When you hear
Air Balancing you might have pictures of a puff of air trying to stay on a
narrow bar without falling off. While that might be something you would see in
the comic section, when it comes to your home, Air Balancing is a bit different
and more important. The simple explanation is that the amount of air coming
into the home needs to match the amount of air going out of the home.
So what air
is going out of your home? There is more air leaving your home than you
probably realize. Items such as your furnace, water heater, clothes dryer, range hood, and bathroom
exhaust fans can all be pulling air out of your home. All of these items
provide a pivotal role in the overall comfort and/or indoor air quality of your
home so not using them is not an option.
This is where
the balancing comes in. As we defined earlier, balancing is making sure the
amount of air going out matches the amount coming in. So where do we get the
air (referred to as make-up air) to balance everything? This all depends on the
construction of you home. Many older homes have what is called natural air infiltration.
The rest of the world knows these as drafts. In newer homes, the amount of
drafts has been greatly reduced. You might hear the term – tight home. While
this helps with the comfort and efficiency of the home it creates an issue with
the air balance of the home and it is harder to account for all the air leaving
the home. An easy way to balance the air is to leave a door or window open.
That works great unless you live in a climate that has temperature changes
(like almost all of the United States). There might be a few weeks of the year that
this would be a viable option but in the middle of summer in Arizona or the
middle of winter in Minnesota, not sure you want to have a window open. This is
where mechanical solutions come in. A mechanical solution like the Air King
QFAM is set up to bring fresh, filtered air into the home – balancing the
amount of air leaving the home. There are air test that can be done to your home
to determine how much air is leaving, then the QFAM can be set to deliver the
proper amount of air flow to make-up that air providing a safe living
environment.
Wait, you
used the phrase “safe living environment” does that mean mine is not? Maybe. If
a home is too tight and the air leaving is not replaced, you can create a
negative pressure inside your home. Air will always find a way to balance
itself and can start pulling from things like furnace vents or chimneys. The
negative pressure won’t allow them to vent properly and the
harmful fumes, gases and contaminates that should be going out of the home
could be coming back into the living environment. For these reasons the
American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers
(ASHRAE), who is a leader in writing codes for indoor air quality standards has
included a provision for fresh air (or make-up) air in the latest version of ASHRAE
62.2.
