The air inside your home plays an important role in how comfortable you are and, in some cases, how healthy you feel, too. This is why having good indoor air quality is pretty important.
Let’s be clear though, just because your home isn’t filled with smoke or smog doesn’t mean that it has good indoor air quality. Your indoor air quality is impacted by factors such as dust, pollen, humidity or lack thereof, and even how much fresh air you have access to.
One way to help improve your indoor air quality is through the use of air filtration systems. If you don’t already know about the ins and outs of whole-house air filtration, we can provide some helpful facts to help you learn a bit more about their potential benefits.
Staten Island is still cold and spring is only being hinted at by the fact that temperatures have been above freezing for a while. With that said, no one is about to crack a window to let in the breeze for some fresh air because that fresh air is still really cold. But fresh air does sound quite good, especially when you’ve kept your house buttoned up for months on end and you’d been breathing filtered air all day long.
You like enjoying the clean warm air that is being pumped out of your vents. But every once in a while, that air can feel a little artificial and you wish you could open up a window and enjoy the fresh air too. Unfortunately, it is too cold out and you’d rather not run your heater just to have the hot air get sucked outside.
MERV may look like a misspelling of the name Marv, but these four letters are vital for understanding the air filters in HVAC systems designed to trap particles from circulating through a building. Not all filters are the same: the simple panel filter on your HVAC cabinet is designed to stop large contaminants like dust and lint from getting into the system, while the HEPA filters used in hospitals are powerful enough to stop the movement of bacteria and viruses. MERV is the rating that explains the filtration power of the filter. The higher the MERV rating, the tighter the filter weave. 
There are many ways you can improve your home’s indoor air quality and its ventilation. One of the most useful is the installation of an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) or heat recovery ventilator (HRV), devices which allow fresh air into your house without it drastically changing the indoor temperatures and placing more stress on the AC or heater.
Air quality in homes is a growing concern today. Government studies have found that the air inside buildings, including residential ones, can be three to four times worse than the air outside. This goes against what most people think of when they think of “air pollution.” The reason for this spike in indoor air pollutants is that homes aren’t designed today for sufficient circulation of outdoor air. This helps to keep homes energy efficient (less heat gain in hot weather, less heat loss in cold weather), but it ends up trapping numerous pollutants generated indoors from household products, paint, varnish, cleaning supplies, and plain o’ dust and lint.
The summers in New York can be notoriously humid, turning what would normally be pleasantly warm weather into something much more unpleasant. It’s not that the high moisture levels is making that day any hotter. What’s actually happening is the moisture in the air is making it harder for your body to release heat—and when there’s more heat trapped in your body, the temperature will feel around 10°F hotter than it is!
It’s not quite full spring weather yet here in Staten Island, but it’s definitely the time to start preparing for it. One of the essential steps is to schedule maintenance for your air conditioning system or heat pump so that it’s ready to go when the first heat hits.
“It’s not so much the heat, it’s the humidity.” Everybody has heard a version of this saying before. People know that when humidity is high, a hot day feels worse. But why does it feel worse? And is an extremely dry day much better? Is there an ideal between too humid and too dry? And what can you do to achieve that ideal in your house?
