The Surprise Inside A New Kenmore HEPA Air Cleaner!

Know the HEPA filters from the laminar flow safety cabinets in our cell culture facilities

Used to be the flagship appliance brand for Sears, when Sears was the flagship store in the US.

Fran Blanche

Oh, the "Arcade Smell"... ozonated entertainment.

Fran Blanche

Likely.

Fran Blanche

I'm going to return it. Ordered a few real machines, I'll do a video on those when they arrive....

Fran Blanche

Hi Ewen, all the dust was on the clean side of the filter (the air is drawn in on the side past the black activated carbon of the filter then out the top), so if tested it had should have failed. There should be no dust inside the unit, even one that been used for sometime as the HEPA filter should remove it. So something wasn't good about the factory.

Leigh

My gut feeling is what you saw was that it had been tested before packing. Fine dust is precisely what you’d want a HEPA filter to filter out, and not have it leak out the sides. Which means it’ll collect inside. And opening it for “a final clean before packing” would invalidate the seal and the testing. Just saying. Ewen

Ewen McNeill

Hi Fran, I would be surprised if the smell is actual ozone (O3) as it isn't stable, it very quickly degrades into normal oxygen (O2) over the course of a few hours, so unless you had turned it on immediately before hand I can't see how there would be actual ozone there. It is probably other chemicals from the plastic having a similar smell. Loved the video, I tend to take things apart even before turning on if there is something I want to hack.

Leigh

We don't have Kenmore in Europe, do we know owns them? Is Kenmore a company or just a "brand"?

Was it made in China? I bet it was made in China...

Jason Olshefsky

Remember all our electric toys that made ozone smell?

It could also have been through some rudimentary QC testing as well where they run it in a mixed environment to specifically see what passes and what does not. I think the fact it all seemed the same material rather than general detritus makes this more probable. Still cleaning it out won't do any harm and now you know what filters best.

veritanuda

I bet it was used in the past then returned and passed off as a new unit. If you opened the unit up and dug to check the ionizer portion, I'm getting there would be quite a bit of dust around the ionizer fins/brushes. The particulates mixed with the ozone smell gives me the suspicion it was used. That doesnt occur from just texting the unit briefly from the factory.

AESFTW

I guess that this thing was used before...

This is clearly designed to run backwards in time, so that the internal dust is sucked back through the filter. All you need now is a time machine!

David Peaker

I'd run that for a day or so without the filter in to try and knock some of the dirt out so it doesn't pre block the filter. Shame how little thought went in to storing the bits so they didn't come pre-filthy