How often do we actually think about indoor air quality? Whether at home or the office, we’re usually more concerned with temperature than we are with quality. However, low-quality air presents a host of issues. Read on to learn more about the most common contaminants and how to improve and maintain your indoor air quality.

Indoor Air Quality

Just as it sounds, indoor air quality (IAQ) refers to the air inside building structures and can sometimes refer to its immediate outside air. Air quality is usually defined as it relates to human health. Indoor air pollutants can cause various human health issues depending on the type, dosage, and length of contaminant exposure.

North Florida’s Most Common Indoor Air Contaminants

The main sources of indoor air pollution in the Gainesville area include:

• Mold
• Excess Moisture
• Radon
• Formaldehyde
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
• Construction Dust
• Household Cleaning Products
• Pet Dander
• Bacteria

Note, that this list isn’t exhaustive. Depending on life habits, this list can be much longer or shorter. For example, well-maintained homes feature better air quality than homes where cleanliness is poorly maintained.

Indoor Air Contaminant Health Impacts

Florida is a peninsula with a warm and humid climate. Therefore, mold is a common issue in many homes and offices. The presence of mold indoors isn’t unprecedented. Instead, issues arise when the mold count indoors begins to exceed the outdoor count — mold concentrations indoors should be nearly identical to outdoors.

Mold begins to get out of control when homeowners fail to practice some of the following habits:

• Regularly running their air conditioner unit during the humid summer months.
• Quickly identifying and addressing an unwanted water source like a slow plumbing leak or roof leak.
• Running their bathroom’s vent fan while showering.

There are thousands of mold species, and some are more toxic than others. Additionally, mold sensitivity varies from person to person, increasing in concert with mold exposure. In other words, the longer a person is exposed to mold, the more their sensitivity increases.

Nearly every home contains various levels of VOCs and formaldehyde from building materials such as insulation and flooring. When a remodel or construction project is completed in a home, there is likely construction dust that can affect the human respiratory system. Homes with pets also contain dander and hair, which can become trapped in crevices and the home’s HVAC duct system.

If left unchecked, these contaminants work together to cause diseases and conditions, including weakened immune systems, cancer, respiratory illness, allergies, and a host of other issues.

How to Improve and Maintain IAQ

Improving and maintaining indoor air quality is accomplished by the following:

• Properly maintaining your home’s HVAC system.
• Regularly cleaning your home.
• Keeping your thermostat setting within an appropriate range (68°F – 78°F).
• Quickly addressing water leaks from faulty plumbing or leaky roofs.
• Checking caulking around windows to ensure they’re properly sealed.

These habits form a great starting place for improving and maintaining indoor air quality. Most of these habits, including some aspects of HVAC maintenance, can be performed by the average homeowner. For example, homeowners can maintain their HVAC system by regularly replacing their air filter every 1-3 months. Other aspects of HVAC maintenance, such as duct cleaning, can be done by a professional.

Contact Gator Air & Energy For a Healthier Home

Here at Gator Air & Energy, we can help you with your indoor air quality. Our services start with proper HVAC system maintenance, including coil and pan cleaning, air filter replacement, duct cleaning, and UV light installation in the HVAC system’s air handler.

Practicing good home cleaning habits and allowing us to provide routine maintenance every 6-12 months will help you breathe easier in your home. Contact us today for more information about our indoor air quality services here in Gainesville, FL, and the surrounding areas.

Whether you’re spending time inside your home or outside, the quality of the air you breathe is incredibly important for your health and wellness. Harmful air pollutants can build up and collect in the air supply within your home, posing significant health threats to your household. As we tend to spend approximately 90% of our time indoors, it’s crucial to ensure that we have clean indoor air in our homes.

While it may seem as though indoor pollution may simply be the remnants of excess outdoor pollution, there are various sources of indoor air pollution directly stemming from your home. These sources include your building materials, cleaning products, pet dander, appliances, excess humidity, and furnishings.

In fact, according to the EPA, indoor air can be up to 2 to 5 times more polluted than outdoor air.

There are specialized HVAC features that can foster clean indoor air by significantly reducing the number of pollutants, including UV lights, increased ventilation, dehumidifiers, air purifiers, and air filter systems. In addition to improving your home’s HVAC system, you can take some simple steps to reduce the source of indoor air pollutants and work with these features to help purify the air.

Add Greenery to Your Home

While plants aren’t as effective as air purifiers, they offer a simple solution to help clean your home’s air naturally and in a cost-effective manner. By nature, some plants help to filter out harmful chemicals in the air, allowing your family to reap the benefits of thriving plants far beyond just aesthetics. We recommend adding these houseplants to help refresh your home’s air supply:

• Pothos (Epipremnum aureum)
• Snake plants (Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Laurentii’)
• Chinese Evergreen (Aglaonema)
• Peace lilies (Spathiphyllum)
• Spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum)

These plants are also some of the easiest houseplants to care for, so even if you don’t have the greenest thumb, you can surely keep these plants thriving. Place two to three of these houseplants about every 100 sq. ft. within your home to help remove harmful pollutants from the air. If your house is not only home to your family but also some furry friends, remember that most houseplants are toxic to animals. You may want to keep houseplants on shelves or safely tucked out of reach from your pets.

Switch to Cleaner Household Products

When we speak about fresh air, that’s not a cue to reach for a spray can of air freshener. While that freshener can make your room smell pleasant, it may also release harmful aerosolized chemicals. Many common store-bought household cleaners consist of toxic chemicals that can increase the pollution of your home’s air, causing additional health-related concerns. As an alternative, switch to non-toxic cleaners at the grocery store with simpler, healthier ingredients or make your own natural cleaning products.

Maintain Your Pet’s Grooming

Pet dander can easily build-up in a home with pets. Pet dander refers to your pet’s skin cells circulating in the air, causing much greater allergic reactions and respiratory problems than the pet fur you see throughout your home. To keep pet dander from accumulating in your home, groom your pet often, ensure that any brushing takes place outdoors, vacuum frequently, and change your AC filter regularly.

Take Your Shoes Off at the Door
When coming home, try to make taking off your shoes one of the first things you do. Walking through your home with your shoes on will transfer dirt throughout your house. This can leave behind harmful substances, including pollen, fungi, pesticides, fecal matter, and bacteria contributing to poor air quality.

Care for Your Home

Cleaning Your Carpets

Your carpets are like sponges for harmful particles and potentially pathogenic microorganisms. By vacuuming and cleaning your carpets regularly, you can minimize the build-up of these pollutants in your home. Most pollutants tend to weigh heavily in the air, causing them to fall downward. This can often lead the lower portion of your home’s air to be even more polluted, posing specific concerns for small children. By actively cleaning these lower areas and the floors on which these pollutants can build up, you can reduce the risk of heightened indoor air pollution.

Ensuring a Healthy Environment

Proactively cleaning your home provides countless health benefits, including improved air quality. Many contributing factors negatively affect your indoor air, including excess humidity, bacteria, mold, and mildew growth. Mold often grows in damp, dark places, like your bathroom or laundry room, and will release harmful spores into the air, causing respiratory issues or triggering allergies and asthma. Cleaning your home before this happens can prevent these additional pollutants from developing.

Open Your Windows

If the weather permits, open your windows to let fresh air into your home. Doing this for a few minutes each day can help circulate the air in your home and allow cleaner outdoor air to refresh the air inside.

Change Your AC Filter Regularly

AC filters trap the indoor air pollutants that flow through your home’s air supply. Routinely changing your filter allows for better air circulation and optimal filtering capabilities, while dirty AC filters enable contaminants to enter your HVAC system and continue to build up in your home. Having a clean AC filter in place allows your HVAC system to operate at its fullest capacity, promoting better indoor air quality. Combine this proactive measure with regular AC maintenance to keep your home’s air circulating freshly.

Breathe Better with Gator Air & Energy

While these are great ways to incorporate healthier practices into your home, to get truly high-quality indoor air, you’ll need to equip your home with the tools it needs. Minimizing the sources of pollutants in your home and purifying the air as it circulates improves the quality of the air you and your family breathe every day. Reach out to our team at Gator Air & Energy to find the best ways to combat indoor pollution. Call us at 352-389-4396 to refresh your home’s air today!

Living in Gainesville, homeowners are no stranger to their fair share of weather extremes. But a constant threat to the security of your home, indoor air quality, and overall comfort is humidity. Luckily, a properly maintained AC unit helps to protect your home and your family from humidity. This is because the main purpose of your HVAC system is to drive air to your unit, which conditions your air, pulling impurities and moisture from the air to deliver back to your home.

The Risks of Humidity and the Help of an AC Unit

Humidity poses risks if too much or too little exists in your home. The obvious threat is of course to your comfort, but some risks are not as noticeable and can do more damage.

Too Much Humidity

When your home has too much humidity, mold becomes a much bigger problem. This can cause mold spores to linger and lead to health or breathing problems, especially for those that suffer from allergies. Mold can even cause rashes or eye irritation.

The build-up of mold not only threatens your family, but can also compromise the integrity of your home. Hidden or noticeable mold damage can occur on ceilings, in insulation, or on your walls, causing more money to be spent on repairs.

Too Little Humidity

On the other hand, not having enough humidity can also cause issues. While this may seem like a very uncommon occurrence in Florida, it can happen in the dryer, winter months. Too little humidity can cause dryness and even irritation. Common discomfort with low humidity includes chapped lips, a scratchy throat, and nose irritation.

Like too much humidity, your home can suffer from less-than-optimal humidity levels. Wood floors can warp or shrink along with wood furniture. Plus, wallpaper can actually begin peeling off the wall if it’s too dry!

How an AC Unit Protects Against Humidity

Finding a happy medium with humidity is important, and sometimes requires either a dehumidifier or a humidifier to accompany your AC unit. However, if you have a quality HVAC system, you shouldn’t have to worry about that.

Dehumidifying is a byproduct of cooling down a house and is done if your HVAC system is working as it should. Air conditioning removes moisture from the air in order to blow cold air throughout your home.

Is My AC Unit Working?

How can you tell if your AC unit isn’t pulling its weight? Well, if you are noticing that the inside of your house is humid, (you would detect a musty smell, possible signs of mold, etc.) then it is possible that your air conditioning unit is not working up to its full potential and might need to be fixed or replaced. Aging or damaged units are not reliable when it comes to maximum humidity protection.

You may have a properly working AC unit, but if you have an older home, humidity and moisture may still find their way inside. Make sure your doors and windows are properly sealed, otherwise, your unit will be working overtime while moisture continues to find its way in.

When Should I Be Concerned?

Of course, we all know that summer is the time when you feel the most moisture in the air, but interestingly enough, summer is not always the time when you should be worried about humidity in your house. Humid air often sneaks up on a house not when you feel it most, but when it is mild and your AC unit is not working as hard.

Because a byproduct of HVAC systems is clearing the air of humidity, when your AC unit isn’t being used heavily, then humidity can easily build up in the house. Therefore, look out for humidity in the spring or fall seasons, especially in Florida.

Contact Gator Air & Energy for Air Conditioning Services

In order to keep your house at a comfortable temperature and protected against humidity, your AC unit should be helping you fight the battle against humidity. Contact our team to schedule your AC inspection or repair if you begin to feel the effects of improper humidity levels.

A recent study from Velux cited that over 25% of all Americans spend their 21-24 hours inside, citing this as a worldwide problem that needs to be addressed. They referred to this phenomenon as the “indoor generation”.

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Here in Gainesville, FL, we’re already beginning to see the tell-tale signs of spring: cars covered in green pollen, seeds sprinkled on the ground, and of course the rise in seasonal allergies.

For many people, this time of year is torture. Stuffy noses, watery eyes, and sore throats are common symptoms of seasonal allergies, and here in the Sunshine State we never truly get relief from the pollen created by our beautiful foliage.

So what can be done? Outside of taking allergy medication, there are a few ways you can help control your allergies in the home. The air conditioning unit in your home helps to control pollen in a few ways. Air conditioners filter the air in your home and control humidity, which both contribute to improving indoor air quality.

As long as your air conditioner is properly maintained, your air conditioner can serve as your home’s first line of defense against Florida’s pollen counts. If you are concerned about your air conditioner maintenance or indoor air quality, Gator Air & Energy are Gainesville’s air conditioning experts, and we can help you breathe easier with our air conditioning maintenance and indoor air quality services.

The Role of Air Conditioning with Allergies

There are several ways that your air conditioner can help to keep your allergies under control in the home.

• Humidity Control – It’s no secret that pests and allergens thrive in humid environments. A well-maintained air conditioning unit acts as a dehumidifier. When hot air is circulated through the system, the air is cooled and condensed, and the cooled dried air is blown out until the optimal temperature is reached.
• Air Filters – Consistently changing your air filter and using a high-quality HEPA filter can also help prevent pollen in your home. If the filter is left unchanged for long periods of time, the trapped particles will have no where to go except to recirculate back into your home.
• UV Lights – If you have UV lights installed in your air conditioning unit, the lights will kill any mold and bacteria that may be lurking in your air conditioning system. In addition, UV lights sterilize the air in your home.

The Importance of Air Conditioning Maintenance with Allergies

If you notice that your allergy symptoms don’t subside when you get home, it may be a sign that your air conditioning unit is due for maintenance. Without regular maintenance, your air conditioning unit is suspectible to allergens and costly breakdowns.

At Gator Air & Energy, part of our process when we perform air conditioning maintenance is cleaning the condenser and evaporator coils within your system. Dirty coils can create mold throughout the system by causing a buildup of water, which in turn will affect your allergies.

In addition, we also offer duct cleaning services, which help to control allergens that may be thriving in the cool and dark environments of your duct work.

Call Gator Air & Energy for Air Conditioning Maintenance

Here in Gainesville, FL, allergies are a concern for many residents. Keeping your air conditioner properly maintained throughout the year can definitely help with airborne allergies. Call us today to schedule your air conditioning maintenance service and we’ll help you breathe easier this allergy season.

The winter season brings about many changes to the air, including how you heat your home. In this season it’s especially important to know how your indoor air quality is affected by the heaters in your home.

Chuck Larsen, the owner of Gator Air & Energy, offers his insights below on what you need to know about how indoor air quality is affected by the changing temperatures in winter.

How Your Air Gets Contaminated

In the summer, the evaporator coil in your air conditioning unit run at 35°F – 45°F. This coil is what is cooling the air as it enters your home. An evaporator coil is similar to a radiator on a car. It has tubes where the refrigerant is evaporated and many small fins to aid in heat transfer to the tubes.

If your unit has no air filter or a fiberglass filter instead of a high-efficiency pleated filter (that captures more contaminants), the contaminated air is cycling through your home. Dirt from the air will accumulate in your system and ducts and will serve as food for the microbes that thrive in the dark, cold, wet environment of the coils. Remember the coil drains moisture out of the air and outdoors through a ¾ inch drain pipe all summer long.

Heat Pumps and Winter Indoor Air Quality

Due to Florida’s relatively warm climate, many homes in North Central Florida are equipped with heat pumps. Essentially a heat pump is the same as an air-conditioner, except for the fact that it is cycling warm air into your home rather than cool air. Throughout most of the year, air conditioners work as heat pumps in reverse by cycling hot air through cooling coils to cool your home.

In the winter, the coil works in reverse to heat your home and becomes a heat coil. When that happens, the dirt and microbes in your system will dry out. This is what causes a “musty” smell that many homeowners complain about when turning on the heat for the first time in winter.

Your system might also be equipped with an auxiliary electric heater to serve as a second stage heater or when the system needs to be defrosted. When this additional heater is activated, the dirt and contaminants will get burned off the heater elements (like they do in a toaster). This is what causes the short-lived “burning” smell when you turn on your heat pump in the winter.

Furnaces and Winter Indoor Air Quality

Furnaces are less common in North Central Florida, but there are still many homeowners who use them. In gas furnace heat, the cooling coil becomes inactive and gas is fired into a heat exchanger sitting below the cooling coil. With gas furnaces, the heat is much higher than in a heat pump. Temperatures in a heat pump are 90°F to 105°F whereas a gas furnace produces heat at 120°F to 150°F.

Similar to heat pumps, the coils in a furnace are heated and the contaminants in the duct system and on the coils can burn or become airborne. Some furnaces also produce heat using natural gas, propane, or oil. It’s especially important for homes with this type of furnace to watch out for CO (carbon monoxide) poisoning. If your home is not properly ventilated, you could be at risk.

Older combustion furnaces are also at risk of developing cracks in the heat exchanger. Annual furnace inspections are essential – even on newer furnaces – to detecting these often invisible cracks which could lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. If your furnace is in the 16-20 year age range, it may be time to start considering a new furnace.

How to Improve Indoor Air Quality in Winter

If you’re looking for ways to improve your indoor air quality this winter, there are several easy things you can do today.

• Install UV Lights – Installing UV lights in your home kills the microbes and bacteria that thrive in your ducts and coils. As the air cycles through, the air is sterilized and prevents any contaminant growth.
• Have Your Ducts Cleaned – Having your ducts cleaned regularly prevents the buildup of dirt and dust, keeping the air clean when your heater starts.
• Change Your Air Filter – Changing your air filter at least every three months prevents dust and dirt from entering your system. It’s important to use a high-efficiency, high MERV rated air filter.
• Coil & Pan Maintenance – Regular maintenance and cleaning of the coils and pans of your system not only improves air quality but also improves the energy-efficiency of your system.

Dirty coils can cost up to 37% more on your energy bills.

Call Gator Air & Energy to Improve Winter Indoor Air Quality

Although AC contractors are not microbiologists or certified mold remediators, we know how to prevent or remediate indoor air quality through proper maintenance and cleaning. We also offer HVAC system upgrades such as high-efficiency air filters, UV air purifying lights, or electronic air cleaners with activated carbon working with UV lights.

If you’re concerned about your indoor air quality this winter, give us a call today! We can help you choose the best option for your needs, and keep your family breathing easy this season.