It's smoky outdoors. How about inside? • Green Home Consulting

Your home air quality needs to be excellent, especially these days.

It's smoky outdoors. How about indoors?

It's very smoky out there.

The forest fires are raging in Colorado and across the nation. While some are contained, others are popping up. Sadly, Green Home Consulting can’t help you with the drifting smoke and ash outdoors.

But we can do something about your home indoor air quality. Good air quality affects the health and comfort of those who live with you. It’s important to tend to this now, especially because outdoor air naturally enters your home.

Smoky in the Colorado mountains — You can't control outdoor air quality, but you can control it in your home.

How do I protect my home’s air indoors when the air outside is terrible?

There are two things you can work on to foster excellent indoor air quality:

Control indoor pollutants
Control outdoor pollutants that enter the house

Control indoor pollutants.

Watch what you bring in the house. Tobacco smoke is a pollutant. So are pesticides and many household products. Cleaners, bug sprays and pesticides can be toxic. Materials used in the construction of a home, such as asbestos (when disturbed), formaldehyde and lead can be problematic as well. Avoid these toxins in your home.

Control outdoor pollutants that enter the home.

In essence, optimal air quality is achieved with proper:
1. Air exchange
2. Ventilation
3. Moisture control

Now that we are home even more, it's important to have healthy air to breathe.

In other words, you must "Seal tight. Ventilate right."

This industry phrase means that a home should technically be as airtight as possible. This is accomplished by doing various tests for air quality, air leakage, proper ventilation and the right amount (not too much, not too little!) of insulation. Once you learn what’s right for your home, you can make the proper adjustments.

Read more about the details of controlling indoor and outside pollutants through these three elements in our blog about air quality.

Determine if your home air quality is optimal. Then do something about it.

A home energy audit is the only way to identify the quality of your home’s current air quality. The resulting audit report will provide all the recommendations to remediate problematic conditions.