As your family prepares to spend more time indoors throughout the winter months, you may be thinking about your air quality. One of the best ways to help enhance the quality of air inside your home is to invest in whole-home air purification technology. Read on to learn more about the benefits of this technology and what to consider when choosing a system for your home.
Why Is Indoor Air Quality Important?
Indoor air quality can have a huge effect on you and your family. When your air is of high quality, it helps to improve your overall cognition and productivity throughout the day. It works to decrease the spread of airborne diseases and greatly reduces the amount of environmental triggers for conditions like allergies and asthma. When transitioning from poor-quality air to good-quality air, you’ll likely experience less fatigue and fewer headaches.
Discovering Your Indoor Air Quality Level
One of the best ways to understand where the quality of your indoor air sits is to have an indoor air quality assessment. An HVAC professional will walk throughout your home and test it for concentrations of various pollutants. These include things like known allergens, radon, and mold spores. Whenever any of these pollutants are above a set threshold, your air will be designated as being of poor quality.
Once you understand the specific pollutants in your home, choose the appropriate air purification systems to reduce those levels. It’s important to get regular assessments done to ensure that the air purification system you choose is effective.
Stand-Alone vs. Whole-Home Units
Both air cleaners and purifiers work to remove harmful pollutants from your indoor air. These units can be purchased in stand-alone models or whole-home systems. Stand-alone models are rated to handle a particular square footage of one room. To be effective at enhancing the quality of air throughout your entire home, you would need to have multiple stand-alone units.
On the other hand, whole-home systems are designed to enhance air quality throughout your entire home. Technicians install them directly inside your return ducting. This helps to treat all the air that flows through your ducts as part of the normal operation of your HVAC system.
What Are Air Cleaners and Purifiers?
Whole-home air cleaners and purifiers both work to remove harmful contaminants from indoor air. In general, air cleaners work solely based on trapping these harmful airborne pollutants in a series of filters. Air purifiers can include these media filters. However, purifiers tend to include some sort of germicidal UV light as part of their overall air sanitizing method.
Air cleaners can use various types of filters to trap different types of pollutants. For example, they may use an active carbon filter to trap unwanted airborne odors, like tobacco smoke. It’s important to point out that air cleaners do not kill airborne toxins. Rather, they trap them inside filters, which the homeowner disposes of.
With an air purifier, a UV-C light will be placed inside your ducting or over your evaporator coil. This light will distort the DNA of airborne toxins and render them unable to reproduce. This method essentially stops the replication of airborne toxins in your home.
What Pollutants Can It Remove?
Air purification devices can be used to remove a wide variety of harmful airborne pollutants that may be present inside your home. Some of the most common include the following:
- Dust
- Pet Dander
- VOCs
- Pollen
- Mold Spores
- Pathogens (bacteria, viruses, etc.)
What Are the Benefits of Whole-Home Air Purification and Cleaner Systems?
Whole-home air purification devices can be a bit costly for the average homeowner. However, many consider the investment well worth it thanks to the many benefits they gain from installing these systems in their homes. Not every technology is required for every home. Instead, you only need the machines that address the specific impurities in your home.
Offer Whole-Home Purification Capabilities
One of the biggest benefits of choosing a whole-home purification device is that it allows you to treat the air throughout your entire home. Instead of having to invest in multiple devices to treat the air throughout the various rooms of your home, you only need to get one unit. Furthermore, the unit is positioned inside your existing ductwork, so it’s out of sight and not taking up vital space.
Enhance Indoor Air Quality
One of the most obvious benefits of a whole-home air purification system is it helps to enhance your indoor air quality. This is good news for everyone, especially those suffering from allergies and asthma. When you have good quality air inside your home, your family will feel rejuvenated, comfortable, and healthy. Better yet, you’ll have peace of mind that they’re breathing in healthy air.
Eliminate Lingering Odors
Whether there are lingering odors from cooking dinner, your pets tracking in dirt, or someone smoking inside the home, air purifiers are a great way to help eliminate these unwanted odors. You’ll enjoy having air that smells fresh and clean. Furthermore, this odor-free environment will be more welcoming to your guests.
Stop Bacteria and Virus Spreading
One of the bigger benefits of getting a whole-home air purification system with a UV-C germicidal light is that it helps to stop the spread of bacteria and viruses. This process is helpful during the time of the year when your family is spending a lot of time indoors together.
Less Dust Accumulation
One of the most frustrating parts about having poor indoor air quality is that it can allow excessive dust to build up on the surfaces throughout your home. In fact, you’ll likely find that you need to dust more often to keep up with cleaning during times of the year when you’re spending more time indoors. Fortunately, an air purification system can easily work to remove excess dust circulating throughout your home. This means less dust accumulating on the surfaces in your home and less frequent dusting for you.
Quiet Operation
The beauty of a whole-home air purification device is that it’s virtually quiet during operation. Air naturally flows through the media filters thanks to the regular circulation of your HVAC ducting. The air or coil sanitizing UV-C germicidal lights don’t make a sound while they’re running.
Maintenance Needs
Whole-home air purifiers that use a germicidal UV-C light will need to have the light replaced every one to two years. The frequency of the replacement will depend on whether the light is air sanitizing or coil sanitizing. You will need to have professional HVAC technicians replace your sanitizing lights and clean your whole-home air purifier during their yearly maintenance visit.
Reliable Indoor Air Quality Service
Honest Air Conditioning provides reliable indoor air quality services for Mesa, AZ and the surrounding communities. Our technicians can help you with all your ductless mini-split system, heating, and air conditioning needs. Give our office a call today to schedule your next service consultation.