Ways to Improve Your Home Air Quality
Need some tips to help improve your home air quality? Are you still sniffling, coughing and sneezing, even after recovering from a cold or flu? You may have poor home air quality issues that are making your symptoms worse. Below are tips and information to help you improve your home air quality.
Ways to improve your home air quality are:
Change Your HVAC System Air Filters Regularly
Duct Sealing (to prevent low-quality air infiltration)
Air Purification Equipment (get a plug-in unit or whole home system)
Insulation and Air Gap Sealing
Changing your filters regularly with a high-performance media filter is the easiest and fastest way to help improve indoor air quality. It will also help your system run more efficiently, which can reduce the wear and tear on your system and help reduce your heating and cooling bills.
If you don’t get the results you want from regular filter changes, you may have dirty and/or leaking ducts in your home. This often occurs when you have animal damage (e.g. in attic, walls and underfloor areas). Small animals and rodents love the warmth (and cooling) your ductwork provides just as much as you do. If you hear animals scurrying around your floors and walls, or have heard it in the past, it’s a good idea to inspect your ducts for damage. If they find a point of entry to your home, they can chew and claw their way into your duct system causing permanent damage that needs to be repaired along with weak air flow and poor indoor air quality (breathing rat nest…yuck).
For example, we had a customer who was experiencing very weak air flow and heating to the master bedroom. We sent a Tech out to inspect the system and he discovered that her ductwork under her kitchen floor (that connected to the master bedroom) was completely disconnected and it appeared that a cat had crawled under the home and pulled it apart (probably for the warmth). He reconnected her ducts and the airflow in her bedroom immediately and significantly improved!
Air purification equipment can help reduce dust, allergens and smells in your home (e.g. if you have pets, dirty diapers, athletes, smoke, cook with onions everyday, etc.). They come in plug-in room size units, all the way up to whole home solutions that can be installed directly into your heating and cooling system.
Lastly, you may not realize that an improperly insulated home can leak and even backdraft conditioned air out of your home, increasing your home heating and cooling bills unnecessarily and lowering your indoor air quality. For example, the areas around light fixtures, wall switches, plumbing fixtures, appliances, etc. should be properly insulated and sealed to prevent air loss and backdrafts.
Want to learn more? Call us today to learn how we can help you say goodbye to sniffles and hello to cleaner breathing.