Best Practices to Improve Your Indoor Air Quality

If the quality of your indoor air has taken a turn for the worst, there's no need to worry, so long as you act fast and inspect your home to figure out the source of the problem. Luckily, the number of culprits is limited and there are quick and easy fixes to get you and your family breathing easy once again.

Start off with the structure of your home by checking walls and closed windows for air leaks. If you feel drafts where there shouldn't be any, bust out that caulking gun and get to sealing them shut. After a day or two, your home's temperature should return back to normal. If this preliminary inspection turns up no leads, you can move on to the following pair of appliances:

Furnace

Your furnace is responsible for spreading warm air throughout your home for the comfort of you and your loved ones. That said, the quality of the air it provides will not hold up without monthly cleaning and bi-yearly inspections.

What happens is that, over time, hair, dust, and possibly harmful bacteria adhere to your furnace's filter and force it to work double-time to produce the same airflow you're accustomed to. You're also likely to find it harder to breathe due to excess particulate matter in the air, which can lead to coughs, colds, asthma attacks, and infections such as Legionnaires' disease.

The solution is to source your furnace filters from a reputable Canadian purveyor, such as PureFilters, and replace them every two months to ensure top-tier performance. Though, if you happen to use a low-quality carbon fiber filter, you will need to replace it at least every 30 days.

Humidifier

A portable humidifier can help open your airways and restore your body's defenses by returning moisture to your indoor air. It performs this function in one of four ways:

• Steam humidifiers boil water and release the steam into the area of your choice.

• Ultrasonic humidifiers create water droplets by way of ultrasonic vibrations.

• Evaporative humidifiers blow air through a moistened wick filter.

• Impeller humidifiers direct water toward a diffuser, which breaks it up into particles small enough to drift into the air.

The key to a long-lasting humidifier comes down to basic cleanliness. You should replace the water daily to prevent it from becoming stagnant and attracting microorganisms that could make you sick. You should also take care to use water with low mineral content, because these minerals will appear as dust once they run through your humidifier. Most important of all, humidifier filters must be replaced every three months-or monthly if you use it daily-to keep indoor moisture at optimum levels. Follow these steps and your nose and throat will always be properly coated to keep foreign particles at bay.

Even though they can make a tangible improvement to the environment in your home, humidifiers can also cause mold and bacteria to proliferate if left running in enclosed areas. Simply set your device to <50% humidity and limit run times to a few hours at the most to avoid this problem altogether.

With a little basic knowledge and the diligence to follow through on it you can breathe clean filtered air every day of the week. Take the advice in this article to heart and you and your family's health will be all the better for it.