How your Air Conditioner Helps Improve your Indoor Air Quality
Posted in Air Quality, on August 31, 2017
The air conditioner in your home likely doesn’t turn off until the end of September when the cool air of autumn finally begins to arrive in the GTA. After running your air conditioner all summer long, it’s a good idea to pay attention to your unit so that it’s giving you the best indoor air quality that it can.
Your air conditioner is doing a lot more than just cooling down your home, it’s also helping to keep your indoor air quality at a high level. Indoor air quality can be measured by the cleanliness of the air, humidity, temperature, and odour. Obviously all four of these things have a huge effect on your comfort and well-being inside your home, so paying a little attention to your air conditioning unit can have a huge effect on your indoor air quality.
The fall is a great time to do a little annual maintenance on your air conditioning unit. Having someone come in and replace filters and make sure your unit is running efficiently will improve your indoor air quality and also your pocketbook.
At SafeAir, we’ve seen many air conditioning units with old, clogged filters - not only are these filters ineffective, they’re also letting pollen, dust, and other allergens into your indoor air quality, which may be causing allergies. They’re also causing a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on your air conditioning unit, which may lead to more frequent repairs or permanent damage.
A well-functioning air conditioner can also help with humidity levels in your home, which can help your indoor air quality by keeping mold from growing, and keeping airborne allergens from spreading. Humidity can cause a room to feel hotter than it really is, and a good air conditioner will act like a sponge to pull moisture from the air.
Many of the pollutants in our indoor air quality are water soluble and as your air conditioner pulls the water from the air, it also removes these pollutants. Poor air circulation is another reason that your indoor air quality could be suffering, and your air conditioner is the best tool for this job. By moving air around your home, your air conditioning unit helps keep your indoor air quality at a high level by making sure that moisture or other problems caused or exacerbated by organic matter are dispersed and kept dry.
Mold can be a huge indoor air quality problem where humidity, moisture, and high temperatures exist, so your air conditioning unit can be a great weapon against it. But air conditioning units themselves could be the cause of poor indoor air quality - as complex machines, they use a variety of chemicals, motors and other parts to cool the air of your home. In an old or damaged machine, these parts could actually be causing poor indoor air quality instead of improving it by releasing the hydrochlorofluorocarbons that are part of the refrigeration process. While these chemicals do not damage the ozone like other fluorocarbons, they are still a greenhouse gas and their long term health affects in indoor air quality is unknown.
As the summer winds down, a quick check of your air conditioning unit and your indoor air quality can have a lasting value for you and your family’s health and indoor comfort. If you’re curious about improving your indoor air quality, give us a call at SafeAir and we’d be happy to speak with you.