor, make sure you first understand where it is, how old it is, and how inconvenienced you would be if it burned out.
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There is at least one big downside to running the fan 24/7: you lose out on humidity control.
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Why?
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At least in summer/cooling mode, I think the fan blows some of the condensed water back in the air off the coil (instead of it dripping down the drain). I think it still dehumidifies, just not as efficiently. Not sure if that's what op meant
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Annoyingly, both Ecobee and (at least historically) Nest make controlling the fan independent of the heating and cooling hard. You have to enable either heating or cooling before being allowed to enable the fan. And you can't specify how long you want to run it for, but have to select one of a few options.
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Could just bypass with esp32 and relay. I think you just need to close a 24v AC switch/relay unless you have a newer/more expensive communicating system (although then I don't think you'd have an Ecobee)
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i have an ecobee and it was pretty simple to hit fan on even when system is off. this may be a limitation of your hvac system being exposed awkwardly through to ecobee. some systems have a "fan only" wire, which mine does. but my guest house is a much older system, and it is like yours.
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It's able to run the fan without either a heating or cooling call, so I'm not sure what would prevent it from doing so without making me choose heating or cooling first in the UI.
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