Household dust is a factor every homeowner must contend with on a daily basis. While dust may erode the aesthetic appeal of your home, it also impacts indoor air quality, as dust and the pollutants it carries with it can trigger and/or irritate allergies and asthma. Here are four effective tips for controlling dust in the home and improving indoor air quality:
- Choose your furnace filter carefully – Most furnaces are installed with basic, low-efficiency filters that trap only large dust particles. If this is the kind of filter your furnace utilizes, it’s not capturing tinier breathable particles that may be causing problems for you or a family member. Upgrading your furnace or heat pump filter should help. Work with a professional HVAC contractor to choose a filter with the highest minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) that will work in your heating system without impeding airflow. That likely will be somewhere between MERV 8 and 12.
- Use effective dusting tools – Feather dusters may seem appealing to use, but these types of dusters don’t permanently trap dust. Instead, they simply move it around your home. For effective indoor air quality control, use a duster with an electrostatic charge or a wet rag.
- Run the furnace fan – When you operate your vacuum, it likely stirs up dust in your home through its exhaust or agitator. To help move some of that dust out of the airstream, run the furnace fan continuously while you’re cleaning. Simply set thermostat to “on,” instead of “auto,” which runs the fan intermittently. Doing so will circulate the air in your home, and pass it through the furnace’s filter, capturing some of the dust the vacuum stirs up.
- Use effective cleaning practices – To get dust out of the carpets, use a vacuum with a powerful agitator and suction. Beat area rugs regularly, and avoid keeping lots of knickknacks around the house, which attract dust and make it more difficult to clean.
Take control over your home’s indoor air quality with these four tips. For more expert advice about air quality or home efficiency, please contact us at Energy-1 Heating & Air Conditioning today. We proudly serve homeowners in Erie, Lorain and Cuyahoga counties.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Lorain, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about indoor air quality and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning
1 (440) 246-5440
Serving the Lorain, OH Area