In urban Indianapolis, avoiding air pollution is hard enough without adding to the problem with air contaminants in your home. If high humidity is worsening your indoor air quality, a whole-home dehumidifier can help.
Humidity and Air Quality
Ideally, your home’s humidity level should be somewhere between 30 to 50 percent. Humidity higher than 50 percent creates ideal conditions for viruses, bacteria, dust mites, and mold.
Viruses and bacteria increase your risk of illnesses such as colds, flu, and strep throat. Dust mites live in fibrous materials such as bedding and soft furniture. While they rarely become airborne, they thrive on damp air and can aggravate asthma and allergies when you breath them in during sleep.
Mold produces spores that float through the air. Inhaling these spores not only aggravates respiratory health conditions, but also increases your risk of respiratory infections. What’s more, damp conditions attract cockroaches, which leave droppings that can cause lung irritation.
How Dehumidification Helps
A whole-home dehumidifier is placed inside your heating and cooling system. As your home’s air circulates through the system, it passes through the dehumidifier, which removes excess moisture. In this way, it maintains a healthy humidity level throughout your entire home.
Among the signs you could benefit from this device are respiratory health problems. If you notice your asthma or allergy symptoms are worse when you’re at home than when you’re out, the cause could be air contaminants at home. Improving your indoor humidity cuts down on these contaminants.
Mold spots also suggest you have a humidity problem. Check for these in the corners of your ceilings, on walls behind furniture, and under rugs. If you smell a musty odor, there’s a good chance you have mold growing somewhere.
A healthy humidity level also keeps you more comfortable and reduces your need for heating and cooling. Your body will be able to cool itself more efficiently in summer, and you’ll feel less chilly and clammy in winter.
To find out if a whole-home dehumidifier can help you, get in touch with us at Mowery Heating, Cooling and Plumbing anywhere around Indianapolis.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Brownsburg, Indiana and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
Credit/Copyright Attribution: “luxxxam/Shutterstock”
