Improve Your Indoor Air Quality By Following These Easy Tips
It is summertime and boy, do we love the outdoors. We love the warm weather, cookouts, and pool or lake time. However, statistically, we spend 90% of our time indoors, at home, when we travel, and while working or shopping. Given the time we spend indoors, ensuring optimal indoor air quality is crucial. Here are a few recommended steps to improve the air in your home.
Recognize Indoor Air Quality Contamination Sources
Reducing the concentration of contaminants entering your home is a good place to start.
- Pollen, mold spores, and exhaust can enter a home through small gaps around windows and doors, or ductwork leaks. While each gap might be quite small, the combination of these spaces can be the equivalent of a hole several inches in diameter. Closing these gaps will reduce the quantity of contaminants entering a home.
- A garage is often the storage space for fuels, paints, and adhesives. Vehicles and lawn care equipment may leak fuel. A habit of warming a car up in the garage will significantly increase the amount of carbon monoxide that enters a home even when the garage door is open. Make sure the door between the home and garage is well sealed.
- Carpet, manufactured flooring, paints, stains, and adhesives give off volatile organic compounds (VOC) for the useful years of their service. The same is true for upholstered furniture and mattresses; the foam contains petroleum byproducts. We register the scent of VOCs as the “new” smell. The concentration of VOC falls off quickly, but they are still released in low quantities for years.
Fully Use the HVAC System
A major function of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system is to produce clean, fresh air.
- During the summer, the air conditioning system removes about half of the moisture to keep the indoor relative humidity between 40 and 60%. This is important, since outdoor relative humidity soars above 90% during July and August in Texas. Removing humidity inhibits the growth of mold and mildew in moist spaces (bathrooms, kitchens, and laundry rooms). Annual professional maintenance is essential to ensure the air conditioner performs this function properly.
- Even the most basic air filter efficiently removes about 80% of airborne contaminants with each cycle. Consult with your HVAC professional to determine the appropriate MERV (minimum efficiency reporting value) filter for your system.
- When ultraviolet light is installed inside HVAC ductwork, it disrupts the DNA and cell walls of organic contaminants, including pollen, mold spores, dust mites, bacteria, and viruses. If UV lights have not been installed in your system, inquire with your HVAC professional about after-market installation.
- Whenever a heating or cooling cycle ends, gravity drops airborne dust particles inside ductwork. This dust can be removed by duct cleaning; it is recommended that ducts be cleaned every 3 to 5 years.
Further Simple Indoor Air Quality Steps
- Regular and thorough cleaning removes the largest number of airborne contaminants, and they are removed permanently from the home. Whenever a home is dusted, mopped, and vacuumed, the visible results are evident. Don’t forget hard-to-reach areas, bedding, and drapes.
- Opening windows or doors strategically can reduce the concentration of contaminants, including VOCs that are not collected by other cleaning techniques. Find advantages times, during mild temperatures and low pollen counts.
- For troubled areas or family members with delicate health problems, consider a room air purifier. The portable units can move from room to room and have multiple filtration stages, including activated charcoal to remove VOCs and odors.
Improve Your Indoor Air Quality with Help from AllCool AC
Routine maintenance and preventative tips like we have outlined can help improve indoor air quality in your home to help those with chronic respiratory issues. Schedule your indoor air quality consultation by calling All Cool AC & Heating at 281-238-9292 or contact us via email and let our NATE-certified AC maintenance technicians put their experience to work for you.