Protecting your home’s indoor air quality is essential, as the air inside your home is often worse than the air outdoors. If you are a Montgomery, Alabama, resident looking to maintain your IAQ, the following checklist is a good place to start.
Clean the Floors
Whether your home has carpet or hardwood floors, allergens and dust accumulate everywhere. They are then stirred up and moved from room to room through regular foot traffic, resulting in decreased air quality throughout the home.
Keeping your floors clean is crucial if you are battling poor indoor air quality. Use a vacuum equipped with a HEPA filter to eliminate dust mites, pet dander, pollen, and other allergens, and mop with a microfiber mop to pick up any dust the vacuum leaves behind.
Decorate with Clean-Air Plants
Having various clean-air plants throughout the home can help get rid pollutants. More than that, some plant varieties filter out varnish, paint, formaldehyde, and lacquer toxins, so they are great to have around for those pollutants we don’t normally think about.
Some great clean-air houseplant options include English ivy, peace lily, lady palm, Boston fern, snake plants, begonias, spider plants, and garden mums.
Ensure Proper Ventilation
Air quality is best when energy-efficient vents are located in the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room, and then directed outdoors. Many homes are not properly ventilated, especially older homes, and this doesn’t allow proper ventilation to occur. One upgrade you can do to combat this issue is to have a whole-home ventilation system installed. Mechanical ventilation systems work by circulating fresh air through fans and ducts, removing unhealthy air from those areas that need it most.
Alternatively, you can crack a window to let in fresh air when you’re cooking or cleaning, or run your ceiling fans year-round to keep the air circulating.
Schedule an HVAC Maintenance
Having your HVAC system serviced regularly is a major component of boosting your indoor air quality. A regular HVAC inspection can spot minor issues before they become major problems. When ducts and filters become clogged with dust and debris, air can’t properly circulate throughout the system, resulting in dust settling back into rooms.
It’s a good rule of thumb to have your furnace and AC inspected, serviced, and cleaned once a year to ensure it’s operating at its peak efficiency. Most experts recommend scheduling this service in the spring when you no longer need heat, but before turning on your AC. You should also change your air filters every four to six weeks.
Invest in an Air Cleaner
Whole-home air cleaners make great additions to any HVAC system. These innovative purifiers provide every room of your home with allergen-free air by trapping bacteria, mold spores, pollen, dust, viruses, and pollutants that other systems miss. When you’re looking to make an upgrade that boosts your indoor air quality, this is the one to consider first.
If you can’t afford to upgrade to a whole-home air cleaner, a portable air purifier will work for smaller areas or one room. When shopping for a portable model, you want something large enough to filter an entire room, so one downside is having the purifier take up valuable floor space. Still, the benefits of clean air far outweigh any drawbacks.
Upgrade to a New HVAC System
If your HVAC system is more than 10 years old, your model isn’t as efficient as current options on the market. Having a new system installed will not only ensure you’ll be breathing cleaner air, but it will also mean lower utility bills, thanks to more energy-efficient heating and cooling technology.
When buying a new HVAC system, discuss indoor air quality solutions with your HVAC technician. Some systems are more effective at cleaning the air than others, and some systems are designed to work in conjunction with other indoor air quality products such as UV lamps, ventilators, and whole-home dehumidifiers. This gives you even more options when it comes to making your home’s air cleaner than ever.
Schedule your next maintenance service by calling Air Conditioning by Luquire at 334-230-5870. Our experienced HVAC technicians will be happy to help you address your indoor air quality concerns.
Image provided by Shutterstock
