Air Quality Home Maintenance Tips
Keep the house clean
Keeping house clean and organized is a very big task. Before you start cleaning and organizing things, make a list of things that you need to do in order to clean the house.
The most important for improving the air quality in your home is to remove as much dust, dirt, pet hair, food spills, and other debris as possible on a regular basis.
Turn on the air conditioner when cleaning
If you’re kicking up dust and dirt while cleaning your house, turn on the air conditioner fan while doing so. That way, some of the particles will get sucked into the AC unit’s filter.
Use plants
Some plants work as air purifiers, absorbing odors and chemicals in the area. Some examples include peace lilies, bamboo palm, English ivy, chrysanthemum, and ficus.
It can also boost moods, productivity, concentration, and creativity. Reduce stress and fatigue and add life to sterile spaces, offer privacy, and reduce noise levels.
Open the windows
Bringing fresh, outdoor air into your home helps keep virus particles from accumulating inside.
When it’s nice enough outside, open the windows up to get fresh air moving through the house.
If opening windows or doors is unsafe, consider other approaches for reducing virus particles in the air, such as using air filtration and bathroom and stove exhaust fans.
Use natural air fresheners
Some candles and sprays add chemicals to the air that may not be good to breathe over extended periods of time. Use air fresheners that won’t have harmful effects, such as beeswax candles.
If you’re like most people, you may fill your home with fresh scents from candles, essential oil or reed diffusers, or sachets of potpourri. You may even rely on natural cleaning products for freshening your kitchen and deodorizing bathroom smells.
Insulation Home Maintenance Tips
Insulate outlets
There are a few simple reasons to insulate electrical outlets in your home. You may not notice, but these areas are nothing more than holes in your walls filled with wires, meaning that they present a great source of cold and warm air entering your home through all those small gaps. This can all affect your home’s inner temperature and only reduce the positive thermal effect of having a properly insulates walls, floors and ceilings.
Add foam insulated padding to electrical outlets to keep drafts from coming through. Since messing around with electricity is extremely dangerous, make sure you know what you’re doing or get a professional to help.
Quick door fix
If you have drafts coming out from under a door and need a temporary fix, stuff a rolled up towel at the bottom to keep some cold air from getting in. Another option that works on some doors is cutting a pool noodle in half and attaching it to the bottom.
Insulate garage doors
The garage door on an attached garage is often seen as a weak link in the thermal envelope on a home, and for good reason. In most homes, the garage door opens several times a day, exposing most of an entire wall to outdoor air. Because a garage door functions like this, it’s tough to adequately seal and insulate the garage. Unless the garage door is rarely used, any effort to thoroughly insulate the garage often costs more in materials than you’ll gain from energy savings.
By adding insulation to the inside of your garage doors, you not only keep your home temperature more stable, but also reduce noise from outside.
Insulate windows and doors
Insulating windows, a simple and inexpensive project, can reap huge benefits for your comfort level and your monthly energy bill. While insulation cannot transform a bad window into a high-performance window, it can make a marginal difference to get you through a season or two.
Understanding window insulating materials can help to understand how and why an insulating product or material works around a window. Make sure you understand the particularities of the item you plan to use before you begin insulating your windows.
Ideally, you should insulate your windows before cold weather sets in. On the other hand, because it is difficult to assess the state of windows’ insulating abilities when temperatures inside and outside are nearly equal, you may wish to wait until it is time to start cycling on the heat or air conditioner.
Insulate the attic
A lot of airflow occurs through the attic if it’s not properly insulated.
There are two basic ways to insulate a finished attic. If only the living space will be insulated, wrap the insulation around the room’s walls and ceiling and then continue along the floor of the non-living space.
In an unfinished attic, the goal of insulation is to keep the rooms below cool in summer and warm in winter. That means insulating the attic floor only—not the walls—and having vents in the roof. With a finished attic, insulation must help keep the attic areas comfortable.
If your attic is already finished, it probably is at least partially insulated. However, most older attics are under-insulated so it’s a good idea to raise the R-value where possible.
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