Ways To Improve Your Home’s Air Quality
These tips will help you change your indoor air quality for the better. By using these practices, you may reduce the severity of health issues like allergies and asthma.
1. Rid the Home of Existing Toxins
Take time to clean your home thoroughly on a regular basis. Pet dander, dust, and mold collect in hidden areas of the home and affect your indoor air. If you have carpeting, be sure to use a vacuum equipped with a HEPA filter to keep the carpets clean. Other places where these contaminants gather, such as in bedding and curtains, should be laundered weekly.
2. Bring Home Some Houseplants
Adding a few houseplants to your home can improve your home’s air quality because they remove harmful compounds from the air. Along with exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide, plants also filter formaldehyde, ammonia, and benzene from the air in your home. To fully reap these benefits, you should add one houseplant per 100 square feet of living space.
3. Maintain Clean Filters and Ducts
Over time, the filters in your HVAC system will collect large quantities of dust and other contaminants. These same contaminants will gather in your ductwork and your system will blow these contaminants around, recirculating them into the air you breathe.
Improve your home’s air quality by regularly cleaning or replacing those filters and cleaning out your ducts. This will help reduce the dust and debris from the air that you breathe indoors.
4. Buy an Air Purifier
Using an air purifier is the best way to reduce pollutants in the air. Smaller air purifiers are ideal for filtering the air in a single room, so they are perfect for bedrooms and nurseries.
If you want to purify all of the air in your home, a larger air filtration system is ideal. While this requires a larger investment, it will provide long-term relief from allergens and contaminants. Often, this is a good way to treat seasonal allergies in addition to improving the overall indoor air quality.
5. Air Out the Home
Whenever possible, spend time with the doors and windows open to allow fresh air to move through the home. This will air out the home and remove air that has been continuously recirculated. Adding a window fan to an open window will help pull fresh air into the home.
6. Enhance Ventilation Throughout Your Home
Use ceiling fans and oscillating fans to help improve overall ventilation throughout the home. If you observe damp, moist, or humid areas, adding a fan will help to dry out the area and prevent mold growth.
Similarly, using the home’s air conditioning system will move air throughout the home and help to filter out contaminants. Installing exhaust fans can also improve your home’s air quality by drawing indoor air pollution out of the house through exhaust vents.
Certinspectors provides mold testing and other inspection services to the Greater Hudson Valley. Contact us to book our services.