Is the Air Inside your House Clean?
Have you ever even thought about the air inside your home?
We had an energy audit done on our house a while back. After sealing all the obvious air leaks, they did a blower door test (check this article). Turns out our 1990’s house is pretty dang airtight!
This is great except that it means we’re sealed inside our house with all the fumes we create (breathing, showering, cooking, the list goes on). Not so great…
So we got an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) monitor!
I consider this the CHEAPEST way to ensure you’re breathing good air while at home. And during the winter is the best time to check your IAQ, when windows and doors are closed most of the time.
What’s an IAQ monitor? Here’s the one we have: Awair Element Indoor IAQ Monitor (I am getting ZERO $$ for saying this.)
86/100 when I took this pic. We’re breathing the good stuff!
This is our IAQ monitor sitting in a central area of our house. It tracks temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, chemicals, and particulate matter (PM2.5) small enough to filter into your lungs.
The higher the number the better the air quality in that moment.
Sidenote for design nerds: Isn’t it hilarious that the Awair designers were keeping it simple with the dots but now I need a cheatsheet to be able to read it?
We keep an eye on it as we live in our house, throughout the day and during different activities.
64/100. Not great. Time to ventilate!
When the number is low (and the IAQ is bad) the monitor light turns red instead of green. This particular reading was red because I burned something while cooking (dinner’s ready!) and the smoke translates to “dust”.
Our low-budget solution for bad IAQ:
Crack a window and turn on the hood vent in the kitchen and/or the bathroom fan. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.
We’ve moved our monitor to different rooms in the house to check those areas too. And of course there’s an app so you can track IAQ even when you’re not home.
Things we’ve discovered:
- The CO2 in our bedroom gets very high at night, when we’re sleeping in there with the door closed. So we try to keep the door open.
- The PM2.5 gets high when I cook so it’s a good reminder to turn on the hood vent.
- The PM2.5 gets high when Mike runs the woodstove so we need to keep some ventilation going when the fire’s burning.
- Our house tends to get very dry in the winter so we have humidifiers for each bedroom.
With this IAQ monitor, a little observation, and some basic ventilating, we know that our house has healthy air. Worth the effort.
If you’d like more info, Maine Indoor Air has some fantastic tip sheets: Maine Indoor Air IAQ.
*We also have the uHoo Air. We’ve had both monitors for about 2 years and prefer the Awair Element.
**Thanks to Bo at The Breathable Home for the Awair Element recommendation.