Don’t Ignore Indoor Air Quality
It’s well known that outdoor air pollution can directly affect your health, but what about indoor air pollution? If you’re sensitive to air quality for any reason, investing in indoor air quality services can go a long way in improving your comfort at home.
How Does Indoor Air Quality Affect Your Health?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, indoor air quality describes the quality of the air in and around your home. It’s affected by things like temperature, humidity, and how well your home is ventilated.
Airborne pollutants you can encounter in your home include dust, allergens, bacteria, mildew, and even mold. If you’ve ever ignored warning labels to use something outside or in properly ventilated areas, those chemical pollutants may have circulated through your HVAC system too.
If you’re coming in contact with these kinds of pollutants regularly, chances are you’ll start to feel it. On the mild side, you’ll feel some irritation in your eyes, nose, and throat. You may also start to have unexplained headaches, dizziness, and even fatigue.
Luckily, reducing your chances of exposure to indoor pollutants is as easy as regularly scheduled HVAC maintenance and cleaning. As a bonus, services that improve indoor air quality can also reduce utility bills! Clean HVAC systems just don’t have to work as hard to circulate air through your home.
Services That Improve Indoor Air Quality
Duct Cleaning
The easiest way to start improving your indoor air quality is to get your air ducts cleaned regularly. That makes sense, right? Your HVAC system uses those ducts to circulate air through your home, so naturally, a lot of pollutant buildup happens.
On average, we recommend getting your air ducts cleaned every 3-5 years. However, there are some reasons you may want to do it more often. If you’re sensitive to airborne allergens like pollen or pet dander, have asthma, or live in an area at risk of wildfires, you may benefit from doing it more frequently.
Here’s a breakdown of our duct cleaning process:
- Remove all large debris near the heat register with a shop vacuum.
- Seal the registers.
- Place each register under negative pressure with a Hypervac Negative Air Machine (big vacuum).
- Use two compressed air cleaning tools down the length of each register.
- Clean the main trunk lines that lead back to the furnace.
- Agitate and remove dust and debris from the blower motor, air handler and interior cage.
We also offer the option of performing a botanical disinfectant fogging after cleaning. This helps kill any remaining odor-causing bacteria, viruses, pet dander, and mold that may be lingering in your system. We proudly use Benefect Botanical Disinfectant, which kills 99.9% of germs!
Air Filters + Purifiers
Air filters are the unsung heroes of your HVAC system. They should be changed every three months, but many people forget to change them until there’s already a problem. When it comes to dealing with indoor air pollutants, it’s your first line of defense.
Which air filter you use can make all the difference. MERV ratings report a filter’s ability to capture larger particles, but we’ve found that a higher score doesn’t necessarily relate to better performance. If your filter is doing too good of a job, it’ll clog quickly and make your HVAC system work harder to circulate air.
Another component that can improve your air quality is duct-mounted air purifiers. While air filters can catch larger particles like dust, air purifiers can eliminate mold, bacteria, and viruses circulating through your system.
We believe the Aprilaire 4” MERV 11 Filter with iWave-R will give you the best value for your money. The inclusion of the iWave-R increases the effectiveness of the filter by about 20% on average, with the added benefit of killing pathogens and reducing VOCs!
How’s Your Indoor Air Quality?
Managing your indoor air quality is important to keeping you and your family healthy and comfortable in your home. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to improve and can even help you save on your utility bills!
You can check out our indoor air quality services whenever you’re ready.