Best Air Curtains in Canada | 2022 Comprehensive Buyer’s Guide

Other Popular

Berner DTU03 DRIVE-THRU Window 18" Air Curtain

This one is designed for drive-thru windows or other smaller apertures, but it is very powerful. If you had a couple of these, you could use them for heavy-use loading bays or other things, though again, they’re mainly for smaller spaces.

Features

• Weight: 10lbs.
• Material: Aluminum.
• Dual-Mode: Yes, micro-switch for Cool, Off, Heat.

Performance

This one’s probably really only for you for small window spaces, though Berner offers similar models for larger spaces as well.

Pros & Cons of Air Curtains and Where To Use Them

These aren’t heaters nor are they air conditioners. They’re a branch of climate control technology, and much of how they work uses the same sets of principles (aside from how the air blows), but you cannot use these to heat nor cool a space.

Air curtains, as I said, are mainly used as a barrier system. So, let’s look first at when they’re called for.

• Commercial space customer entrances – This is a common use for them. With automatic doors that slide open and make a big gap, an air curtain can help keep the climate control in, and it can also help keep the unpleasant weather outside.
• Greenhouses – These are common in greenhouses that have compartmentalized environments that you need unhindered movement across. The air curtain helps to maintain temperatures and pressures, even if a door is open. This helps prevent cross-contamination.
• Industrial spaces – This same contaminant prevention is often used in industrial spaces as well, for the same general reasons.
• Residential utility entrances – I actually have an air curtain device over the door leading out to my garage. It’s not climate controlled, and sometimes I have to be in and out of there with my hands full unloading groceries or what have you. An air curtain comes on automatically when that door opens, and this keeps flies out, keeps my AC in, keeps the heat out there, and allows me unhindered movement through my doorway without worrying about air conditioning the not-so-great outdoors.

Pros

• It forms a decent temporary barrier that you can walk through.
• It can help blow contaminants off of you.
• It has a nice blast of warm or cold, which customers tend to like.

Cons

• It’s not secure at all.
• Larger animals will cross them.
• They run the power while active.
• They cause turbulence in the room.

Comparing to Other HVAC

I don’t think this section needs to exist, to be honest with you, because these aren’t climate control, not in the same sense as other heaters. They don’t heat your space, that’s not remotely what these are designed for.

Heaters produce hot air which they blow out in a spread area from a large aperture, be it vents, grills or something else. They pump hot air out to fill a room and establish a stable warm climate. They involve heating elements or combustion chambers, and often a fan that distributes the heat widely.

Air curtains are barrier technology. In a small enough space, yes, I suppose they could heat things up, but it’s a square peg in a round hole. They cast air in a broad, thin, powerful blast of shaped wind, creating a downward barrier of off-temperature and rapidly-moving air. This prevents two climates from mixing through an opening, it keeps bugs out, it prevents cross-contamination from things like pollen and other airborne irritants.

You’re not going to buy an air curtain to heat your house nor your workshop nor garage. You’re going to get one to help preserve that heat when you open doors. You’re hemorrhaging heat out into the outdoors while loading stuff into your house. An air curtain can be crossed through by solid objects, but will work to keep your ambient heat contained. Some of the air curtain’s heat will be deflected out into the cold, but your house’s air will stay put.

You shouldn’t leave the door open with this air curtain running for super long periods of time, because you’re burning electricity in a new and creative way to fight the cold after a point.

Again, these aren’t heaters. They may involve forcing air, they may involve heating and/or cooling elements, but they’re not to actually control the climate of your space directly, merely help preserve it when doors or windows have to be opened. That said, they can be worth the little bit of time, expense and consideration, and it’s surprising that more homes don’t have these over their front and back doors for the sake of improved climate control retention.

For temporary containment, they’re very effective and honestly, it’s a clever concept.

High-End vs. Cheap Air Curtains

So, I feel the need to hammer home that you want to buy a good brand of these. This technology is somewhat specialized, and when you have specialized technology, there aren’t that many standard parts at play, even if the basic technology concept is shared by other implementations.

This means that the cheap ones are using the cheapest parts possible, which will have a serious gap compared to ones engineered and manufactured by the top brands. Now, given I’ve said that these are for a very specific purpose, you may be flinching at spending more than two hundred dollars on one of these things.

However, if you actually talk to a retailer that uses one on their door, ask them how much it saves them on lost heat or air conditioning during the extreme months of the year. They will pay for themselves in short order. Truth be told, one of the good ones is barely over two hundred anyhow, and I do mean barely.

Another advantage to buying a good brand of air curtain is that they have far better return policies, defect replacement policies and of course, far better warranties. A company that charges a price for their product must show confidence in their product this way, because it helps to justify such a brash expense, even if you don’t directly notice that being the case.

Finally, at the end of the day, it’s like the old saying goes. You do get what you pay for. If you want a quality product with actual longevity, high performance, and confidence in its design, it’s going to cost more than something really cheap you buy on a whim on Amazon. Let it be said, though, that you can buy high-end ones online too, you just have to actually look for them.

Air Curtain Maintenance & Cleaning

These devices are generally pretty low-maintenance. They will have a filter (usually), which should just slide out of either the top or bottom. It’ll slide on tracks, and snap into place. Most of these filters can just be washed in cold water with some soap.

Replacement filters tend to be pretty affordable, but they do have the problem of these filters being kind of special, and needing to be ordered from a provider. Aside from dusting their intake vents from time to time, there’s really not much more maintenance to be done to these.

If it’s also able to do cold air (many of these are both), you may also need to drain it once in a while, as cold air creation results in condensation. Air conditioners produce water, remember.

For a longer life out of your air curtain and its filter, consider turning it off when the climate’s nice and you don’t have AC or heat on, and you’re not worried about an onslaught of bugs at the time. Don’t let the thing run when it doesn’t need to. But also make sure once a month, you do turn it on and run it, because devices that’re never used actually do break down sometimes.

Table of Content

• What are air curtains?
• What to look for when buying air curtains
• Pros & Cons of air curtains and where to use them
• TOP best air curtains