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Your Guide to Cleaner Indoor Air

Tired of sneezing, coughing, and clearing your throat due to poor indoor air quality? You can’t change the city you live in and the environmental factors that are largely out of your control, but you can influence your living space and take steps to reduce airborne irritants and allergens by following the tips discussed below. Refer to the graphic below for a high-level overview, and contact the Quality Air Experts team to get started with HVAC maintenance, repairs, or anything else we can do to help you improve your home’s air quality!

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Daily Tips

Although the weekly, monthly, seasonal, and yearly tips listed below are all important, keeping your indoor air quality throughout the year good starts with a foundation built on your day-to-day air quality.

Investing in an air purification system is a great way to minimize dust, reduce cooking odors, and filter out other environmental contaminants that may be contributing to allergies and other forms of respiratory irritation. Make sure that you find a model that’s sized appropriately for the room(s) you want to purify, and look for a system that includes a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter. Unlike traditional filters, HEPA filters can capture extremely small particles such as pollen, allergens, viruses, smoke, and more. Air purifiers are an investment, so read plenty of reviews and take your time before making a decision.

You’ll likely purchase an air purifier for a frequently used area of your home, but it’s important to improve the air quality throughout the rest of your home, too. If you have a basement or crawlspace, you’ve probably noticed a damp, musty smell from time to time. Too much humidity can lead to mold and mildew growth, and it can also affect the air quality throughout the rest of your home. Purchasing an appropriately sized dehumidifier can remove excess moisture and create a steady stream of cool, dry, filtered air.

Weekly Tips

Air purifiers and dehumidifiers are excellent investments, especially because they require so little effort on your part! However, they’re not a replacement for thorough cleaning. Set aside time at least once a week to vacuum and dust throughout your home, increasing the frequency by one or two days if you have pets or particularly sensitive individuals under your roof. If dusting, vacuuming, and sweeping each week sounds like a lot of work, just remember that your air purifier and dehumidifier will likely do a significant amount of the work for you!

Monthly and Seasonal Tips

Your air conditioner and your heater are similar to air purifiers in the way that they use filters to clean the air before distributing it throughout the rest of your home. These filters need to be replaced approximately every three months, but you may want to consider changing them every six to eight weeks if you have animals or live with people who suffer from allergies, asthma, or another respiratory issue.

Seasonally, you’ll want to contact a local HVAC company to schedule routine maintenance a few weeks before you plan to use your heater or air conditioning. Remember that many people will be scheduling heating and air conditioning maintenance around the same time, so it’s best to get on the schedule as early as possible.

Alternatively, you can work with an HVAC company like Quality Air Experts and sign up for a routine maintenance plan that automatically reserves an appointment for you and takes one more thing off of your to-do list!

Yearly Tips

If you keep up with daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal air quality maintenance, you won’t have to do much in the way of yearly maintenance. You may have to schedule an occasional air conditioner repair or furnace repair appointment depending on the age of your HVAC system, but taking care of routine maintenance will help you proactively address problems before they become full-blown breakdowns.

We recommend that you schedule duct cleaning every three to five years, especially if you’re just now finding ways to take charge of your home’s air quality. Your ducts have probably collected quite a bit of dirt, dust, dander, and other contaminants over the years, and hiring a professional duct cleaning company like Quality Air Experts is just one more way you can keep the air in your home free of harmful and irritating pollutants.

Ready to improve your home’s air quality? Give us a call to schedule HVAC maintenance, duct cleaning, or any of the other services we offer!