Indoor Air Quality 101

Indoor air quality is one of the unsung heroes of the HVAC world. Everyone can feel when a room is too warm or cold, but it may not be as easy to tell if there is poor indoor air quality. We want to equip you with some knowledge that can keep your air quality healthy and comfortable for your family.

Why is Indoor Air Quality Important Anyway?

Poor indoor air quality has enough negative impacts to fill up a book, but we’ll just go over a few of the main ones now.

Poor IAQ Can Cause Health Problems

Indoor air quality has been linked to childhood asthma and other breathing problems. If you don’t take care of the air in your home, you could expose your family to allergens or make it more difficult to fight them off. If your home has high humidity, you could end up causing mold to grow in your home. These are just a few of the potential health hazards caused by poor indoor air quality.

Poor IAQ Can Make Your Home Uncomfortable

The difficult thing about poor indoor air quality is that it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint it as a problem. Often we attribute the symptoms it causes to other things. For example, you might think your allergies are simply caused by the current season or a household pet, when you were only susceptible to those allergies because the excessively dry air in your home messed with your ability to fight allergies off.

Often if your home feels stuffy or you’re having trouble sleeping, it may be caused by the air around you. Luckily, there are so many ways to restore comfort to your home and improve the quality of your indoor air.

How Can I Improve My IAQ?

It’s essential to remember that indoor air quality is measured by three main things: ventilation, humidity, and pollutants. All three of these factors work in concert and can impact each other. Humidity can build up in a poorly ventilated bathroom, or a dry home can allow pollutants like viruses or allergens to cause more harm than normal.

Ventilation

The recent health crisis has shown us the importance of ventilation. Outdoor socially distanced gatherings are much less likely to cause transmission of the coronavirus because the outdoors is naturally ventilated. Without that, the virus or any other air pollutant can linger much longer. Never close any vents in your home and make use of fans to keep your home well ventilated.

Humidity

In general, you want to keep your home humidity between 35% and 45% as much as you can. In this sweet spot, your home is humid enough to be comfortable and not so humid as to allow for mold to grow. You can increase or decrease humidity with a number of common household habits. Want to boost humidity? Add a houseplant. Reduce it? Run your HVAC system and it will naturally remove some moisture from the air.

Pollutants

The most visible of the indoor air quality factors, air pollutants can be easy to control. Cleaning and replacing your air vents is often enough to reduce air pollutants by a huge margin. If you have a mild pet allergy, it’s possible to control it and prevent the dander from getting into the air with strong cleaning habits and some quality air filtration. Additionally, try to limit the number of pollutants you are releasing into the air. Activities like smoking can cause harm to your entire family once as air flows around your home.

The pros at family-owned 1st Class Heat & Air, Inc are eager to assist you with your indoor air quality. If you’d like to know how to improve your home’s IAQ, give us a call at (972) 673-0408 or fill out a simple online contact form!