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How to Fix the 4 Biggest Air Quality Issues in Homes
Reading time: 6 minutes
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Learn about the most common culprits behind poor indoor air quality and get tips for creating healthier homes.
The average adult consumes half a gallon of water per day – and nearly 3,000 gallons of air. We go to great lengths to ensure healthy drinking water. We can survive not drinking for several days, but can’t survive more than a few minutes without air. Nevertheless, when was the last time you stopped to think about the quality of air?
Indoor air quality (IAQ) can be two to five times worse than outdoor air and is rated as one of the top five environmental dangers to health by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Poor indoor air quality can trigger respiratory issues like asthma and allergies, causing discomfort and compromising well-being. With more dangerous toxins like carbon monoxide and radon, serious health consequences such as lung cancer and even death can occur.
Proper ventilation is the most reliable way to improve a home’s air quality and ensure a safe indoor environment. Learn about the most common culprits behind poor IAQ and get tips for creating healthier homes.
4 Common Air Quality Issues in Homes
1) Airtight Design in New Construction
In contrast to older homes, newly constructed homes benefit from building codes and standards that outline minimum ventilation requirements. For example, ASHRAE 62.2 outlines requirements for acceptable indoor air quality in residential buildings.
Although building codes can improve a home’s ventilation, some of these codes can actually pose an added challenge for builders and contractors. Increasingly, homes are built using airtight design to improve energy efficiency.
In older, less-efficient homes, air leaks through cracks around windows and doors brought in outside air. However, airtight homes have fewer points of air exchange.
To combat this, the home will pull in air from problematic sources like the home’s water heater or chimney in a process called backdrafting. In some instances, backdrafting can introduce dangerous gases, such as carbon monoxide, into the home and create serious, life-threatening health risks to occupants.
2) Chemical Off-gassing
Few realize that the building products and items within the home can create an unhealthy indoor environment. Furniture, kitchen cabinets, carpets, cleaning products and more can off-gas dangerous VOCs and SVOCs. When this happens, particles from dangerous chemicals release from these products, infiltrating the home’s air.
Off-gassing can cause several ailments, including respiratory problems, dizziness, headaches, nausea, allergies, and eye or sinus irritation. There is no way to prevent off-gassing; instead, the chemicals have to be removed from the home’s air with proper ventilation.
Proper Ventilation
When your home is not properly ventilated, you are surrounded by indoor pollutants:
Chemical Products
Cleaning Products
Glues and Pastes
Personal Care Products
Building Materials
Insulation
Paint and Wood Finish
Carpet
Pressed Wood Products
Combustion Sources
Gas and Oil
Kerosene
Wood Stoves
Fireplaces
Tobacco Smoke
Outdoor Sources
Radon
Pesticides
Pollen
Outdoor Air
Pollution
Other Sources
Pet Dander
Dust Mites
Mold
Viruses
3) Radon Infiltration
Radon, a radioactive gas that results from the breakdown of uranium in the soil, can permeate the home through cracks in the foundation and other sources. Radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer and is particularly dangerous because it is impossible to detect without proper radon testing.
While there are many common myths surrounding radon, one thing is true: radon poses serious health risks to occupants and can easily go undetected in a home. A proper mitigation system is the most effective way to remove radon from a home’s air and ensure safety.
4) Poor Maintenance
Even if a home has a state-of-the-art ventilation system installed, maintenance is required to ensure the system operates properly. Too often, homeowners fail to realize that their fresh air appliances need regular maintenance.
It doesn’t take a professional to keep a ventilation system running properly. Simply change the filters on your HEPA filtration unit or clean the core of your HERO fresh air appliance for continued performance.
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How to Achieve Healthy, Balanced Ventilation
Opening a window may help bring in some fresh air but is a temporary solution with many uncontrolled variables. What allergens are in that air? How long will the window need to be open to clear the air? Is the incoming air tempered?
A more reliable solution is to install an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) or Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV), also known as a fresh air appliance. These solutions create balanced ventilation by exhausting indoor air and pulling in the amount of outdoor air that is required to replenish what’s been removed. Incoming air is filtered to eliminate toxins and allergens. Plus, these appliances temper outside air to improve comfort, lessening the load on heating and cooling systems.
Another advantage is that fresh air appliances can be designed specifically for the building. For example, if 50 CFM is consistently needed to exhaust the space, you can select and preprogram a fresh air appliance to maintain this performance. Fantech offers easy-to-use tools to identify what solution is right for your space.
How it Works
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Clean outdoor air
Clean outdoor air is drawn into the unit
Fresh air
Fresh air is distributed throughout the house main living areas (bedrooms, living rooms, den, dining rooms and recreational room).
Stale, musty, humid and impure air
Stale, musty, humid and impure air is extracted from the home (bathrooms, kitchen, laundry room) and used to warm up cold incoming air.
Unhealthy air
Unhealthy air is expelled outdoors.
Innovative counterflow core
Innovative counterflow core is engineered to exchange energy while keeping airflows apart to avoid contamination.
HERO®
Our HERO series of fresh air appliances supplies fresh, filtered air into an indoor space while simultaneously removing an equal amount of moist, stale air.
Find Fresh Air Solutions
Don’t leave the indoor air quality up to chance. Explore Fantech’s selection of fresh air appliances for safe, healthy homes.
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