SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Blog

How to Have a Healthy Southwest Florida Home This Holiday Season

Your indoor air quality relates to the air quality of your home and how it contributes to the comfort and health of your space. Poor indoor air quality can increase the risk of health concerns and even lead to allergy-like symptoms. If you’re regularly waking up sneezing or feeling stuffy and fatigued, it could be related to poor air quality management. With the holiday season right around the corner, this could increase your chances of getting sick.

Regardless of whether you’re planning on visiting friends and family this season or your house has been volunteered as the entertainment hub, a healthy home is crucial. Our team of industry experts at Koala Insulation of Southwest Florida has put together a Healthy Home Checklist, composed of areas to clean and check through before guests start rotating through.

How to Improve Indoor Air Quality

The holiday season can be stressful for many people. However, having a healthy home can be overlooked during this time by most homeowners. Whether it's ensuring that you have proper air filtration or the house is properly insulated, these aspects of your home often fall under an "out of sight, out of mind" mindset. However, creating a comfortable and stable environment in your household is easier than it sounds. Koala Insulation of Southwest Florida has developed an easy-to-use Healthy House Checklist for you to review as you get ready for the upcoming holiday season.

Replace Air Filters

While it's widely known that you should frequently replace the air filters in your home, only a small percentage of homeowners make this a common household practice. U.S Home Filters recommends that you change the air filters in your home every one to three months depending on what kind of filtration you have in your home. However, many other resources recommend trying to make the habit of changing your filters every month.

Air filters are crucial to your indoor air quality, as they collect allergens such as pollen, dust, and many other outside irritators. Not keeping up with changing your air filters can lead to these allergens staying in your home and circulating through the air. Having a clogged air filter can also lead to higher costs and maintenance fees, as it could cause A/C damage as well as increase your energy bill.

Clean Off Dust & Grime

An easy way to help your air filter is by regularly dusting and vacuuming your home. This can help prevent triggering respiratory issues like asthma as well as keeping the overall air quality in your home to a higher standard. Dust can hold dead skin cells, fungi, and bacteria which all can potentially be harmful to you and your household.

Some experts recommend cleaning hard-to-reach areas every six months while deep cleaning easy-to-reach areas every three months. It is important to ensure that you aren't redistributing dust to new areas, though. This can be done by dusting starting from the top to the bottom of your house while using clean supplies such as microfiber cloths. Once you've finished with the surfaces around your home, wrap up with a thorough vacuuming to collect fallen fibers, stray hair like pet dander, dirt, and sand.

Check Your Fireplaces

While less common in southwest Florida, fireplaces are still an occasional feature in larger homes. Making sure that you have a clean fireplace can be crucial to maintaining a healthy home. Ensuring that your chimney is properly cleaned and looked after can prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, chimney fires, and smoke build-up while also increasing the heating efficiency of your fireplace.

The Chimney Safety Institute of America advises scheduling annual chimney inspections. This can not only protect your home from potential fire damage but reduce health risks imposed by clogged chimney chutes and drafty openings. Expanding on three levels of inspection, the Chimney Safety Institute explains further in this article what you should expect, how to prepare, and what an inspection should cover.

Update the Insulation

About 90% of U.S homes are either poorly insulated or underinsulated. Having an incorrectly insulated home can contribute to many common problems. Insulation contributes to a temperature-regulated space, helping reduce the stress on your HVAC system to maintain the desired temperature and contributing to lower energy bills. During the wintertime, 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're not just looking at the deterioration and age of your current insulation. They check for underinsulated or poorly covered areas, air leaks and problematic holes or cracks in the building envelope, and even potential hazards like moisture retention and mold growth on existing insulation. By scheduling an insulation upgrade, you're not only preparing for a warm winter but ensuring the integrity of your home.

Scheduling a Free Southwest Florida Evaluation

It's important to consider the health of your household and visitors as you make plans for the upcoming holiday season. With poor indoor air quality, you're more likely to increase health risks and irritate respiratory conditions. By regularly cleaning, changing out deteriorated insulation and air filters, and maintaining fireplaces, you can help reduce the outdoor pollutants, dust, and allergens that find their way into your home.

Professional insulation experts at Koala Insulation of Southwest Florida are trained and experienced in increasing your home’s comfort and safety. With free insulation evaluations, we’re dedicated to bringing cost-effective solutions that are energy-efficient and supportive of your needs. Contact your local Koala Insulation team today to learn more about insulation’s impact on your home’s health and schedule your free evaluation before the new year rolls in!