Smoking, fireplaces and pet dander can damage your indoor air quality, but one of the worst culprits when it comes to indoor air pollution is a home renovation.
This is because it often involves ripping up carpets and floors that expose the hiding places of vermin, pet urine and all kinds of mold. There can also be many threats to your health hiding inside of your home’s walls including toxic foam insulation, glass fiber insulation, and mildew.
Yet, another threat to your air quality is the dust from drilling and fumes from painting walls and varnishing floors. Sometimes, renovations can go on for months, and if this is the case, you need to develop a strategy for handling the stress, noise and most of all the air quality in your home.
Make a Plan for Handling Daily Life During Renovations
Long before your renovations on your home are scheduled to begin, it is important to make a plan for how you are going to separate your living quarters.
This includes your cooking and sleeping areas from dirty, dusty areas. Of course, if it is your cooking or sleeping arrangements that are being remodeled you may have to make do by eating in restaurants, sleeping in other rooms, or by staying in a camper or with relatives.
Do not forget as well that toxic fumes often play a role when it comes to the livability of your space. Floor strippers and varnishes can poison the air with toxic fumes and the glue used to fix new carpets in place can cause lung and brain damage.
Protect Your Home Against Air Pollution Due to Renovations
One of the best ways to protect your home against air pollution due to renovations is to seal off the areas that are being worked on with floor to ceiling sheets of plastic.
This type of tenting of a renovation area in your home contains dirty air particles and prevents them from blowing through the air to other areas of your home.
Fumes from paint, glue, and varnishes can also be an issue in which case the area treated should be sealed off as securely as possible by shutting doors and sealing them with tape.
Inside the room where the treatment took place, the windows should be open and routing the fumes out the window. It is best not to have your HVAC on during renovations as fumes and dust can be sucked up through your vents and bring foul odors to your sleeping or living quarters.
The Benefits of Changing Your Air Filters Frequently
It is worth noting that there are many benefits to changing your air filters frequently including the fact that an HVAC that is kept in great condition and constantly maintained can save you up to 15% on your energy bills annually.
At the very least, you should have them changed twice a year, but some people prefer to change them every couple of months. How often you change your air filters depends on many factors including how polluted the outdoor outside your home.
As Seattle, WA residents know, smoggy weather is common during temperature inversions, and this can cause your filters to become dirtier faster. However, the main source of indoor pollution is often a home renovation, which adds extra particles, microbes, and fumes to the air.
