One topic that has received a lot more concern over recent years is indoor air quality. The quality of the air you breathe inside your home can have a significant impact on how you feel. We’re going to take a deep dive into further understanding indoor air quality and how it changes during the cold winter season.
What Is Indoor Air Quality?
Simply put, indoor air quality is a measure of the amount of known pollutants and contaminants within a given space. If you have good indoor air quality, then the concentrations of these contaminants will be low. However, if you have poor air quality, it will be high.
Signs of Poor Indoor Air Quality
There are many key signs that will let you know that your indoor air quality could use improvement. Some of the most common come in the form of physical symptoms. If you have allergies, asthma, or another respiratory condition, then you’ll notice that your symptoms get worse as the quality of air decreases.
Even if you don’t have any of these pre-existing conditions, you can still experience the negative health effects of poor indoor air quality. These include headaches, sinus irritation, fatigue, and even insomnia. Apart from altering your physical well-being, poor air quality can show up in other forms.
It’s fairly common to notice excessive dust accumulation on the surfaces throughout your home. You may even get a whiff of unpleasant odors that seem to linger. Humidity levels can be exceedingly high, and you may notice condensation forming on your windows. Homeowners may spot mold and mildew growth on various surfaces throughout their houses. Some notice stale air, too.
Is Air Quality Worse During Winter?
The simple answer is that air pollution does tend to be worse in the winter. This is due to a number of different reasons. One of the first is that cold air is much denser than warm air. This allows it to retain more airborne pollutants, which you and your family will breathe in.
Another reason that air quality is worse in winter is that less fresh air from the outside is coming into your home. This is because most people don’t open their doors and windows during the cold season. By closing your home off to the outdoors, all the pollutants inside can circulate and not be adequately diluted.
The Importance of a Home Air Quality Assessment
When you’re concerned about the quality of air inside your home, one of the best places to start is with an indoor air quality assessment. This is where a professional uses specialized equipment to detect the level of known airborne contaminants throughout your home. You can learn where the contaminants are the worst and what types of contaminants your home mainly struggles with.
This assessment will give you a good starting point to know what types of contaminants you should be addressing. It’ll be something to refer to in the future to determine how your efforts have altered the quality of air inside your home. While there are DIY home test kits, it’s typically best to rely on a professional whose equipment will be more sophisticated in detecting contaminants and concentration levels.
Types of Airborne Contaminants
There are many different types of contaminants that can get trapped inside your home. One of the more common comes through combustion sources, like a fireplace or wood-burning stove. Building materials and furnishings, like carpeting and pressed wood, can release toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and harbor mold and dust mites.
Household cleaning products and air fresheners are well-known sources of VOCs. Cats and dogs can release dander into the air, especially in spring and fall when they shed the most fur. Other common household contaminants include dust mites, pollen, mold, mildew, and tobacco smoke.
How to Enhance Indoor Air Quality
When you first discover that you have poor quality air inside your home, it can feel overwhelming. Fortunately, there are many different things that you can do to enhance the quality of air inside your home. These tips fall into a variety of price ranges, so you’ll be sure to find some that fit into your budget.
One of the simplest, yet effective things you can do is to upgrade your HVAC filter. It isn’t uncommon for homeowners to throw in cheap fiberglass air filters to protect their HVAC system. However, realize that the filter in your system is also responsible for trapping toxins to boost your indoor air quality level.
Each HVAC filter will have a minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) rating. The higher the rating, the more particles that filter will be able to remove from your indoor air. It’s a good idea to invest in a filter that has a rating of 10 to 13. This will ensure optimal air filtration without affecting the overall operating performance of your heating and cooling systems. Just be sure to keep up with regular filter changes.
Another great way to boost indoor air quality is through a whole-home air purification system. There are a few different styles of systems that you can go with depending on your needs and budget. An extended media filter is on the lower end of the price spectrum. Instead of your HVAC system relying on just one filter, it can use this multi-filter system to trap many different forms of contaminants. For example, this extended media filter could have a carbon filter compartment that’s responsible for removing pesky lingering odors from your indoor air.
Another type of whole-home air filtration system is UV lighting. There are two main styles: air and coil sanitizing lights. Both use UV germicidal lighting to disrupt the nucleus of airborne particles. This renders them unable to reproduce and causes them to eventually die off.
Air sanitizing lights are installed directly in your return HVAC ducting to treat all the air that travels through it. Coil sanitizing lights sit just over the evaporator coil inside your indoor air handler unit. They treat the air and help curb mold and mildew growth on the coil and drain pan.
Apart from methods of treating the contaminants that end up in your air, one of the best things you can do is stop introducing contaminants into your air. One of the most common ways that contaminants can enter your air is through cooking. When there’s steam, it attracts cooking oils and other contaminants. Always use your range hood’s exhaust fan when cooking to expel those toxic particles outside.
The same holds true when it comes to showering. The steam can house byproducts from your soaps and shampoos. If that excess moisture gets trapped in your home, it can create an ideal environment for mold and mildew growth. Always run your bathroom exhaust fan when showering.
Reliable Indoor Air Quality Service
Buehler Air Conditioning & Plumbing offers reliable indoor air quality service to the Jacksonville, FL area. We can assist with all your heating, air conditioning, plumbing, air duct cleaning, duct replacement, HVAC zoning, duct sealing, blow-in attic insulation, and smart thermostat needs.
Call our team at Buehler Air Conditioning & Plumbing today to book your next service appointment.