Are you trying to keep your home healthier this year, especially since we are entering a summer season that will include more time indoors than years past? Many homeowners underestimate the importance of ventilation when it comes to maintaining a healthy home and keeping good indoor air quality in Nashville. Let’s take a look at how proper home ventilation works, and how you can benefit.

Your Home Is a Trap for Contaminants

Once the outside temperatures start to heat up, many homeowners close up their windows and keep the doors shut to keep all the heat and humidity out. Keeping a home comfortable in this scenario involves relying more heavily on your HVAC system, but as you may have learned in our article on The Dangers of Poor Ventilation, an HVAC system in a home with poor ventilation will not be able to flush out the harmful contaminants that are recirculating the breathing air!

These contaminants can include outdoor and indoor-borne particles, like:

• Volatile organic compounds

• Pet dander

• Pollen

• Dust and dirt

• Smoke

• Cleaning chemicals

• Radon

• Carbon monoxide and other combustion gasses

The Effects of Poor Ventilation on Your Health

Once these contaminants accumulate in your home, they need a clear path to the outside, where they can dissipate into the atmosphere. Otherwise, they will circulate in your breathing air over and over again. This means that the exact same particles could be entering your lungs day in and day out, causing multiple unwanted health symptoms — such as:

• Coughing

• Sneezing

• Dry and itchy eyes

• Sinus irritation

• Headaches

• Brain fog

...as well as other allergy-like symptoms that may be hard to initially diagnose, because they so closely mimic the symptoms you may suffer from on a seasonal basis. 

How To Ventilate a Home

There are a few ventilation measures that most homes already have, like a bathroom fan and an oven hood fan. But do you know if your bathroom fan or range hood actually vents to the outside? Or do they simply move the contaminants from your bathroom and kitchen to other areas of the home? When you consider the high humidity levels here in Tennessee, you might imagine that a bathroom fan moving the humid air from the shower into the attic above your living space might make for a particularly muggy home. 

As a part of our whole-home approach, the E3 INNOVATE team focuses on making sure your ventilation systems are venting back outside, where they belong. But we don’t stop there. In order to give you complete control over the air you’re breathing, we like to make sure there are no hidden air leaks in your crawlspace, attic, or ductwork that is exacerbating your indoor air quality issues. 

Then we can assess if your home may also be in need of a whole house ventilation system to provide the proper amount of fresh air, or perhaps a radon mitigation system if your home is prone to high levels of radon.

Experience the Many Benefits of Proper Ventilation

Sure, a properly ventilated home will be healthier. However, there are many other benefits you can experience when you upgrade your ventilation system, like reduced humidity, a reduction in unwanted odors, and in some cases, energy savings. 

If you are looking to gain control over the ventilation in your Nashville area home, get in touch with the home-health experts at E3 INNOVATE, and start your journey to a healthier home with an energy audit. 

Do you suspect poor ventilation is to blame for your unhealthy home? E3 INNOVATE has a ventilation solution for you. Schedule an energy audit by calling 615-876-5479 or get in touch here.