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During cooler winter periods, homeowners invested in their air quality may have a tougher time bringing in fresh air. This is because we can’t keep windows and screen doors open as often during the cold season, at least not without racking up big increases on our energy bills.
However, that doesn’t mean there are no remaining avenues for keeping your air quality high during winter. There are several within the HVAC world alone, starting with changing your HVAC filters often enough and ranging into a few different areas. Let’s go over several methods for keeping your air quality high throughout the year, and particularly during winter when fewer natural options are available.
Air Filters
As we noted, HVAC filters are some of the key factors in air quality in any home throughout the year. All the air in your home will pass through the filter before reaching you, meaning it’s vital that these filters be of the proper type for the system and are being changed regularly.
This becomes even more important during the winter, for reasons we noted above. Homes with pets in them should be changing filters even more often than factory recommendations, at least once a month in most cases.
Vent Registers
Another area where air will pass through in the home is your vents, and it’s important to care for these and the registers that signal their openings. These areas can build up significant dust and other contaminants over the course of a year if they aren’t cleaned, and this makes air quality lower.
Preventing this concern is very easy, however. Take some time to vacuum and dust in these areas at least once every few weeks to ensure these buildups don’t arise.
Cleaning Ducts
Another cleaning area to think about is within your ducts, which may build up dust, mold spores or other contaminants out of sight. If you are having air quality issues and cannot seem to figure out why, contact HVAC pros about an inspection to see if there might be an issue in your ducts.
Ceiling Fans
Another dust-heavy area to keep an eye on is on ceiling fans, particularly if they aren’t regularly used. Clean these regularly during the cooler months, and also consider flipping their direction so they move clockwise and create an updraft, which can help with warming and lowering your costs.
Thermostat Fan
There’s another important fan in your home that relates to air quality: Your thermostat fan, which can be set to ON or AUTO. The former causes it to run constantly, while the latter only runs it when the system is actively heating. As long as your filters are in good shape and have been changed recently, you can use the ON function to run continuous air and create a faster filtration method. Do realize, however, that this takes extra power and may cost you a bit more each month.
