by Home Ventilation Should Balance Indoor Air Quality with Environmental Conditions
In Western North Carolina, specific environmental conditions impact air quality, which can affect your family’s healthiness at home. These conditions – common to the southern Appalachians – include:
Left unchecked, these environmental conditions can make your house – and its inhabitants – sick, complicating respiratory conditions, such as:
Without a doubt, adequate ventilation and good indoor air quality are critical to maintaining a healthy home. At the same time, sealing a house saves energy and makes good financial sense.
Which may lead homeowners to ask, “Is it possible to over-seal a house?”
In older homes, it’s unlikely that weatherizing will leave the structure too tightly sealed. Often, there are cracks, gaps, or other places that air leaks out of the house, indicating that you may need more air sealing. Those spaces can let in contaminants like dust and allergens. Unsealed floors, for example, could allow moisture or mold to permeate your living spaces, suggesting a crawl space encapsulation may be warranted. Similarly, high heating and air costs may indicate that your home needs better insulation. Making changes such as these could save as much as 40% on your home’s energy costs each year. In homes with concerns like these, sealing the house is a healthy choice.
But what if you have the opposite problem? Beginning in the 1970s, energy efficiency was top-of-mind for builders as well as home buyers. Super insulated, air tight structures decreased energy costs, but simultaneously trapped moisture and air. Without proper ventilation, mold, mildew, must and other indoor air issues found conditions right to thrive.
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Today, we know better. We look at the home as a living ecosystem. Air quality can be regulated through the use of good ventilation practices. The WNC region’s green homes often include whole-house mechanical ventilation systems. Other solutions include heat or energy recovery ventilators, which circulate fresh air, reduce humidity, and reduce energy costs. Today, home performance is focused on the healthiness of indoor air, and that’s as it should be.
Very simply, ventilation occurs when air enters or leaves a home. If your home has air quality challenges, you’ll want to place attention on mechanical exhaust solutions. Four common system types include exhaust, supply, balanced, and energy recovery ventilation.
A backdraft can cause major issues
Found in many kitchens and bathroom appliances, exhaust ventilation systems push out stale air and moisture through a duct to the outside. This simple, common system works – until it doesn’t.
A backdraft can return dangerous carbon monoxide to the inside air.
First, if the exhaust doesn’t exit, it’s called a “backdraft.” Carbon monoxide poisoning can be deadly with symptoms including headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, nausea, shortness of breath, and chest tightness. Secondly, say the exhaust does work, but due to expelled air, this causes a depressurization when new air is pulled into the house. That negative pressure can pull in radon or other gasses from the ground.
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The use of a fan can force fresh air into a home, causing stale air to be forced out. Though it reduces the risk of gasses like radon, it may push moisture-laden air into the house. If wall and ceiling spaces capture that humidity, condensation can occur. Wet, warm moist spaces are perfect for mold overgrowth; if left unchecked, air quality can suffer.
A simple way to check the wetness and dryness of areas in your home is the use of a hygrometer.
A balancing act
An equal, balanced exchange of fresh outside air and stale inside air is called balanced ventilation. In this type of ventilation, both intake and exhaust have their own duct system. However, this system neither moderates or removes moisture from the air, and it tends to contribute to higher energy costs. A better solution may include some form of energy recovery ventilation, or ERV. This is a balanced exchange system which minimizes energy loss and costs. The system transfers inside air to mitigate the seasonal temperatures of outside air.
A well thought out ventilation system can make it possible to have an energy-efficient home that’s also a healthy home. When you control the specific environmental conditions that impact air quality, you can positively affect your family’s healthiness at home.
For help in learning more about controlling your indoor air quality and enjoying a healthier home, talk to us.
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