ALBUQUERQUE AND SANTA FE Blog

Home Improvements for a Healthy Home

Whether you're planning to travel during this holiday season or your home has been volunteered as the entertainment hub, it's important to establish a healthy home before the season gets underway. With the amount of planning, travel, shopping, and movement that comes with the holidays, considering your indoor air quality is most likely not at the top of your to-do list. However, it's one of the most important factors to check in order to have a safe and comfortable home ready for the season.

Poor indoor air quality can increase health risks like respiratory irritations and allergy-like symptoms. When you have a drop in your indoor air quality you may also experience less than optimal temperature regulation as well. This can lead to higher monthly costs and energy bills. At Koala Insulation of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, we've taken the time to put together a few crucial considerations when it comes to keeping you and your household comfortable and safe this winter while also not cutting deep into your holiday budget.

How to Improve Indoor Air Quality

The holiday season can be stressful and ensuring your home's indoor air quality is optimized can be a commonly overlooked step. Having proper air filtration and good insulation are both important parts of keeping your home healthy during the holiday season. However, ensuring that your home's filtration and insulation are up to date to ensure a comfortable and stable environment in your household is easier than it sounds. Koala Insulation of Albuquerque and Santa Fe has developed an easy-to-use Healthy House Checklist for you to review as you get ready for the upcoming holiday season.

Clean & Replace Air Filters

Even though it's widely known that your air filters should be frequently replaced, only a small percentage of homeowners make this a common practice. Depending on the type of filtration you have U.S Home Filters recommends that you change the air filters in your home every one to three months. However, many other resources recommend trying to make the habit of changing your filters every month no matter what kind of filtration you have.

Air filters collect pollen, dust, and several other allergens making them crucial for a healthy home. Not changing your air filters regularly can keep these allergens circulating throughout your home. When you have a clogged air filter you can have higher costs and maintenance fees due to possible A/C damage as well as increasing your energy bill.

Develop a Dust & Vacuum Routine

Regularly dusting and vacuuming your home is a simple and easy way to take care of your home. Doing these simple tasks can help prevent triggering respiratory issues like asthma as well as keeping the overall health of your home to a high standard. Dust can hold several potentially harmful pathogens such as dead skin cells, fungi, and bacteria.

Some industry experts recommend that you clean hard-to-reach places every six months while you should be deep cleaning the rest of your home at least every three months. It is important to ensure that you aren't redistributing dust to new areas. To ensure this doesn't happen you should be cleaning from top to bottom to make sure that you are picking up dust that falls from your top shelves to your bottom ones. Once you've finished with the surfaces around your home you should finish by vacuuming thoroughly to collect fallen fibers, stray hair like pet dander, dirt, and sand.

Inspect and Clean Fireplaces

A crucial part of making sure you have a healthy home is keeping your fireplace clean and up to date. Ensuring that your fireplace is properly cleaned and looked after can prevent serious health risks such as carbon monoxide poisoning, chimney fires, and smoke build-up while also increasing the heating efficiency of your fireplace. It is important to inspect your fireplace even if it's not commonly used just in case you decide to prepare roasting chestnuts over an open fire this year!

The Chimney Safety Institute of America advises scheduling annual chimney inspections. Keeping up to date with annual inspections can not only protect your home from potential fire damage but can also reduce health risks that are caused by clogged chimney chutes and drafty openings. Expanding on three levels of inspection, the Chimney Safety Institute explains further in this article what to expect from your inspection as well as how to prepare.

Retrofit and Update Insulation

Having an incorrectly insulated home can contribute to many common problems. According to the EPA, about 90% of U.S homes are either poorly insulated or entirely underinsulated. Having the right material installed in the right places of a home can help reduce the stress on your HVAC system while maintaining the desired temperature and contributing to lower energy bills. Especially during the colder winter months, the insulation throughout your walls, floors, and attic space also contributes to keeping the heat inside of your home.

When your local insulation expert comes in to evaluate the home, they will not only look for deteriorating insulation but will also find any potential weak spots in your home as well. Your local experts will check for underinsulated or poorly covered areas, air leaks, and problematic holes or cracks in the building envelope while also looking for potential hazards like moisture retention and mold growth on existing insulation. By scheduling an insulation upgrade, you will be improving the integrity of your home as well as preparing to keep your home nice and warm for the cold winter months.

Prepare a Healthy Home with Local Insulation Experts

Keeping your home protected and comfortable is a priority you have as a homeowner all year round. However, with the hustle and bustle of visiting friends and family, shopping, cleaning and traveling that the holiday season brings can make it difficult to keep the integrity of your home in your mind. If you're preparing for incoming guests and parties, it's important to ensure the house can handle the season with or without you.

The industry experts at Koala Insulation of Albuquerque and Santa Fe are dedicated to making your home comfortable and safe while also considering your time and budget. With the help of our team, we can not only help improve your indoor air quality and temperature regulation, but also the energy efficiency of your home.  Contact our team today to learn more about insulation’s impact on your home and schedule a free evaluation.