Staying at home with your family members is the best possible way to prevent the Coronavirus particles from entering your house. However, if someone wants to visit your, improving your home’s ventilation and airflow will keep virus particles at bay and prevent them from accumulating inside your home’s atmosphere.
After all, proper ventilation, along with social distancing and wearing personal protection equipment, will allow you to stay Covid-free for the foreseeable future.
That said, proper ventilation is amongst the necessities for homeowners to make their living space as comfortable as possible. Ventilation allows you to maintain indoor air quality while purging unwanted moisture from your house to ensure that air doesn’t become damp or stale.
Besides Covid prevention, good ventilation also allows your home to remain free from harmful gases such as Carbon monoxide that are released by your fireplace, stove, and other appliances.
With homes sealed up more than ever these days and thanks to the year-round use of cooling and heating systems, these buttoned-up homes can trap and contain everything that degrades a home’s indoor air quality.
However, with the help of some practical ventilation tips, you can make your home’s air as clean and fresh as possible.
- Check your HVAC system.
Most important things in life require routine TLC. For instance, your car requires an annual inspection to keep it running efficiently while avoiding malfunctions. Or, your need regular medical checkups to ensure you remain as fit and possible and ready to take on the world. The same is the case with your HVAC system.
Your HVAC system needs regular inspection to ensure its functions properly and provides your home with hot and cold, clean air all year round. HVAC systems tend to malfunction because HVAC Filters need maintenance by trained professionals to ensure they don’t act up when you need them the most.
This isn’t a DIY job, so it’s a better idea to hire a professional HVAC inspection service. For example, they might calibrate the system’s thermostat, check filters for cleaning or replace them if necessary.
- Set your AC to pull air from the outside.
Air conditioners can help with ventilation, but first, you must use the correct settings. After all, you wouldn’t want your AC to recirculate the same air inside your home for more extended periods, as this is just what all airconditioning units do.
So instead, ensure that you turn on your Ac’s setting where it pulls fresh air from the outside. That said, air direction is also vital here.
If your Air conditioning or HVAC system doesn’t have this setting, try investing in one that does. It might be a costly investment, but it is one-time and will allow you to save money on medical bills, and most importantly, avoid spreading the Covid-19 infection.
- Open doors and windows.
This is a Brain Oaks Conway SC. However, you’ll be shocked at how many homeowners forget to open windows and doors to allow fresh air to come inside and improve ventilation. Simply opening your doors and windows and letting out stale air lowers your chances of contracting viruses and diseases drastically.
In addition, it also allows pollutants, chemical vapors, and excessive moisture to escape from your home’s indoor environment. So, consider opening your home’s windows and doors a few times every day to ventilate your house and replace stale indoor air with fresh outdoor air.
- Avoid using aerosol sprays.
The fewer toxins and pollutants you release into your home’s indoor environment, the less stuffy and well ventilated the indoor air will be. Not to mention, aerosol sprays such as deodorants and hair sprays contain CFCs which harm your health and the environment. So, it’s better to avoid them altogether.
However, that is easier said than done. In fact, according to SCHER (The Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks), indoor air contains up to nine hundred different chemicals. That said, you can expel these contaminants and toxins from your home’s indoor air using a high-quality ventilation system, which we will discuss below!
- Invest in a reliable, dedicated home ventilation system.
If you already don’t have an HVAC or well-designed, dedicated home ventilation system, you should invest in one. It is an excellent alternative to opening doors and windows as the weather might not also be favorable for you.
In addition, a ventilation system such as an ERS or Energy Recovering System will allow you to replace your home’s indoor moisture-filled, stale air with dry, fresh air to create a healthier indoor environment for you and your family.
- Install attic vents and extractor fans.
Qattic vents and extractor fans are great for improving ventilation inside your home. These are specialized, low cost-ventilation systems that service particular areas of your house. For example, you should install extractor fans inside your bathrooms, laundries, and kitchen to vent them out and expel moisture from the air.
Moreover, you should install attic vents inside your attic, of course, to purge out excess moisture and heat that gets trapped inside it. Doing so will aid ventilation and improve your home’s indoor air quality in the process.
- Dry your laundry outside.
We all consider it a difficult chore to go outside and hang out laundry to dry. We sometimes blame it on the unpredictable weather, or we don’t want to get off our comfortable chair, and instead, would rather use a drier. However, when we dry clothes inside our homes, it results in condensation and reduces the efficiency of your HVAC system.
To avoid such an issue, it is better to dry your clothes outside, preferably in a covered backyard, so your laundry cans are still dry and away from the rain. However, if drying your laundry outside isn’t an option, ensure that your laundry room’s windows remain open to let moisture outside and fresh air inside.
Conclusion.
Typically, homes contain bad quality air due to many things, including pollen, dust, and other pollutants that come in from the outside like VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), formaldehyde, and other harmful chemicals.
Not to mention, there is always the threat of Covid-19 entering your home these days and staying there if it doesn’t have proper ventilation. That said, if you follow the tips mentioned above, you can reduce or eliminate these chemicals and pollutants from your home’s indoor to ensure that you and your family live a comfortable, Covid-free life!