Fresh air makes your Pennsylvania home cleaner and more comfortable, but creating good ventilation inside of it can be hard to do. After all, one of the best ways to save money on energy costs is to get your home as airtight as possible. It seems like it would be impossible to do both of these things at the same time in the same house. That’s why most homeowners side with energy efficiency, but it’s important to do both.

Exactly What Is Ventilation?

Simply put, ventilation in the home is a regular exchange of the indoor air with fresh air from outside. Of course, simply opening and closing a door doesn’t move enough air to be beneficial, so you’ll need to work with a professional to determine the air exchange rate that is best for your home. The HVAC experts at Coleman Mitchell Heating & Air Conditioning can install equipment that creates an adequate exchange rate without giving up too much of your climate-controlled air. Here are some reasons why it’s important to do this.

Removal of Contaminants

No matter how hard you try to keep your home clean, there will always be contaminants that find their way inside. Sometimes, these substances come in while you have the doors or windows open. You also bring them in on shoes or clothing. Others may originate inside the home, such as carbon monoxide from gas- or wood-burning fireplaces. If anyone smokes inside the home, there can be traces of that in the air.

Even with good filters in your HVAC system, these contaminants can continue to circulate inside your home. The only solution to the problem is to allow the indoor air to escape and to replace it with fresh air from outdoors.

Moisture Management

We often think of humidity as a summertime issue, but inside a home, the presence of water in kitchens and bathrooms makes excess moisture a problem all year long. Without good ventilation, the moisture level can build up and cause a number of problems that make it hard to keep your home healthy and clean.

Mold Control

The number one thing that mold spores need in order to develop into those unsightly and unhealthy colonies inside your home is moisture. That’s why you usually only see mold in a damp kitchen or bathrooms. Reducing the levels of moisture inside your home makes the environment too unfriendly for mold, preventing development. That means a lot of important health benefits for your family.

First, you won’t have the direct effects of mold growth, which include aggravation of asthma and allergies as well as the discoloration of paint and other surfaces. Second, you won’t have to spend as much time and money on cleaning up the mold in your home, a process which also fills your air with the unhealthy vapors of your cleaning products.

Indoor Comfort

Hot summer weather feels even hotter when the humidity climbs. The moisture in the air makes it harder for your body to release extra heat, so you get that muggy, stuffy feeling that we all deal with. The same thing happens inside your home.

Excess indoor moisture in the summer means you’ll probably keeping turning the thermostat cooler to compensate for the high heat index. The more your air conditioner runs, the higher your energy bill gets. Wintertime moisture can actually make the house feel warmer, but it can also cause corrosion and mold. Good ventilation will help you keep the moisture to an appropriate level so that your house is cleaner and more comfortable.

Preventing Condensation

Another problem with excessive humidity inside the home is the formation of condensation. Any cold surface can quickly be covered with droplets of moisture that can damage electrical components or unprotected metal.

Imagine leaving a phone or laptop in the car long enough for it to get cold and then bringing it into a warm, damp home. The damage could be significant, and the best way to prevent it is to lower the moisture level inside your home with good ventilation.

Temperature Consistency

Every house has warm rooms and cold rooms. This can make it challenging and expensive to keep everyone comfortable. How do you set the thermostat if a bedroom on the corner of the house is colder than one in the center of the house? How do you get the kitchen cooled down after cooking a big meal without making the living room uncomfortably cold for your guests? The list goes on and on, and it can be hard to answer those questions.

The only way to get those bedrooms and the rest of the house all on the same page for temperature is to utilize good ventilation. This allows all those different rooms to mix their air together and create a consistent temperature, without having to operate the heating or cooling component of the system.

How to Know You Need Better Ventilation

We’ve mentioned a few ways to know that your house is poorly ventilated already. The presence of mold is a good indicator, as is the development of condensation on surfaces like windows and the inside knob of an exterior door.

Sometimes, the problem can be detected with our health, such as ongoing sneezing or coughing, asthma attacks, and general allergy symptoms. You may also get a positive result from a radon test.

Other signs of a ventilation issue include detection of persistent odors. If someone comes into your house and mentions that they smell food, tobacco smoke, or something else that hasn’t been present in the home for a long time, you may need to think about improving ventilation. Those strong odors should dissipate in a few hours, so if they continue to hang around after that, you may need a dose of fresh air inside.

Excess dust is a good sign of an indoor air quality problem. If you feel like you are constantly having to dust the furniture to keep your home presentable, there could be an issue with dust or other contaminants.

You might notice other evidence of high levels of contaminants inside the house. This can show up in the filters of your heating and cooling system, air purification appliances, or dehumidifiers as excessive dust, unusual colors, or strong odors. Finally, you may have recently weatherproofed your home and feel like it will no longer “breathe” the way it did before you sealed those drafty windows and doors.

The more of these signs you see, the more reason you have to start investigating your options for improving indoor air quality through some changes in your ventilation system.

Get Fresh Air Moving Today!

There’s no reason to let your home in Bridgeville, PA become a stuffy, stagnant place with mold and contaminants in the air. Our team at Coleman Mitchell Heating & Air Conditioning can help you build a plan for improving your home’s indoor air quality without running up the gas or electric bill. We can also service, repair, or replace your heating or air conditioning systems so that your weathertight home is as energy-efficient as possible. Give us a call today!

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