Improving Indoor Air Quality: A Room-by-Room Approach

If you’d really like to significantly improve indoor air quality in your home, it’s important to take a room-by-room approach since some issues are specific to certain areas. Meanwhile, a whole-house strategy will address air quality problems that don’t confine themselves to single rooms.

Room-to-Room IAQ

• Bedrooms: Wash sheets and pillowcases every week in hot water, and use dust-mite-proof mattress covers, box-spring casings and pillow covers. Organize your closet and store clothes you’re not using in plastic cartons or bags. Cloth fibers make up a significant portion of dust. Keep cats and dogs out of your bedroom.
• Living room: Vacuum floor and rugs at least every week, and dust regularly, too. Spreading stones in houseplant dirt will help keep dirt and dust from becoming airborne. Try to avoid using wood- or coal-burning stoves or fireplaces. Even models that are tightly operated will emit some smoke and combustion debris into indoor air.
• Kitchen and bathrooms: Use exhaust fans not only when you’re using the bathroom and kitchen, but also for at least 15 minutes afterwards. Don’t leave damp towels lying around, as they can create mold and mildew. In both rooms, change the trash promptly. Letting a full bag of trash sit around for days isn’t doing your indoor air any favors.

Improve Indoor Air Quality in the Whole House

First of all, it’s important to keep relative humidity inside your home at a healthy, comfortable level – at least 50 percent in the summer. Running the A/C is the best way to control humidity. Effective ventilation also is imperative for maintaining indoor air quality. Consider a balanced ventilation system to exchange stale indoor air with fresh outside air several times a day. It’s also crucial to make sure you inspect and change your HVAC filter on a regular basis. For especially serious air quality concerns, look for an effective whole-house air-cleaning system.

For more helpful advice on enhancing air quality in your Northwest Arkansas home, please contact us at Paschal Heat, Air & Geothermal.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Springdale, Arkansas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about indoor air quality and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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