3 Pillars of Indoor Air Quality

During the winter we tend to find that we need to either add Humidity or remove humidity to keep our home healthy and comfortable. We could ensure that we would be healthy and comfortable if we could keep our relative humidity between 30% and 55%. Whether we need to humidify or dehumidify hinges on factors such as the age of our home, whether or not we have a high efficiency home, how many occupants are in our home and by the size, efficiency and type of heating and cooling system we have. 

There are 3 ways to ventilate a home. The first two methods are easy to do because likely already have them. You can simply bring in fresh air by opening your window… though this is typically not what you want to do on a cold day, and, you can turn on that bathroom or kitchen range hood fan to exhaust stale air from the house. But your best choice is to have a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) or an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) installed. An HRV/ERV will not only exhaust stale air from inside but will also bring in fresh air from outside. And as it is exhausting that stale air, it is taking the heat out of that air and warming up the fresh cold air from outside: In other words, it is changing the air without losing the heat, always providing fresh clean air for your family to breathe. 

There are two ways to filter: we can filter particles and we can filter gases. What we really mean by particles is dust! We’re going to greatly minimize the dust in our home with a higher MERV filter and/or we’ll virtually eliminate dust with a MERV16 or a HEPA filter. Then we’ll go one step further and clean the air of germs, VOCs, and airborne gases such as the flu and other viruses by using a UV germicidal light. And to take it to the next level of air purification you go move to a whole-home air purifier that combines Maximum MERV 16 filtration with photocatalytic oxidation technology to destroy and remove all three classes of indoor contaminants: household odors, small particles and volatile organic compounds like formaldehyde and mold.