Air quality in your home is very important! It can sometimes suffer when we do necessary repairs and upgrades like replacing old doors and windows, improving insulation, replacing a furnace, or adding a full-home air conditioner. That is because all of these things contribute to the HVAC in your home—the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning system.
We usually only think of our HVAC in terms of making our houses cool in summer, warm in the winter, and insulating them to keep the heat in and the cold out, but HVAC is more complex than that. All these systems work together in your house to not only keep your house at a pleasant temperature, but also to exchange stale interior air with fresh air from outside.
As Albertans, we are usually more concerned with sealing up a house and keeping the cold external air out. When we do this, we can end up with a sick house—a house with poor air quality inside due to sealing the house up tight but not increasing the air exchange to keep the air quality at healthy levels.
Poor indoor air quality can result in a variety of health issues. As noted on msn.com, “If you experience symptoms like congestion, dizziness, skin rashes, headaches, or nausea—and if these symptoms go away within an hour or two after leaving a building, it could be sick building syndrome [SBS]. Other, more serious health problems attributed to SBS include allergies, asthma, and chronic fatigue.”
Here’s a video with a quick overview of indoor air quality issues:
4 Seasons Home Comfort can give your house an HVAC check-up, and fix any issues that are found. You might want to add a home humidifier, an air purifier, or a Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV) unit to improve the air quality in your house. Building new houses with HRV units in them is becoming the standard in Alberta.
You can retrofit an older house with an HRV to increase your fresh air exchange, and improve your house’s energy efficiency, since HRV units use heated air from your house to heat the air coming into your house.
Contact 4 Seasons Home Comfort to discuss service options for your HVAC system or visit our showroom at 3620 9th Ave North in Lethbridge.
