Improving Air Quality Inside Your Home
With hotter days looming over Texas many people spend long hours inside trying to stay cool. When you do this, you want to make sure that the air quality within your walls is the best it can be. Improving the air quality within your home helps to keep everyone inside as healthy as possible while spending long hours indoors.
Making the air quality within your home optimal can feel overwhelming and like you don’t know where to start. There are several measures you could take to improve your air quality from enhancing ventilation systems to making sure you are choosing paints that emit fewer fumes.
The importance of indoor air quality
Having indoor air quality is important and sometimes often overlooked. It is now more important than ever as we are still dealing with the effects of a new human virus. You want to make sure that spending a longer amount of time within your home is going to remain healthy for everyone in the home.
Is indoor air quality an issue in today’s homes?
Homes that are built more energy efficient are built with a focus on being more tightly sealed from the outside world to help lower the need for energy consumption. But this also has an impact on the natural flow and ventilation of air from outside. As a result, airflow becomes less, and pollutants can become trapped inside as well as moisture from other operating systems in the home with a much lower flow of fresh air.
Here are some ways that you can optimize the air quality within your home
One of the first steps to improving the air quality within your home is to identify if there are any specific issues with the airflow in your home. Many times, air quality can be tied to other items like insulation airtightness, and damp proofing. You want to make sure you do not impact these other systems while trying to improve your air quality.
If you are concerned about finding the correct measurement of the true air quality in your home it is a good idea to contact a professional. Most professionals agree that homes could improve their air quality by reducing indoor pollutants and improving ventilation.
Ways to improve ventilation and reduce pollutants in the home
There are many items in the home that can emit harmful gases: you want to be mindful of the items you are bringing into your home and be aware of the potential for what is called off-gassing. This means that a product has been treated with or uses chemicals that are then released into the air in the home. There are many products that can do this including furniture, flooring, carpets/rugs, paint, and more.
Try and look for items that are made of natural materials including wood, clay, plaster, wool, and the like. Synthetic materials tend to be treated with chemicals that can emit toxic fumes. In small amounts, they may not make much of a difference, but when everything in the home is full of these items it can make an impact on airborne pollutants in the home.
Optimizing ventilation: if you have an insulated home that is highly energy-efficient you will surely want to assess how well the air flows through your home. Good airflow is key to having high air quality in your home. Unfortunately improving ventilation sometimes comes with an increase in energy cost. But this small impact is worth healthier air conditions within your home. You can talk to an HVAC specialist to ask about systems that create better airflow through your home.
Some other ways to create better airflow also include opening your windows to allow fresh air to flow through the home for a small amount of time every day and bringing in items that can help absorb the pollutants from the air such as house plants. House plants act as a natural air filtration system in the home and are a much cheaper approach to air filtration than altering your home’s internal systems.
For more information on purchasing a home in Granbury Texas and surrounding areas please contact us anytime.
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