Testing Your Residential Air Quality
Consider buying a residential air quality testing machine to put in your house. These devices are very portable, so you could easily move them around from room to room, including from your living area to your kitchen or even to the garage. This aids to isolate poor air quality problems. But what would you do when your local store says it has no quality products?
A residential air quality testing kit is a must have for everyone. The benefits of a device such as this are simple: it lets you know if there is mold or other airborne mold spores in your house. Also, it will let you know if there are any leaks and other major problems with your ventilation system. It can also tell you about the moisture content in your walls. This means you won’t have to guess about whether it’s okay to go inside or not.
What about finding out if your heating and cooling system are to blame for your increased indoor pollutants? These are also easy with a residential air quality testing kit. For example, mold spores are released when organic materials, like wood or drywall are heated up. If the heating and cooling unit is not equipped with an air filter, these spores will simply get blown around and settled on other places, like inside your walls. Getting rid of them means you will also get rid of potentially dangerous indoor pollutants.
Mold spores are another problem with your HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) system that needs residential air quality testing. Mold spores are released into the air when mold fungi grow and reproduce. If you have mold growing in your walls or in the other parts of your house, an air quality testing device will tell you exactly where they are and what kind of mold you have.
You should have your indoor pollution tested for a number of reasons. One reason is if your home is old and your insulation is deteriorating. Older homes tend to release more VOCs (volatile organic compounds) than newer homes because of old age and the natural deterioration process. In addition to aging, older homes are often built with lower efficiency heating and cooling systems that produce more pollutants in the air.
Another reason to have your HVAC system tested by professionals is if you feel like you’re constantly being exposed to harmful indoor pollutants. Some people are sensitive to changes in the level of humidity in the home, especially in the summertime. Others have an especially difficult time breathing when the levels of certain VOCs are extremely high. Even other types of allergens can be tracked into the air through allergies, and certain pollutants such as lead can even trigger asthma attacks in susceptible people. If you think you’re suffering from one of these types of allergy symptoms, it’s important to have your air quality tested.
If you don’t have allergies or a history of allergies, however, you may have indoor mold symptoms. You may not realize what type of symptoms you have, and you might even assume that something else is wrong. It’s important to have your air tested, because if you do have mold or other air pollutants in your house, you need to make sure you eliminate them. If you don’t know what the source of your problem is, you may be adding to the problem yourself with the use of products or vacuuming that don’t completely get rid of the air pollutants.
Once you have the air quality tested, the next step is to test the relative humidity in the room. The relative humidity, or what is known as the “humidity factor”, can make or break the effectiveness of your HVAC system. The higher the relative humidity, the more effectively your ventilation system will work. The higher the relative humidity, the higher the moisture in the air, which means more mold and other air contaminants. Keep this in mind when choosing your HVAC system.
