Indoor air quality is a major aspect of home maintenance, but when most people think about air pollutants, they’re not thinking about inside their own home. Now, as we spend more time at home than ever before, using a quality ventilation system to maintain air freshness is key to keeping your air clean and safe for your family. Here are some tips for improving air quality in your home.
Why is Maintaining Air Quality Important?
- Having clean air in your home can help prevent harmful, short-term health effects, such as irritation of eyes, nose, and throat, headaches, coughing, sneezing, even dizziness.
- For residents exposed to unfiltered air for extended periods of time, the long-term effects could be respiratory disease (asthma or bronchitis), lung cancer, heart disease — with reported low birth weight in infants also reported.
- Properly filtered air minimizes the amount of secondhand smoke in your home, protecting your children and loved ones from respiratory issues and other harmful effects.
- Unvented kerosene heaters, wood stoves, gas water heaters, and central heating systems are common sources of carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions inside a home. Keeping your air free of these types of harmful substances is extremely important to maintaining good health.
- Contaminated air can also facilitate airborne disease and viruses, allowing illness to spread easily inside any unfiltered space.
What Can You Do?
- Install an Air Scrubber.
Using air scrubbing technology, like The Air Scrubber Plus®, can help reduce the presence of particles and contaminants in your home’s air by 90%. The Air Scrubber Plus produces scrubber ions and hydro peroxides that remove contaminants such as mold, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. It also prevents dust buildup in your heating and cooling systems. The Air Scrubber Plus, along with most other air cleaners, can be easily installed directly into your HVAC system or existing ductwork. - Invest in an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV)
Making the investment now can significantly improve your air quality and save you money in the long run. The ERVs filter out toxins and particles in your air, and effectively reduce your AC dependency through their powerful heating and cooling recovery abilities. There is no need to compromise efficiency for clean air!
Other easy ways to improve air quality:
- Change Your HVAC Filter (& other air filters)
Your HVAC system works really hard all year round to keep you comfortable. Your air is constantly circulating, and your filters are designed to reduce the pollutants that circulate with it. But eventually, they’ll call it quits, causing major issues not only for your air quality but also for your system. Checking and replacing these filters regularly will help keep your air clean and your system from getting overworked, which means no costly repairs down the road for you.This also applies to all filters in your home, like your clothes dryer, kitchen vents, and vacuums — carpets and rugs can trap a lot of dust and particles, so keeping them clean is important for air quality too!
- Check Your Air Ducts
These passages are responsible for distributing hot and cold air throughout your home, but if not installed correctly or maintained properly, they can also be a source of all the harmful contaminants you don’t want to be breathing in on a daily basis. By hiring a professional — like the experts at Madsen — you can ensure your ducts are circulating fresh, clean air, while keeping your home as comfortable as possible. - Control the Humidity in Your Home
Exposure to mold can cause sore throat, skin rashes, wheezing, and a lot worse if gone untreated. Particularly in your kitchens and bathroom, keeping humidity levels under control is the best way to eliminate mold growth. Turn on the exhaust fan immediately after bathing, and turn on cooking vents or open a window when whipping up a delicious meal on the stove. This will also help eliminate various levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide that electric burners can produce. Dehumidifiers are a good extra measure for the warmer months when humidity is at an all-time high.
At Madsen, our representatives will be happy to provide more information on protecting your family from germs, dust, and odors, as well as how we can install air cleaning systems in your home. Contact us today to begin your journey to fresh air!