Old Crow
Searching....
I've recently been thinking about how different this year has been for us regarding wildfire smoke. Last summer (2023) our local airport had an air quality index reading of 460 one day and we had way too many above-200 days.
At the time, we had been planning a trip to western Canada. Smoke maps there looked so bad that we almost decided not to go. If smoke was going to be as bad as what we had seen locally, why go? But I had been following Machinebuilder's epic account of his Tennessee-to-Alaska trip and he didn't seem to be complaining about smoke as he made his way through western Canada. We decided to go ahead.
Before leaving, I bought a small 12-volt HEPA air purifier, a Philips GoPure GP5212, and changed the cabin filter in our Transit van.
That seemed to do pretty well. On smoky days we'd drive with air conditioning on and the van's air flow control set to 'Recirculate'. If that didn't seem to be working well enough, I'd plug in the air purifier and run it on high for a bit then turn it to low. The fan is noticeable on high but I thought it quite acceptable on low, even after turning off the engine.
My wife is more sensitive to smoky air than I am and she could tell a difference in the air within about 15 minutes of my running the purifier.
I must say, though, that our experience with the air purifier is limited. It turned out we only had a few horribly-smoky days on our two-month trip. We were surprised to see how bad the smoke maps would look yet we'd have a relatively good day. I'd say they were typically in the 100-150 AQI range but also a surprising number in the 50-100 range.
I have the purifier mounted on the back of the van's driver-side headrest using the included strap. That works for a van but I'm not sure what I'd do in a truck camper. The unit is light and simply plugs in to a cigarette lighter so it could be moved between cab and camper. Given it wouldn't be needed that often, I guess that wouldn't be a big deal.
I should also mention that we didn't have hot evenings where we had to have the van's windows open. I'm not sure how much it would help if the windows had to be open.
At the time, we had been planning a trip to western Canada. Smoke maps there looked so bad that we almost decided not to go. If smoke was going to be as bad as what we had seen locally, why go? But I had been following Machinebuilder's epic account of his Tennessee-to-Alaska trip and he didn't seem to be complaining about smoke as he made his way through western Canada. We decided to go ahead.
Before leaving, I bought a small 12-volt HEPA air purifier, a Philips GoPure GP5212, and changed the cabin filter in our Transit van.
That seemed to do pretty well. On smoky days we'd drive with air conditioning on and the van's air flow control set to 'Recirculate'. If that didn't seem to be working well enough, I'd plug in the air purifier and run it on high for a bit then turn it to low. The fan is noticeable on high but I thought it quite acceptable on low, even after turning off the engine.
My wife is more sensitive to smoky air than I am and she could tell a difference in the air within about 15 minutes of my running the purifier.
I must say, though, that our experience with the air purifier is limited. It turned out we only had a few horribly-smoky days on our two-month trip. We were surprised to see how bad the smoke maps would look yet we'd have a relatively good day. I'd say they were typically in the 100-150 AQI range but also a surprising number in the 50-100 range.
I have the purifier mounted on the back of the van's driver-side headrest using the included strap. That works for a van but I'm not sure what I'd do in a truck camper. The unit is light and simply plugs in to a cigarette lighter so it could be moved between cab and camper. Given it wouldn't be needed that often, I guess that wouldn't be a big deal.
I should also mention that we didn't have hot evenings where we had to have the van's windows open. I'm not sure how much it would help if the windows had to be open.
Last edited:
