7 Ways to Improve Your Home’s Indoor Air Quality

Improving your home’s indoor air quality is an important method of improving the physical and mental health of your family, as well as protecting the investment you’ve made in your home. These seven methods will help you fast track the air quality inside your home for lasting results.

1) Switch to a HEPA Filter Vacuum Cleaner
Vacuuming your floors draws pollen, allergens, mold spores, dirt, sand, and more from the deep recesses of your carpeting. If you don’t have appropriate HEPA filtration, you’re simply releasing these buried toxins into the air rather than removing them from your home altogether.

2) Use a Sturdy Door Mat
What you’re looking for here is one of the scruffy mats that is made for scraping heavy duty boots. These will help you remove pollen, allergens, mold, and other toxins from being tracked inside your home. Alternatively, you could ask family, friends, and other guests to remove their shoes at the door.

3) Keep Indoor Humidity Low
While you do not want your home as dry as kindling, it’s important to keep the humidity levels throughout your home low enough that mold and mildew do not become problems in little used areas where dampness tends to gather such as attics, laundry rooms, etc. Consider using a whole house dehumidifier or portable units in these areas to keep moisture at bay.

4) Install a Whole House Fan
It’s not enough to simply install a whole house fan. You must use it in order to get the full benefit, which is two-fold when it comes to indoor air quality. First, you use the fan in combination with open windows on the lower level of your home in order to draw fresh, cool air into your home. Then, the fan vents the old, hot, toxin-filled air to the exterior of your home through vents in the attic leaving coolers, cleaner air behind.

5) Ban Smoking Inside Your Home
With so many ill-effects related to secondhand smoke no explanation should be needed for this one. It’s a matter of the health of everyone inside your home.

6) Utilize Bathroom and Kitchen Fans
Bathrooms and kitchens are the rooms where the most humid air in your home tends to linger. Fans draw the moisture out quickly leaving the rooms dryer faster and reducing the risks of mold and mildew becoming problems.

7) Clean Air Ducts Seasonally
You’ll be amazed at the allergens, toxins, mold spores, pet airs, and more that are lingering inside your home’s air ducts. It’s a good idea to have them professionally cleaned as a routine part of your spring/fall maintenance projects to get ready for running air conditioners and heaters in the summer and winter. It will remove the bad things from being distributed into the air inside your home while informing you of any potential problems in the ductwork that need to be taken care of before the seasons begin.

These small steps can make the air inside your home or business better and safer for all to breathe. Try them now and see what a difference they make for respiratory health and more in the months ahead.