Why Your House Has Bad Indoor Air Quality—And One Way to Fix It
If you suspect that the air in your house isn’t as fresh and healthy as it should be, you’re probably correct. Poor indoor air quality is a major problem throughout the US, and studies have shown that it’s often four to five times worse than outdoor air quality. Even if you have no specific reasons to suspect bad air in your house, it’s smart to have it checked. Poor indoor air quality can be sneaky: you and your family may experience a few less colds and flus during the year with IAQ improvements.
Why is IAQ often so bad in homes? Although your house may have specific issues with indoor pollutants, we can make a generalization about its poor indoor air quality…
Your Home Has Poor Ventilation
This is the cause of the epidemic of bad indoor air quality across the country. Modern homes and commercial buildings are constructed with energy efficiency as a top priority. To keep heat either trapped inside or trapped outside (depending on the season), homes are built with tight sealing. This benefits your heating and cooling system around the year, but it traps indoor air. There’s little chance for ventilation to the outside air.
Ventilation is important for a home because it allows for air replacements. Outdoor air replaces the indoor air, which sweeps away the contaminants and the build up inside the house. There are more sources of indoor pollutants than ever before: paint, varnishes, cosmetics, cleaning products, hobby products, fumes from attached garages, smoke, pesticides, etc. You’ll have a difficult time reducing the sources of these pollutants, but they won’t pose much problem if fresh air circulation removes them.
But, as you’ve probably already figured out, the only way to allow fresh air into a tightly sealed home is to open the doors and windows. During mild weather, this isn’t too much of a problem. During hot days—and we experience plenty of those in Texas!—and cooler nights, this means bringing in outside temperatures and giving your AC or heater plenty of grief. You can have better air quality or you can have reasonable utility bills—but apparently you can’t have both.
An Energy Recovery Ventilator Can Solve This
Except you can have both! The way to better ventilate your home without bringing in those outside temperatures is with an installation called the energy recovery ventilator (ERV). This device is integrated into the HVAC system, where it draws fresh air from outside and then pre-heats it or pre-cools it using the air indoors. The stale indoor air is expelled outside, and the fresh air entering the house is already heated or cooled. (The ERV recovers the energy already used to heat or cool the indoor air an applies it to the incoming air.) The house enjoys fresh air circulation without the hassle of the outside weather slipping in with it.
To arrange for the HVAC services in Southlake, TX that will equip your home with an ERV or other air quality system, speak to our team today.
Frymire Home Services: A Higher Degree of Comfort. Schedule service for better air quality in your house.
