4 Ways to Improve The Air Quality in Your Home

New Year’s resolutions are great and a healthy thing you might want to do is improve your indoor air quality. While you may think your indoor air quality is good, it might not be.

Have you or any of your family members or guests had issues with allergies or sickness in your home? Any unusual smells, extra dust, or other signs of air quality issues? Then it’s time to think about making improvements to your home’s air quality!

Even if you have your HVAC system regularly maintained, there are other things you can do to improve and keep the air cleaner in your home. By doing this, you’ll keep your house more comfortable, keep it cleaner, and keep you, your family, pets, and guests healthier.

1) Keep It Clean

Keep your house clean. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s the first line of defense against poor indoor air quality. By keeping your house clean, you greatly reduce the number of pollutants in your indoor air. 

Dust, pet hair, pet dander, cooking odors, dirt tracked in from outside, and other sources of allergens and dirt. Vacuum your rugs and carpets weekly. This will help keep the dirt that gets in there from being stirred up by daily activities. Rugs and carpets are great for catching dirt and dander, but you need to keep up with the cleaning. It’s also a good idea to have them deep cleaned at least once a year. The cleaning solutions can get the deeply embedded dirt and debris and leave your carpets and rugs nice and clean. You can either do it yourself by renting the equipment, or you can hire a professional rug cleaning company to do it. Either way, you’ll have clean carpets and rugs, and they’ll last longer as well.

Also make sure you clean your hard surface floors, too. Most vacuum cleaners have a hard surface setting that will pick up all the loose dirt. Use the extensions to get into all the nooks and crannies. Then use your preferred method of cleaning your hard surface areas. 

2) Change Your Air Filter

No, not the one in your car, but you should change that regularly, unless you have one of those filters that you can clean and reuse. Changing the air filter in your HVAC system will go a long way to keeping your indoor air clean. You should change your filter monthly during your heating and cooling seasons. Use high quality fabric filters rather than the cheap fiberglass filters. The fabric filters capture more dirt and keep your indoor air cleaner. One thing you might do for convenience, is to purchase several filters at once, so you’ll have them handy. It beats rushing to the home center before it closes when you need a new filter.

3) Monitor Carbon Monoxide Levels

We’re all aware of how deadly and dangerous carbon monoxide is. It’s a sneaky gas that will cause all kinds of problems and you may not really notice it at first. 

Installing a carbon monoxide detector is the best way to keep an eye on this stuff. The incomplete burning of fossil fuels, as well as fireplaces, can generate carbon monoxide. You need to make sure your chimney flue is clear, as are the exhaust vents for your water heater and other gas fired appliances. Carbon monoxide poisoning can happen slowly, and you may not notice the symptoms.

You can install a carbon monoxide detector or have it installed by a professional. 

4) Keep Your Ducts Clean

You might have heard heavily advertised solutions about duct cleaning. But you need to solve the cause of dirty ducts to keep a healthy household. Have your HVAC professional inspect your ducting and offer solutions to leaks, poor air flow and loose connections. Cleaning ducts without solving the cause of the dirt will get you only one result: more dirty ducts.

Help from the Indoor Air Quality Pros

If you’d like to find out about our indoor air quality services, call us at Mark Lindsay and Son Plumbing & Heating; we’d be happy to sit down with you and discuss the services we offer!