How often do you think about the air quality in your house? If you spend most of your time indoors, you can invest in systems to help monitor air quality. Besides, various factors might compromise the air quality in your house, even with an air conditioner in place.
Standard AC maintenance practices like air conditioning duct cleaning may help improve the air quality in your house. Meanwhile, various signs tell you when your home has lousy air quality. These can vary from indications in personal health to environmental changes within your home.
Signs of Bad Air Quality in a House
Knowing the signs of bad air quality can help you determine if your air conditioner is working as it should or not. Besides, it enables you to avoid health issues resulting from poor air quality.
Here are the signs of bad air quality in a home that you should know.
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Respiratory Issues
Experiencing respiratory issues like congestion and coughing is one of the primary signs that you have bad air quality in your house. Respiratory problems in a home with poor air quality originate from breathing air with particle and carbon dioxide concentrations. The particles may be soot, dust, pollen, pet dander, or mites.
Congestion and coughing develop as your body tries to expel the particles you breathe. So do what you can, for instance, improving ventilation and cleaning your house to mitigate the concentration of particles in your air space. Also, it’s essential to treat congestion and coughing as soon as it develops. Waiting for it to go away naturally could have fatal consequences.
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Mold Growth
Mold thrives in the presence of humidity and is both a sign and causes bad air quality. It’s an air contaminant that produces toxic pollen that spreads throughout the air in your home. The pores from mold are light and easily get carried about by air. You can spot mold on moist spots in your home.
Check your AC for mold infestation if you’ve spotted mold growing in your house. Bad plumbing causes water leaks, ultimately encouraging mold to grow in the home. Repairs and maintenance for your plumbing and air conditioning unit could help improve air quality in your house.
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Fatigue and Insomnia
Carbon monoxide and other contaminants cause fatigue. Along with fatigue comes headaches, nausea, and dizziness when you have bad air quality in your house. Gases from garbage, cleaning products, or pesticides you use in your home also undermine air quality in your place. Monitor the intensity of your fatigue to know if you need to seek medical intervention.
Catching sleep in a house that has terrible hair quality is hard. If this happens for a prolonged time, inadequate sleep will catch up with you and cause your health to decline. Excess humidity and high temperature in the air in your house are the primary cause of these conditions.
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Allergy Triggered Episodes
Certain conditions like asthma get triggered by allergens such as dust and other allergens in the air. It features sneezing and wheezing. You will also likely develop hay fever symptoms such as watery eyes. Allergy-triggered episodes that last beyond pollen season indicate that you have unclean air in your home.
The most likely air contaminants that cause allergy-triggered episodes are mold, dust, gases, and wood floor products. And rather than helping with the bad air quality in your home, an air conditioner can worsen matters by distributing the allergens across all the rooms and spaces.
It’s worse if your AC unit has a mold infestation and is still running. The air under circulation is already contaminated. One only way to get around the issue is through AC maintenance, especially cleaning or replacing the filters.
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Excess or Low Humidity
The moisture content in your should be between 30 to 50 percent. Anything lower than 30% renders the air dry, which causes you to develop skin conditions and breathing issues. On the other hand, high humidity encourages mold to grow, which is another indicator of bad air quality in your house.
An overly humid house shows that your air conditioner is not working efficiently. Sealing your hem efficiently while ensnaring adequate ventilation ensures you keep humidity at the recommended levels. Also, a humidifier-dehumidifier can helps keep humidity in your house at optimum levels.
Check the amount of moisture that has settled on your window to help you know if you have excess humidity in your hoes. Also, servicing your AC unit on time, especially during the humid months, can help check humidity levels in your home.
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Odor in Your House
Order in your house may result from different things, such as stagnant air. Chemical pollutants and mold also cause unwanted smells in your home. Cleaning the air ducts in your air conditioning unit is one way of addressing the issue.
Another way of telling when you have bad air quality in your home regarding smells is when usual scents linger. Smells in your house, even the normal ones, should only last a few seconds. Improve ventilation besides cleaning to improve odor dissemination.
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Skin Issues
Change in the state of your skin is also an indication that you have bad air quality in your home. The takeaway from that should be that bad air quality does not only affect the mucous membranes in your body. The prolonged presence of bad air quality causes you to develop rashes, redness, dryness and peeling on the skin.
There are skin conditions such as eczema and acne that develop as a result of exposure to poor air quality. Bad air quality could be dry air or damp, bacteria-harboring air. Installing specific equipment such as humidifiers and dehumidifiers can ensure that your air space has a balanced moisture content.
Conclusion
Bad air quality poses a threat to your general well-being. Developing certain respiratory conditions out of the blue indicates that the air you breathe is contaminated. Excessively moist or extremely dry environments only aggravate the issue of bad air quality.
You can ensure good air quality by improving ventilation in your house. Adequate air circulation in your air space minimizes the number of contaminants in the air. If possible, have experts come into your home to check on your air conditioner and plumbing to keep off certain conditions that come with bad air.
