Breathing is an essential part of living. Wherever you are, your body is affected by the quality of the air in that location. Since so much of your time is spent in your San Antonio, TX, home, it makes sense that you should work hard to improve and maintain your home’s indoor air quality so that it can positively affect your health. At Rosenberg Plumbing & Air, we want to help you take a deeper look at how to do this so that you can begin making strides toward a healthier indoor environment.
What Lowers Indoor Air Quality?
The quality of the air in your home is a result of several different factors. One factor that you don’t have much control over is the quality of the outdoor air in the neighborhood where you live. Factors you can control, at least to some extent, include releases of potentially harmful vapors from household cleaners and common home improvement materials, the level of dust control in your home, and the presence of odors from cooking, smoking, and other similar activities.
Therefore, improving the quality of your indoor air needs to involve a combination of changing certain aspects of your lifestyle and improving your home’s ability to purify the air within its walls.
What Contaminants Are Present in Indoor Air?
As clean as your indoor air might appear given the absence of smog, you might be surprised at the number of contaminants that it can contain. When we at Rosenberg Plumbing & Air test people’s indoor air, we find everything from the obvious household dust particles to more surprising contaminants that include volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can harm your health.
Allergens such a mold, ragweed, and pollen are often present after they rush in from outside when a door or window is opened. Volatile organic compounds, which are released by everything from finishes on furniture to fingernail polish remover, include benzene, formaldehyde, and toluene, and are present in nearly every home.
Your home may also contain high levels of radon, which is a radioactive gas and one of the leading causes of cancer in America. Needless to say, your home could be hiding some nasty surprises in the air that you breathe every day.
How Do You Improve Your Indoor Air Quality?
Making the air in your home healthier to breathe is a multi-tiered process that usually takes place in stages. The most basic air improvement tool that you likely already have is a quality air filter for your HVAC system.
If you want to improve the filtration capacity of your HVAC system, you can select a filter that has higher-density fibers, indicated by a high MERV rating on the package. By keeping your HVAC’s air filter changed regularly, you can ensure that the air in your home is always being effectively cleaned.
Another important step in improving your home’s air quality is to keep high-odor activities to a minimum or find ways to make them less impactful. For example, you can upgrade your stove vent so it vents outside instead of back into your kitchen. Additionally, smoking can be restricted to outside areas instead of taking place in your home. By removing these and other common odors, your home will begin to smell fresh and clean again.
You can also opt to deep-clean the air in your home by having Rosenberg Plumbing & Air install a whole-home air purifier. These devices operate alongside the other components in your HVAC system to ensure that the air throughout your entire home is cleaned and sanitized.
For rooms where the air is especially foul, you can purchase a single-room air purifier to provide extra cleaning capacity. Opening windows when outdoor air quality is good, growing indoor plants, and cleaning your home more often are more ways that you can help your home’s air “sparkle.”
We Take Pride in Your Comfort
At Rosenberg Plumbing & Air, we take pride in all aspects of your comfort while you’re at home. That’s why, in addition to helping with your indoor air quality, we can take care of your air conditioner and furnace, performing maintenance, repair, and installation for customers across the region. We can also further improve your indoor air quality by installing dehumidifiers and UV sanitizers, ensuring that your home is the sanctuary that you seek.
Our commitment to excellence has earned us several awards. We are multi-year recipients of the Angie’s List Super Service Award, maintain an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and have a host of five-star reviews from customers who trust us with the care of their home.
As a family-owned company, you can be sure that this commitment to excellence will never change, meaning you can trust us in the future just as people have during our first 17 years. For help with improving your home’s indoor air quality, give us a call at Rosenberg Plumbing & Air today. We would be proud to serve your indoor comfort needs.
Tags: Heating Tips, HVAC Tips, Indoor Air Quality