We all love to say, “I’m going out to get a breath of fresh air”. With the vast majority of our day spent indoors (90%), and the high level of pollutants found inside our home or office, it is no wonder it feels great to get outside. Pollutants come from all different sources – cooking, carpets, products containing formaldehyde, cleaning supplies, garbage and food waste, clothes dryers, natural occurring radon, fireplaces, pets, and many more. This problem is only exasperated by the tighter homes we are building today. The indoor air we breathe becomes polluted and stale, deteriorating our health and quality of life. In order to improve the indoor air quality, builders and homeowners need to design every component of the home thinking about how it will affect the indoor air quality.
The first step is to keep pollutants out of the house. Limiting the amount of air infiltrating the house is job one. Use a good housewrap, window and door tape, as well as high quality, air tight doors and windows. Watch your installation – a great product installed the wrong way does you no good. If your budget allows, foam insulation is a superior insulation and air infiltration limiter. You also need to make sure there are no sources of moisture coming into the home such as improper drainage, leaking pipes, or cracked slabs.
Inside, you need to make sure you have properly sized and placed ventilation units in your bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry room. It is critical that the ductwork from these ventilation units are sealed tightly, ensuring they do not leak until they exit the envelope of the building.
Air filtration inside the home is a critical component to air quality. Changing your filters monthly will go a long way to improving your air quality as well as extending the life of your HVAC systems. Whole house filtration systems, although an expensive solution, provides superior indoor air quality.
Since our goal is to prevent pollutants from entering the home, and then removing the pollutants as soon as we generate them inside, we have to be concerned about introducing fresh air into the home. A super insulated tight home is not necessarily healthy. Imagine living inside of a cooler; if you don’t take the lid off every once in a while, it is going to get a little stuffy. With very little air leaking into the home and a ventilation system that is removing large amounts of air from inside, its important that we introduce fresh air into the home in a controlled fashion. We have to bring fresh air in from the outside, condition it, and purify it. Enter the energy recovery ventilator (ERV) . The ERV will bring air from the outside into the home, clean it, and then exchange the energy from the conditioned air inside the home. In other words, it will take the hot air from outside and mix it with the cool exhaust air the system is sending outside, and in turn, makes the intake air cooler. The pollutants are not exchanged, but the energy is, and this will produce cleaner air with less energy use. During the winter heating months, the ERV will work in reverse, heating the cool air coming into the home with the warm exhaust air.
Every decision you make during the custom building or renovation process has a direct impact on the indoor air your family breaths. Having a builder and HVAC contractor that understands your home and how it operates will be critical in ensuring that every decision and component are working together to ensure a well functioning system. As with many systems in the home, one decision can have a direct impact on other choices you have made that might not appear to be related. A builder who sees the big picture and can give you the best information for your decisions making process is critical to achieve high levels of indoor air quality.