Winter Indoor Air Quality Tips

Maintaining healthy indoor air quality can get a little challenging during winter. This season brings several issues in your home, including sickness, humidity problems, carbon monoxide exposure, and dry air.

When the temperatures drop, you’re probably more concerned about your home’s insulation — you don’t want that precious heated air to escape! Drafts can be seen in doors, windows, and areas where wiring and piping enter your home. You may have increased your insulation prior to winter to increase comfort and energy-efficiency, but did you know that this came at a price?

When it comes to HVAC, you may not get everything, so to speak. An increase in energy-efficiency could mean a decrease in indoor air quality. When contaminants are trapped in your home, they breed quickly, posing several health risks to you and your family. Due to the absence of proper ventilation, your home suffers from poor indoor air quality. Airborne particles are stuck inside the home and can collect to a harmful level, causing a number of health issues. These pollutants include viruses, bacteria, mold, dust mites, and other particles.

Four Seasons Air Specialists is your reliable HVAC company in Hugo MN. We offer effective air purification systems made by Healthy Climate, one of the best names in the industry.

Your Indoor Air Quality During Winter

As mentioned earlier, you tend to improve your home’s insulation during this time of year, which inhibits the essential exchange of fresh outdoor air and stale indoor air. Considering the fact that indoor air can be up to 2-5 times more polluted than the air outside, you and your family are at risk of developing respiratory diseases due to exposure to polluted indoor air.

Household items such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in soap, shampoo, detergent, cleaning agents, and similar items can contaminate your indoor air. In addition, dust mites, formaldehyde, pet dander, dirt, and debris are also instrumental in lowering the quality of your indoor air. When these contaminants remain trapped inside the home, they can pose danger to you and your family.

Maintaining a Balanced Indoor Environment

To ensure you have healthy indoor air quality, you should establish a balance between insulation and ventilation. If your home is too tight, the air stays inside and easily gets more contaminated because of the lack of fresh outside air coming in.

Therefore, we recommend the use of a ventilation system, which is beneficial for homes with:

•                    Tight construction. While this construction technique does help save energy, but it also makes your air watery and muggy.

•                    Attached garages, which can contain contaminants such as car fumes that can seep into your home.

•                    Spray-foam insulation, which helps keep your home warm, but it also recirculates contaminated indoor air.

Mechanical ventilation systems, especially heat recovery systems, ensure there’s less wasted heat, resulting in less money spent on fuel costs. With a ventilation system, you can keep your windows closed, seal off drafts, insulate your home, and still breathe fresh air every day. A heat recovery ventilator helps your cooling system improve its performance as it takes heat from incoming fresh air and transfers it to cool, stale air that's on its way out. That means your heating and cooling systems will benefit from the energy recovery.

Running a ventilation system helps eliminate condensation, a common issue for many homeowners. It reduces the moisture in your home, preventing the condensation that encourages mold and mildew growth, which can be hazardous to your family's health, your electronic gadgets, and wooden items such as musical instruments.

Using an Air Purification System

Regular home cleaning helps maintain a cleaner habitation. However, it does very little in terms of purging airborne contaminants. For thorough cleaning, consider using an air purification system, which is an effective way to eliminate household pollutants. It cleans the air by passing air through filters, capturing small particles and removing them from your indoor air. Air purifiers can be helpful with allergies, unpleasant smells, snoring, and more.

Certain air purifiers use high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters that effectively catch 99.97 percent of airborne particles larger than 0.3 microns. These highly efficient filters take away smaller allergens like dust, smoke, chemicals, asbestos, pollen, and pet dander.

Ask the Air Quality Pros

For more information on how to maintain healthy indoor air this season, be sure to call Four Seasons Air Specialists. We are your dependable Forest Lake heating and air conditioning company.