Indoor Air Quality in Surf City, NC

Why Is Indoor Air Quality Often So Bad?

This is a good question, and we hear it often from homeowners. Air quality in modern homes is much worse than it used to be. In fact, indoor air quality can be four to five times worse than outdoor air. That’s the opposite of what people usually think because they imagine air pollution as something that only exists outside the home. Unfortunately, the contemporary home is often a trap for many airborne pollutants.

Modern construction emphasizes energy efficiency, and that requires creating an effective heat seal against the outside with insulation and air sealing. This may help to make it easier to heat and cool a house, but it has the side effect of limiting fresh-air circulation. The stuffy and contaminated air in a house doesn’t get replaced with fresh air currents.

There are plenty of sources of pollutants already inside homes:

• Cleaning and cosmetic products
• Pressed wood and varnishes
• Glue and other hobby products
• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from numerous household chemicals
• Fumes from cooking and cleaning
• HVAC system and combustion devices

It’s not always easy to bring fresh air into a home, especially when the temperature outside is too cold or too hot. Indoor air quality devices and other services can help reduce the air quality problems your home may have.

What About Humidity Control?

This is also an important part of indoor air quality, and it’s one that can have a major impact on our homes in Surf City, NC. High humidity is a major barrier to comfort during our summers because the high moisture levels trap heat inside our bodies and make the temperature feel hotter than it is. High humidity also creates trouble with water damage inside a home and encourages mold and mildew growth.

Is dry air much better? No, it’s not. When relative humidity levels drop below 30%, it makes it harder to stay warm. Dry conditions lead to skin, eye, and nose irritation, static electricity, and damage to wood and paint. You want to achieve balanced humidity between 30% and 50%, and our IAQ experts can help make that happen.

Your Ductwork Is Vital to IAQ as Well

The ventilation system in your home circulates air around the rooms. If it’s damaged or poorly constructed, it will harm this circulation and lead to problems with contaminants entering the air in your home. Damaged ductwork contributes to spikes in heating and cooling costs.

Proper ductwork is an important part of general home performance: treating a house as a single energy system that can be improved with the right services. We recommend our customers consider home performance services along with boosting their indoor air quality.

Top Solutions for Cleaner Indoor Air

We now come to the big question: What can we do to improve your home’s indoor air quality? The answer is, "quite a lot." It depends on the specific requirements of your house. You can rely on our expertise and decades of experience in Surf City, NC when it comes to discovering the best solutions for your IAQ problems.

Here are several of the services we offer that can turn around your home’s air quality and performance:

Air Filters and Air Purifiers

Your HVAC system has a filter, but it’s not designed to clean the air, but only protect the interior of the HVAC cabinet. To remove numerous particles from your air (dust, dander, lint, dust mites, etc.), you’ll need to have professionals install a whole-house air filtration system (also known as an air cleaner) into the ductwork. The right filter, matched to the power of your HVAC system and the pollutants in your air, will remove the majority of larger particles that can contaminate the air you breathe. Our professionals will ensure that you don’t have a filter that is too powerful, as this can end up harming your HVAC system.

Air purifiers use electronic means to remove smaller particles that might get through an air filtration system. Air purifiers use different methods for purification. One of the most common is the ionizing air purifier. This device uses an electric discharge to change the charge of particles in the air. This will cause particles to clump together and become easily trapped in the filter or fall out of the air, or they will drift down to charged plates on the purifier where they’ll be captured. The correct combination of an air filter and air purifier can eliminate more than 98% of the pollutants in a home’s air.

You can ask our team at Gideon Heating & Air Conditioning anything you want to know about air filters and air purifiers and what combination will turn your house into a healthy haven.

Learn more about Air Filtration Systems and Air Purifiers

UV Germicidal Lights

These are special types of air purification systems that target organic pollutants. These are the pollutants you really don’t want inside your home: mold spores, bacteria, germs, viruses, and various microbes that can cause illness and trigger asthma and allergies. Many standard filters and purifiers won’t affect these airborne contaminants. It takes the power of a UV germicidal light (a.k.a. a UV air purifier) to eliminate these dangerous intruders.

A UV germicidal light emits low levels of ultraviolet radiation that disrupts cellular material. It’s harmless for people and pets—no more dangerous than a bit of sunshine—but it will kill small organic pollutants outright or render them inert and harmless. It does the job with no chemical or harmful residue. UV air purifiers are easy to maintain and can provide passive protection to a home for many years. Ask our technicians if your house might benefit from UV germicidal lights.

Learn more about UV Germicidal Lights

Humidifiers and Dehumidifiers

Let’s tackle that humidity problem in your home! Whether you have high humidity or dry air, we can install a whole-house unit that will put the balance in your control.

• Whole-house dehumidifiers are installed into an HVAC system and work in connection with the air conditioner to draw moisture from the circulating air. Dehumidifiers use refrigerant to remove moisture from the air. This also cools the air, but the dehumidifier reheats it so that it won’t make a home too cool. You can control the dehumidifier through a humidistat—we recommend aiming for 45% relative humidity for the best comfort and healthy indoor environment.
• Whole-house humidifiers send moisture into your circulating air through a series of pads kept damp by water pumps. You have control over the humidity levels so you don’t end up making your home too muggy. Make sure to regularly schedule maintenance for your whole-house humidifier so it doesn’t develop mold.

Learn more about Humidifiers and Dehumidifiers

Heat and Energy Recovery Ventilators (HRVs and ERVs)

You can bring fresh air into your home and clear out the stuffy and polluted air without bringing in cold or hot air from outside that will put strain on your HVAC system. It requires the installation of an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) or heat recovery ventilator (HRV), and you can depend on our experts for this installation service.

HRVs and ERVs use the air inside your home to heat or cool an incoming current of fresh outdoor air. The indoor air is vented outside and the fresh air flows indoors, already close to the temperature you want. Your air conditioner or heater won’t have to do much extra work, because the ERV or HRV "recovered" the energy used to heat or cool the air and applied it to the incoming air. Not only will you have fresher, cleaner air, you’ll see lower energy costs.

ERVs also balance humidity levels. HRVs don’t affect humidity, but they do work more effectively in colder weather. Consult with our IAQ professionals when you’re looking into ERVs and HRVs to find out what will work best for your household.

Learn more about Heat and Energy Recovery Ventilators

Improve Your Home Performance in Surf City, NC

You can trust Gideon Heating & Air Conditioning to make your home a better energy consumer. This will lower your living costs and also help to benefit the environment and improve your air quality.

Here are some of the home performance services we offer:

• Blower Door Testing: This test will discover if you have a "leaky" home with places where heat can enter and escape. We’ll lower the indoor pressure of your house and then measure where air moves back in. We will then use this information to help you with further improvements
• Air Sealing: When we know where your house has air leaks, we can seal them so you won’t have drafts or extra heat. Your HVAC system will work at far better efficiency.
• Duct Testing: The ductwork in your home may be stealing money from you as air goes to waste out of holes and gaps. This will also allow contaminants inside the circulating air. We’ll use the best tools to analyze the condition of your ductwork so we can offer targeted solutions.
• Duct Sealing: If you do have leaky air ducts, you’ll need more than duct tape to fix the problem. It takes professional duct sealing to restore your ducts to airtight condition again. We use the best tools for a job done right.

If you’re unsure if your home needs to have home performance improvements, please schedule a consultation with us. We’ll work with you as partners to ensure you have the work done that you need and that you end up with a house that’s an energy-saving dynamo.

Protect Your Family With Better Indoor Air Quality

The health and well-being of your family are important to all of us at Gideon Heating & Air Conditioning. We’re in this business to help local homeowners enjoy the best possible life in Surf City, NC. When you want better air quality for your home, you can trust that we’ll go the extra distance to find actual solutions—long-term improvements that make a difference.

We are glad to answer any questions you may have about indoor air quality. We want to form relationships with all our customers, which is why we’re always available to answer questions you may have and provide helpful tips. We are a full-service HVAC company with everything you need to enjoy the best life with your family in your home. Reach out to us today for cleaner air tomorrow!