The air inside your home can be two to five times dirtier than the outdoor air. You spend up to 90 percent of your time indoors. Make sure the indoor air you breathe is clean, at least when you’re at home.
Here are some easy maintenance practices can make a big difference in the quality of your home’s air.
- Inspect your air handler. An air handler is the indoor part of a central air conditioning or heat pump system that pushes air across the unit’s evaporator coil and into the ducts. It includes the fan that blows cold air through your house. You should inspect it at the beginning of every air conditioning season to make sure it’s not blowing dirt or chemicals through that fan. Start by looking in the closet where your air handling cabinet is located. If you store toxic or hazardous materials in the same closet, your family is probably inhaling those fumes whenever your air conditioner is running. Rosie has seen these closets used as storage for weed killers, fertilizers, paint, paint thinner and gasoline, all products you don’t want to inhale! Rosie’s recommendation: Find another place to store these products and give this closet a good cleaning before you turn on your air conditioner for the first time in the spring. If your air conditioning system’s equipment sits on the roof, move exhaust vents or plumbing vents away from the unit. Fumes from those vents can waft right back into your home when your air conditioner is operating.
- Change the air filters in you air conditioning system every month to make sure they are fresh and can trap as much contamination as possible. Fresh filters also allow your AC system to “breath” easier and allow it to operate at the efficiency level it was designed to operate at.