Air Quality

Air Conditioning Solutions to Improve Indoor Air Quality

Thinking about germs lately??

Not long ago Hot 2 Cold brought on a mechanical engineer, James Thornsberry, to focus on one of our nation’s most prominent and silent killers, poor air quality. According to the EPA the air inside your home is 200%-500% dirtier than the air outside! If you have a young home, built in the year 2000 or later, the problems can be worse!

With strict energy efficiency guidelines homes are tighter than ever. This helps bring down energy consumption, but has a terrible downside… it can make us sick. Inside a tight house, particles get trapped inside, gases from the building materials, carpet, and paint leach into the air (VOCs), and mechanical systems (like the dryer, hood vent, and bathroom fans) suck air out of the house which in turn pulls dirty, unfiltered, air from the attic into the home.

Schedule a free air quality evaluation with James and learn what can be done to have a healthy home.

Depending on your goals and the construction of your home the solutions will include:

• Whole home air/surface purification systems
• These systems install alongside your existing HVAC unit. They purify all of the air and hard surfaces in your home by eliminating bacteria, viruses, mold, VOCs, odors, and allergens. Lab results even show a 99% reduction in germs within 3’ of a sneeze!
• Whenever one family member comes home with a cough, those germs are sucked up by the AC and blown into every single room!
• Positive pressure, fresh air ventilation
• You’ve encountered this type of ventilation whenever you enter a well-designed grocery store. Think about walking up to the automatic doors of your favorite grocery store on a hot summer day. The doors open and whoosh you feel a blast of cool air. This air pressure keeps out pests and allergens while also providing the correct amount of fresh air inside the market. Once completed the pressure in your home will not push as hard as the local Publix, because it would be hard to open the exterior doors, it will however keep the home less dusty, less humid, and much cleaner!

• Sealing ductwork
• As time passes the ductwork in your attic will start to leak. The connections are held together with tape and over time the tape peels up and loses its stickiness. When the ductwork starts to leak, the central AC unit causes negative pressure inside the home which will pull in dirty, unfiltered air from the attic. The attic air has a host of garbage in it; there is fiberglass, formaldehyde, pesticides, and other stuff that we shouldn’t breathe. Sealing the ductwork is a good start to cleaning up the air in your home, remember that improper maintenance can lead to an air duct replacement, you can click here to learn about duct replacement.

If you’re a nerd like James click the links below and dive deep into indoor air quality! If you’re ready to learn what it will take to clean the air in your home call now and ask for an appointment to evaluate your air quality or leave a message for James and he will call you back.

https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/introduction-indoor-air-quality