HVAC and Indoor Air Quality

If any of these are true about your indoor air, this article is for you:

• You have severe allergies.
• You live in a home with multiple pets or smokers.
• You seem to catch the flu every winter.
• Your cough always lingers longer than it should when the air is dry.
• You have had issues with mold or mildew in your basement or other corners of your home.
• You live in a city with smog issues and frequent air quality alerts.
• Dust and debris seems to accumulate in your home very quickly.
• You live with an elderly relative who is at greater risk of illness or with someone who is immunocompromised.
• You get dry, itchy skin when it’s cold.

Is HVAC the solution to each of these? Well, not entirely. But it can help with each of them and in many cases, yes, dramatically improve your life.

No household will have all of these indoor air quality problems, and that’s good news, since it means affordable solutions are available for the ones you do have.

Why Home Air Quality Matters

Americans spend over 90% of their time indoors. Not all of that is in our homes, but most of it is. Even if you commute to a workplace, your mornings, evenings and nights are generally spent at home.

So why does it matter? Imagine spending 90% of your life in a smoke-filled room, or surrounded by allergens.

Is this hyperbole compared to reality? Yes, a little bit. But we’re exposed to more pollutants, allergens, viruses, bacteria, and irritants that we realize on a daily basis. The less our bodies have to deal with them, the healthier we’ll be.

Problems Associated With Poor Air Quality

We touched on some of the problems at the top of this article, but here’s a comprehensive breakdown of both problems and the air quality issues that cause them:

Low Humidity

• Warping floorboards, which can become worse over time
• Virus and bacteria particles will survive in your air longer, increasing your risk of exposure and sickness.
• Dry, itchy, or cracked skin, which can develop into a rash
• Lingering dry cough, which again can worsen into more serious conditions if it lasts for too long

High Humidity

• Dust mites thrive in high humidity
• Increased dust mites attract their predators, which include numerous bugs that can infest the home. Your spider problem may actually be a humidity issue, for example.
• Muggy, uncomfortable feeling throughout the home.
• Mold or mildew buildups in the basement or other areas of the home.

Poor Air Circulation

• Trouble sleeping due to lack of temperature-regulating airflow
• Air from some rooms won’t cycle back into your system, and so odors and dust build up in these areas.
• Hot and cold spots in your home where air flow is low
• Increased heating and cooling costs, since lack of air flow is the #1 reason your HVAC system will need to work harder than it would otherwise to combat the heat or cold.

Poor Air Quality

• Clusters of dust, pollen, debris, and pet hair
• Lingering odors from smoke, cooking or natural causes
• Allergy issues, coughing and sneezing
• Trouble sleeping and poor quality of sleep
• Long-term health issues related to respiratory problems.

Below, we go into more detail on each of these areas, and discuss solutions for each of them.

Air Circulation and Natural Ventilation

Quick PSA out of the way: clean, natural ventilation is the best way to flush bad air (odors, dust, etc.) out of your home quickly. Seriously, just opening your windows and creating a nice cross-breeze can be a great way to keep your home’s air healthy.

There’s sometimes a stigma that heating and cooling companies want to solve everything with their products when more cost-effective solutions exist, and this is often true. Utilize generic fans and windows whenever you can.

The key word there, though, is “clean” air. Increasingly, especially in urban areas, air quality is not uniformly great. You could simply be letting different bad air in when you do this.

Additionally, getting a nice breeze going in the home in the summertime can be great! But what about when it’s 30 degrees outside?

It’s in these situations, and many similar ones, when we need to look to effective home solutions for air circulation.

Here’s a quick checklist of items to consider (or to discuss with your heating and air conditioning company) that can be hurting your airflow:

1. Filter – Clogged filter equals no airflow, which equals your system working harder and costing you more money.
2. Leaky Ductwork – Your heater and A/C may work fine, but you’re losing air out of the ductwork. This can amount to hundreds of dollars of lost energy every year, and thousands over time.
3. Insufficient Ductwork – Sometimes the ductwork in a home is not properly sized to adequately contain the airflow required to properly heat and cool a home. Most often, this requires upgrades to areas like the return air drop (part of your ductwork), which increases airflow throughout your home when it’s properly sized.
4. Improperly Insulated Ductwork – Same idea as leaky ductwork. It’s money lost every time you heat or cool your home if the insulation isn’t done right.
5. Old Blower Fan – the motor on your blower fan might be 20+ years old. Is it still keeping up with your air supply needs year-round?
6. Clogged Ductwork – when’s the last time you had your ducts cleaned? 10 years? 20? Never? You undoubtedly have tons of dust, dirt and minor blockages that hinder air flow.

Chances are, you aren’t affected by each of those. But if even one is out of whack, your entire home could struggle to keep you comfortable.

Did You Know?

Most thermostats will allow you to run the fan in your heating and cooling system, without running the heater or air conditioner. This allows you to better circulate air, removing dust, debris, and odors, and filtering out bacteria and allergens from the air.

HVAC Equipment and Air Quality

Heating and cooling equipment isn’t all the same. Yes, any filter will provide air filtration, for example, but not all of them are as good as any other.

The same goes for your larger heating and cooling equipment, up to and including your air conditioner and heater themselves.

Below we take a look at several major components of an HVAC system, and how each can contribute to air quality.

Filters

The cheapest, thinnest air filters (usually fiberglass) will capture dirt and debris, but not smaller particles in your air. These include allergens, smoke particles, bacteria and virus particles. The result is a dirtier, smellier, and less healthy home.

Better filters exist that are more cost-effective, even if a single filter costs more than the budget ones. Sometimes called media filters, these are generally thicker, pleated filters that capture more particulates in the air while still allowing for smooth airflow. In terms of efficiency, the acronym MERV (minimum efficiency reporting value) measures filter quality. Aim for MERV 11-13 for an ideal filtration experience.

Blower Motor & Equipment Staging

Staging refers to how many settings, or stages, your equipment has. The most basic equipment has only a single stage, while more advanced units can have two stages all the way up to hundreds.

This relates to air circulation, though, since these stages control the speed of the system’s blower motor, which pushes air through your ductwork.

Imagine a fan blowing at 100% power. It will cool or heat your home quickly, but the air won’t circulate as much. Now turn that power down to 50%. The home will heat and cool slightly less quickly, but with better air circulation the home will have fewer hot and cold spots and will keep upper stories comfortable more easily due to this increased air flow.

This is a quick summary of why higher staging equals better comfort, but it also equates to better air quality. By circulating air from your entire home, you filter the air more thoroughly and also remove odors and other pollutants from areas that might struggle to stay fresh with a traditional, single-stage system.

Air Purifiers

These are supplemental items that can be added to an HVAC system. Most people think of air cleaners as standalone products, and they can be. However, there are also air cleaners that are ducted to your HVAC system and provide whole-home air purification.

These can improve air quality in ways that standalone ones never could, since those are only intended for a single room or area in the home.

Ductwork

When’s the last time you had your ductwork cleaned? 10 years ago? 20? Never? We hear this a lot from customers, and it can lead to problems.

Most ducts have dust and debris buildup that eventually becomes stuck and contributes to both a loss of air flow (bad for cost-efficiency and comfort) and also can contribute to the dust and pollutants in your home.

Ducts that are free of leaks and clean can contribute 20% or more to the cost-efficiency of your home’s heating and cooling system. Additionally, keeping them clean is an easy way to keep your home cleaner all the time, since the alternative is blowing around a lot of dirt that sits in the ducts.

Airflow, Efficiency, Comfort and Health

We’ve talked about air flow a couple times already, but it’s worth pointing out just to what extent this contributes to the health of your system.

Let’s look at a worst case scenario:

1. Your filter clogs up with debris and you forget to change it out on time.
2. Your air conditioner or heater has to work harder to keep your home comfortable.
3. More dust and debris build up inside your system, leading to pockets of filth, mold and bacteria buildup.
4. The increased strain on the blower motor causes it to break down years before it should need repairing.
5. This increased workload makes heating and cooling your home hundreds of dollars more expensive each year.
6. The lack of air flow eventually chokes your system and some rooms receive little-to-no air flow from the vents in each room.
7. Particulates build up in these rooms, it begins to smell, and it’s never quite as comfortable as you’d like it to be.
8. You end up having to replace your system years earlier than you would otherwise.
9. Your ductwork remains dirty even after the new system is installed and it operates at a lower efficiency.

Now some sobering news: this isn’t all that uncommon.

It’s the reason why regular system maintenance is important, since it details the many different ways air flow contributes to the health and safety of your home.

Can HVAC Prevent Illnesses?

Yes. High-quality filters can capture bacteria and virus particles. Flu virus particles and even COVID particles are trapped by MERV-13 or higher filters!

Additionally, air cleaners such as ducted UV lights like those we discussed earlier can kill or neutralize organic material in your air supply, including many illnesses. The result is a much healthier home.

This isn’t a guarantee that you won’t get sick. After all, your home isn’t the only place you interact with airborne illnesses.

However, it can significantly reduce the chance of you and your family getting sick, and can make flu season easier.

HVAC Maintenance, Tune-Ups and Ductwork Cleaning

If you want to avoid many of the problems detailed in this article, the number one piece of advice we can give you is to get each major piece of heating and cooling equipment tuned up every year.

For most homes, that means once for their cooling unit (air conditioner or heat pump), and once for the heater (furnace or heat pump).

These can be done at the same time in a pinch, but it’s recommended that you get your tune-up a month or two before you expect to start using it. That means early Fall for heaters and early Spring for air conditioners.

Once every five years or so, you should also consider having your ductwork cleaned. If you live in a household with a lot of pollutants or pets, this number should be every few years.

Humidity-Controlling HVAC Products

But wait, there’s more!

Sorry to sound like a TV salesman there for a moment, but we’re not quite done canvassing the various ways that your home air quality can improve.

If you’re used to feeling muggy in the home in the summer, or you have perpetually dry skin in the winter, these are just the outward symptoms of larger problems with your air quality.

Low humidity? Virus particles will survive in your air longer, risking sickness. This is a big reason why the winter is considered “flu season” in the US.

High humidity? It could indirectly attract insects, which feed on dust mites, which only survive at higher humidity levels. You’ll also experience much higher allergen counts, and your home will struggle to cool properly. This will increase your cooling bills considerably.

The solution(s) are either a whole-home humidifier or whole-home dehumidifier. These can be ducted to your HVAC system for maximum efficiency, or dehumidifiers can be standalone and usually go in your basement.

If you live in a very humid area, you likely don’t need a humidifier. Similarly, if you live in a dry area, you’ll likely never need a dehumidifier. Most homes could benefit from at least one, though.

Ideal Home Humidity

Short answer, keep your home at or near 50% relative humidity throughout the year and you’ll be in good shape.

There’s no such thing as a single “best” home humidity level, but there are safe levels. Most experts agree that this range is from about 30% to 60% relative humidity.

Outside of these levels, you’ll start to experience one or more problems that come with high or low humidity.

Problems Solved Through Air Quality Control

If you made it this far, first of all, well done! We hope you learned a thing or two.

No one needs all of these solutions. If you’re lucky, you won’t need any of them.

But every single one of the problems we listed in the intro to this article can be solved or significantly reduced with quality home HVAC. We wouldn’t make this claim if we hadn’t seen it numerous times.

There’s a lot of information here, though, and so this might be overwhelming to consider. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. Here’s a few quick steps you can take toward better home air quality:

1. Make a list of problems you’ve experienced in the last year in your home that we’ve mentioned in this article. Allergies, illness, dry skin, bug infestations, mold, mugginess, trouble sleeping due to not having a comfortable temperature or air quality, and anything else you can think of.
2. Make a list of factors that may play into your home’s air quality, such as smog, smoking, cooking smells, pets, or other factors.
3. Give your trusted local heating and cooling experts a call and ask them to assess your home and make any recommendations based on these problem factors.
4. Discuss any costs and benefits with your loved ones and decide what, if anything, to install, upgrade or have serviced in your home.

This is a simple way to be prepared, informed, and to make sure your HVAC partner understands your needs.

Your Air, Clean and Healthy

The best air quality products contribute to both your cost savings and your comfort.

This is something we stress to our customers, because simply selling you stuff isn’t the way to earn repeat business.

Here at CABS Heating and Air Conditioning, we’ve stayed in business by being able to assess all of your comfort needs, then making recommendations that make the most sense for your home, budget, and comfort needs. The result is efficiency, comfort, health AND savings.

An investment in your home is an investment in the wellbeing of your loved ones. It’s why we don’t just do heating and cooling but everything else that comes with maintaining a healthy, comfortable home.

If you’re ready to take the first step and improve these things in your home, reach out to us today!