“The comfort of your own home.” It’s cliché, but it really is what matters most in life. All the other malarky becomes far more bearable when you’ve got a great little hidey-hole to retreat to at the end of each day.
Securing your comfort goes beyond putting a roof over your head and a recliner under your derriere, however. Some sources of discomfort are invisible, but still very much perceptible. Dust. Pollen. Mold spores. Animal dander. Pollutants so disgusting that we shudder to parenthesize them at the end of this sentence (rodent feces particles). All of these things can worsen your indoor air quality, which is another way of saying they can irritate your respiratory system and sicken you.
Not to worry. Improving the quality of the air you spend approximately 90% of your life breathing isn’t rocket science. It’s HVAC science. Here’s how you can improve your indoor air quality through the power of HVAC upgrades.
Increased Ventilation
Indoor air can be two to five times (and potentially 100 times) more contaminated than the air outside. That means the air inside your home only stands to become fresher if you decide to throw open a window or two.
If you live in the Sioux Falls, SD area, then the thought of throwing windows open probably doesn’t occur to you all that often in winter. No worries. An HVAC upgrade exists to help you get around that: ventilation fans. By installing fans in your bathroom and kitchen that exhaust outdoors, you’ll be able to send indoor airborne contaminants outside where they can no longer bother you.
Kitchen ventilation is especially important. Cooking produces a wide variety of air pollutants, and kitchen cleaning products can release high concentrations of volatile organic compounds (especially when they are used in combination with one another).
Air Filtration
Regularly replacing your HVAC filter is an excellent way to improve your indoor air quality. If you upgrade to a HEPA filter with a MERV rating of 17 or higher, so much the better.
But that’s only scratching the surface of what HVAC filtration can do for you. If you want to go one step further, you can ask an HVAC technician to install an expanded media filter: a boxy filter which is around 7″ thicker than the standard one most HVAC systems are designed to accept.
If you’d like to go further than that, then you may install an electrostatic precipitator, which utilizes high-voltage current to trap microscopic airborne particles on special collector plates. Still not enough? Consider upgrading your ventilation ducts with an ultraviolet light filter, which eradicates bacteria and viruses by bombarding them with radiation (which won’t harm occupants’ health).
Humidity Control
High humidity isn’t necessarily bad for your health. If it were, then all those folks living in the Amazon rainforest would be in serious trouble. Even so, excessive humidity can exacerbate an existing health condition. Worse yet, when the humidity level inside your home exceeds 50%, it creates the ideal breeding conditions for black mold: a fungus which releases spores that can harm people with allergies and asthma (in addition to causing property damage).
A standalone dehumidifier is often enough to keep indoor humidity beneath the safe threshold. But if you’d rather take the surest approach to preventing mold growth, then incorporating a whole-house dehumidifier into your HVAC system is your best bet.
Don’t forget: low humidity can be bad for your health as well. The bacteria that cause pneumonia, strep throat and infection all thrive in dry environments. Worse yet, several diseases spread more effectively in dry air (due to the lack of aerosols which would normally inhibit airborne transmission). If your indoor humidity regularly subceeds 30%, consider solving the problem by installing a whole-house humidifier.
Improve Indoor Air Quality With PrairieSons
Would you like to dramatically reduce your exposure to indoor pollutants, and also rest assured your indoor humidity never falls outside of optimal levels? If you live in the greater Sioux Falls area, then we welcome you to contact PrairieSons for the definitive solution. Our experienced pros know all the ways indoor air quality can suffer – and all the ways to fix it!