ENERGY STAR Homes

Have you ever used the phrase: I wish I would have (or as we say in eastern Pennsylvania – I wish I wood-a)? Probably most of us have said this phrase at one point in our lives. Building or doing a major renovation to a home can be a place where this phrase is commonly used. “I wish we would have upgraded to the better cabinets”, “I wish we would have put hardwood floors in”, “I wish we would have made the house more energy efficient” and so on. When building a new home a great place to start is making sure it is an ENERGY STAR home.

As the cost of energy continues to rise, making sure your home is as energy efficient as possible will have life long benefits. To this end, ENERGY STAR has developed the ENERGY STAR Residential New Construction Program. As ENRGY STAR puts it: “To earn the ENERGY STAR, a home or apartment must meet strict program requirements for energy efficiency developed by ENERGY STAR's Residential New Construction program. These program requirements are based on extensive interaction with the nation’s home-building industry, including builders, developers, verification professionals, and building scientists.”

So what does the entail? It starts with the exterior, making sure everything is sealed, proper installation, uses ENERGY STAR windows and so forth. You will hear this referred to as the building envelop or the thermal enclosure. All these elements are designed to prevent drafts and make the house tight. This will greatly reduce the monthly utility bills, as the HVAC system will have to work less. There are some consideration when building a tightly sealed home – make sure to read our blog post on the subject by clicking here.

Next we move to the home's heating and cooling system (HVAC). An ENERGY STAR Home will have a certified heater and/or air conditioner installed as well as special attention given to the ducting to make sure they are sealed and installed as efficiently as possible. A mechanical ventilation system that draws fresh, filtered outdoor air into the house and exhausts stale air from inside the house is also a requirement of an ENERGY STAR home. This is where Air King comes into the equation with the QFAMD and a host of ENERGY STAR certified exhaust fans and kitchen range hoods.

Onto the water management – yes we said water management. We don’t think too many people would think to add this to the check list but as ENERGY STAR states: “ENERGY STAR certified homes include a comprehensive package of water management practices and materials that help to protect your home from water damage and reduce the risk of indoor air quality problems.” These processes include making sure water is directed off the roof, the home, has moisture-resistant barriers and that materials are protected during construction. All of these ensure the home is being built to last.

We finish with the appliances and lighting. These are probably the easiest to understand, as they are typically the most visible ones. They are also ones that can easily be changed in an existing home. Many ENERGY STAR Home builders will utilize an appliance and lighting package of products that carry the ENERGY STAR certification. Items such as the refrigerator, dishwasher, clothes washers, ceiling fans, ventilation fans and so forth should all be ENERGY STAR certified. For lighting, high efficiency LED lamps should be used throughout the entire home.

Building an ENERGY STAR home will have long lasting benefits for your utility bills, your indoor air quality, your piece of mind and for the environment. If you are in the market to build a new home, make sure you talk to your builder about building an ENERGY STAR home. Remember our phrase at the beginning of this blog? Now it will be your friends and family saying, “We wish we would have done what you did.”

To learn more about ENERGY STAR certified kitchen range hoods, exhaust fans and fresh air systems visit www.airkinglimited.com. Also visit the ENERGY STAR Residential New Construction Page on their website.

COVID has shut down countries and disrupted lives. In a word, it stinks (technical term). As we are hopefully nearing the end of COVID, or at least learning to live with it, there is a temptation to put everything into a history book and call it a day. While COVID stinks (there’s that technical term again), it has taught us some very valuable things about our living environment. The biggest is the indoor air quality (IAQ) of our homes and work places.

Prior to COVID not much attention was paid to our indoor environment. How many times did colds or the flu make it’s way through families or work places. No one really did much as the common practice was to “let it run its course”. You might have had that one person who doused themselves with sanitizer and ran around the office with a can of disinfectant spray, creating a dense fog that you could barely see through anytime someone sneezed but in general you just hoped it missed you.

While concerns with indoor air quality are not new concepts, COVID has allowed them to finally get some prominent airtime with the general population. The goal is to create a better living environment no matter what is happening with pandemics, endemics or any other viruses floating around. So what have we learned? Proper ventilation and airflow inside your home creates a better living space. Properly utilizing bathroom exhaust fans, kitchen range hoods and having a system for bringing fresh air into the home, will exponentially increase your indoor air quality.

So how do we properly use these components? Well the first step is to use them. As comical as that sounds it does need to be the first thing on the list. There is a long list of reasons these are not used – they're too loud, it doesn’t cross my mind to turn it on, I’m only warming something up, and the list goes on. Our response to all of those excuses is they are all bad. There are a lot of really good, efficient, quiet and affordable options on the market today to upgrade to.

A second step is to make sure they are working properly. You might be noticing a trend here. These are some really basic things we are highlighting. Something like noticing if your exhaust fans are even working seems very basic and it is but it’s always amazing how many times you walk into a home and the fans are not working.

Finally, you need to make sure the exhaust fans are installed and functioning properly. This one is a little more difficult and a lot less obvious. The main culprit with this is the kitchen range hood. To maximize your IAQ it should vent to the outside. Many range hoods do not; instead they recirculate the air back into the kitchen. While this is better than nothing, it does very little for the IAQ of the home and can actually give you a false sense of security. The fans throughout the home should also be working in harmony with each other. Air King’s Total Ventilation System is a great way to ensure this is happening. See how it all works here.

While COVID has been difficult, it is up to us to make sure the lessons learned are not wasted. To learn more about Air King’s Total Home Ventilation System, Air King Range Hoods, Exhaust Fans and Fresh Air Systems click on the links in the menu bar above.

What’s Your Strategy For Fighting COVID?

We all wish there was a simple solution to fighting COVID as we are all about worn out. Unfortunately COVID is still here and while we have learned a lot, we are still not there yet. One issue is we need to look at fighting COVID as multiple layers rather than a “magic bullet”. What we mean is that just getting vaccinated or just wearing a mask isn’t going to fully protect you.

Think of it like walking in the rain. If you just go outside in the rain without any protection, you are going to get wet. If you try the good old newspaper over the head trick, you might keep the top of your head dry but the rest of you will be wet. Now add an umbrella and possibly your top half will stay dry. Next add a full-length rain jacket and you might keep your pants dry. Put on some rain boots and you are about as fully protected as you can get. Using all these items together gives you the best chance of staying dry.

We should be looking at COVID in the same manner. Being vaccinated is one layer of protection but it is not 100% full proof as we are currently seeing across the United States and the World. Wearing a mask as well as social distancing and limiting gatherings helps but is also not 100% full proof.

Now, we want to take a second and say, we are not here to debate vaccines, masks and so forth. We know this is a hot topic and our goal is to help everyone see how all these things can work together then leave the decision up to you.

Going back to our walking in the rain analogy. The umbrella might be a mask and the rain jacket might be a vaccination so what are the rain boots? Ventilation and filtration. Here is an earth shattering revelation. It is really hard to be infected with COVID if it is not present. We know – mind blowing. If we are able to remove the virus through proper ventilation while bringing in fresh filtered air, we just might be able to get ahead of this. While there has been debate as to if we should call COVID an airborne virus or not, almost everyone agrees that it is able to hang in the air for a considerably longer time than other viruses like the Flu. If that air is not moving, being exchanged or filtered then you have increased the chances of infection. 

Adding exhaust fans, fresh air intake and filtration greatly decreases that risk. While we believe proper ventilation is a key factor in fighting COVID as with the other methods, it is not full proof. However, when you add it to a full strategy it provides a pivotal layer. At some point (and hopefully very soon) we will move past COVID but a good ventilation strategy will be one that will benefit your overall health for the long term in many ways.

To learn more about Air King’s Total Home Ventilation System as well as the products to help increase your indoor air quality visit airkinglimited.com/total-home-ventilation.

CO2 Monitoring and Your Indoor Air Quality

You read the latest news headline that “If you are not CO2 monitoring the air inside your house you are putting your entire family at risk!” then the next article reads, “CO2 monitoring is a hoax!” So that makes it fairly clear on what to do – right. In this post we are going to try and find the common ground.

First, what is CO2 monitoring? CO2 or Carbon Dioxide is what we exhale. A lot of people confuse it with Carbon Monoxide, which is what cars produce. CO2 monitors come in many shapes, sizes and price points but all function in basically the same way. The monitor takes readings of the room and displays the CO2 level of the room in parts per million (PPM). The recommended level inside a home or office should be under 1,000 ppm. Now before you run out and get a CO2 monitor, take a reading in your home and freak out because it is over 1,000, we have more for you to read.

Next, why should I monitor the CO2 level? Many people feel that monitoring the CO2 level will give you a direct reading on what the indoor air quality (IAQ) of the home is. This is not untrue but there are a lot of caveats to it. The principle behind CO2 monitoring is that it will give you an indication of the ability of your home to exchange the air, moving bad things like CO2 and other pollutants out of the home. If you have high levels of CO2 it probably means you have poor ventilation and not enough fresh air coming into the home. You will have a constant flow of CO2 in your home from people breathing. This is going to be elevated depending on how many people live in the home as well as if you host and guests.

Okay, sounds fairly straightforward that every home or office should have a CO2 monitor. While we agree that it would be helpful, this is where we get into the caveats. CO2 is only one of many contaminates in your home. While monitoring the levels is helpful, it is not a be all end all for the IAQ of the home. There are a ton of other contaminates that you also need to be aware of – mold, viruses and pollutants produced from cooking to name just a few. The other issue with monitoring is where you place the monitor. If you place the monitor in the middle of the dining room table as the entire family sits down for a meal, the levels are going to skyrocket. This is because everyone will be breathing directly on the monitor. Conversely if you place it in a closet that is cut off from everything, the levels will probably be very low. Both these scenarios are going to produce inaccurate results.

So now we are back to why would I want to monitor the CO2 when I can’t trust the results? One of the main reasons CO2 monitoring has gained popularity is that it is one of the few indicators for risk of exposure to COVID. Lets make one thing very clear – CO2 monitors do NOT detect COVID in the air. The theory (and we think it is a sound one) is that when dealing with an airborne virus or at least one where the main form of transmission is through the air, you can detect how much air has been exhaled by the level of CO2 in the room. Put another way, if the virus is transmitted from people exhaling, the CO2 level will determine how much air has been exhaled. The other thing we know about viruses is if they are not exhausted or diluted the chanced of transmission increases as more air is exhaled into the room. All of this assumes that someone in the room is a carrier of a virus.

Still not sue about a CO2 monitor. It’s okay, the debate is far from over. CO2 monitors can be a helpful tool but are not going to be the magical solution to your indoor air quality issues. As a matter of fact, they will do nothing to solve IAQ issues. At best they will just let you know you have issues. The route of the problem is how to make sure you don’t have CO2 build-up in your home or office. The good news is that there are very simple answers.

Proper ventilation and a source of fresh air are going to be your best solutions. If you have a CO2 monitor and want to demonstrate this, take a reading inside your car. Next drive in your car with the windows up and no air conditioning or the heat on for about five to ten minutes (like on your way to work or the store) and watch the CO2 level increase significantly. Now open the windows and watch it drop almost instantly. What happens is when you are in your car without any air coming in or going out there is nowhere for the CO2 to go. Once you open the windows, it is quickly exhausted out and fresh air comes in to dilute the level. You are still exhaling the same amount of CO2 just now it is being mitigated. The same principles hold true in your home. Having properly installed and functioning exhaust fans as well as a fresh air source will make your home or office a better place to live or work in. Air King has introduced the Total Home Ventilation System aimed at providing proper ventilation throughout the living space by viewing it as a whole and not as individual pieces. See it in action at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbzdzT5CabY

Lets sum all this up. Even with their limitations, CO2 monitors can be an effective tool in determining the level of ventilation and fresh air of a space. They can also be effective at gauging the risk level of a room, especially in a more corporate setting. Using the information gained from the results of the monitor as a piece of the puzzle can help formulate an action plan on how to increase the overall IAQ of the area.

To learn more about ventilation and fresh air solutions visit the exhaust fan, range hood and fresh air sections of the Air King website or view the Air King YouTube channel.

You’re looking to buy a new home. You take a tour and see the bedrooms, the type of flooring and so on. Now you turn the corner into the kitchen and before you even notice the cabinets, flooring and colors you are looking to see if it is a gas or electric cooktop. For some it is gas or nothing. For others electric is fine and now for a handful of people it has to be induction. While this might not be a deal breaker, buyers definitely have strong opinions on the type of cooktop in the home. The type of cooktop can also have a direct effect on the indoor air quality of the home. Matching the ventilation and cooktop is an important consideration. Let's take a look at each of these.

Gas Cooktops
Gas cooktops utilize natural gas or propane to power the burners. An open flame provides almost instant heat allowing pots and pans to heat up very quickly. For this reason it is the preferred method for cooks and chefs. While the cooking benefits are good, it produces a lot more contaminates than electric or induction cooking. If you stop and think about it – you are starting a fire, all be it a controlled one, in the middle of the kitchen. That is going to produce all kinds of contaminates and in large quantities. To properly ventilate the area, you need a more powerful range hood, probably something in the 300 to 600 CFM (cubic feet per minute) range and one that vents to the outside. With the hood removing that much air, you might need to consider how to make that air up depending on how tight the home is (you can read more about tight homes here). In some cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, New York and more, they have either banned gas appliances or there is legislation to do so in the coming years. If this becomes a nation-wide movement the need for more powerful range hoods might be decreased.

Electric Cooktops
Electric cooktops are more common and utilize an element that heats up when current is passed through it. That in turn heats the pot or pan. Electric cooktops are generally less expensive than gas and are easier to install, especially if there isn’t already a gas line to the house. The negative to electric cooktops is the time it takes to heat a pan or especially boil water. For a large pot you might need to start on Monday so it is boiling by Wednesday – okay that might be an exaggeration but you get the point. While electric cooktops still produce contaminates during the cooking process, it is at a reduced rate when compared to gas cooking. Therefore a less powerful range hood can be used, something in the 150 to 300 CFM range. Even with the lower CFM it is still highly recommended that it be exhausted to the outdoors. Unfortunately a hood that the air passes through a filter and then recirculates back into the kitchen is not effective and the indoor air quality of the home will suffer.

Induction Cooktops
This is a new technology that is quickly gaining steam (yes – pun intended). Electric induction cooking utilizes magnets to heat the pot or pan so the cooking surface stays relatively cool. There are some real technical things going on with terms that you need to look up in a dictionary, so for our purposes we will just go with it heats the pan and not the surface. Because it is heating the pan directly, it is the most efficient way to cook as almost all the energy is going directly to the cooking process. With gas and standard electric cooktops, a lot of the energy is lost in the heat transfer. The challenge with using induction cooking is your pots and pans must be magnetic otherwise they won’t work and since this is a newer technology, the price of induction cooktops is still very high. From a ventilation standpoint, they are very similar to standard electric cooktops. Because there is not a lot of wasted energy causing contaminates so a lower CFM range hood can be used. The other benefit is with electric and especially gas cooktops, the residual heat and contaminates being generated can last a lot long than with an induction cooktop.

Summary
In looking at all these technologies, it is important that your kitchen is properly ventilated. How much ventilation depends on the type of cooktop you have as well as how you utilize it. Matching the ventilation and cooktop is an important step as a gas cooktop is going to require a higher CFM range hood while an electric or induction cooktop will require less. Your style of cooking will also factor in. If you are cooking for 20 people every night using all the burners your ventilation needs will be different than someone who is just cooking for themselves.

For more information about matching your ventilation and cooktop as well as Air King range hoods visit the Range Hood section of the Air King website.

What Is Particulate Matter and Why Should I Be Concerned?

When talking about air quality, a term that has and continues to gain popularity is Particulate Matter. Particulate matter is sometimes referred to as PM2.5 or fine particulate matter. To get a sense of why it is concerning, lets first define what it is.

Particulate matter refers to fine particles in the air that are 2.5 microns or less in width, hence PM2.5. To give you a sense of how big, or in this case how small that is, there are about 25,000 microns in an inch. Their small size also allows them to hover in the air for long periods of time and travel long distances outside. So we know they are really small, why is that a big deal?

Because of their small size these partials are able to travel deep into our respiratory track, reaching the lungs. This makes them especially dangerous. Here is where it gets scary. There can be short term and long-term effects to exposure. Short term we can experience things like itchy or irritated eyes, nose irritation (sneezing or running), coughing or even shortness of breath. Longer effects can include increased chances of chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function as well as other lung related health issues. For people with underlying health issues such as asthma, exposure to particulate matter can be especially bad.

So where does particulate matter come from? Unfortunately there are many sources for PM2.5 both indoors and outdoors. The main source is from items that burn fuel such as cars, trucks, construction equipment or from burning wood, leaves, coal, heating oil and in some parts of the country forest fires. Indoors, the kitchen is going to be the main source of PM2.5 and is released during the cooking process, especially if using a gas cooktop. Other sources inside the home can be burning candles, oil lamps, fireplaces and fuel burning space heaters (time to get rid of that kerosene heater – Lasko has a full line of safe ceramic electric heaters). 

We need to take a minute for a public health announcement. Smoking and vaping are the quickest ways to infuse particulate matter into your body. Both methods contain PM2.5 and the process delivers it directly into your lungs.

Hopefully you are not so depressed that you stopped reading. There is hope. Eliminating PM2.5 from the outdoors is going to be almost impossible. What you can do is make informed decisions. Many states post the daily air quality and will send out warnings for elevated levels. If it is a bad air quality day, you might want to postpone that hike, run or anything else that will cause you to breath heavily that day. For those who are around forest fire smoke, staying indoors in a filtered air environment will help.

Indoors is where you can really make a significant impact. First, identify what could be producing PM2.5. The first stop should be the kitchen. This is where it is critical that you are utilizing a properly sized range hood that vents to the outside every time you cook. We have written a lot of blogs regarding the usage of range hoods and encourage you to read through them for more information.

Second, have a constant flow of air coming in and exhausting out of the home. Utilizing a fresh air intake that also filters the air coming in along with exhaust fans removing all the “bad” air inside your home will reduce contaminates inside the home. Air King has developed a Total Home Ventilation system to improve the indoor air quality of the home. You can read more about it here or watch a video on how it works on the Air King YouTube channel here.

Third, think about items that are releasing PM2.5 into the air that you along with your family are breathing. Items such as smoking inside, burning candles (yes we know this is a tough one especially with pumpkin spice candles in the fall), and even some air fresheners.

Eliminating PM2.5 is not attainable, but limiting exposure to it and creating better indoor air quality is. The goal is to reduce by utilizing some common sense and easy solutions. To learn more about ventilation solutions visit airkinglimited.com.

5 Ways to Improve Your Indoor Air Quality

Finding ways to improve your indoor air quality (IAQ) has become a hot topic. More and more research is being done and studies are finding that when you improve your indoor air quality it can have some very beneficial results. Almost everyone can agree that better IAQ is good, but how do we get there? There are a lot of “solutions” on the market today. Some good, some not as good, and some that might be good but need more development. In this post, we are going to focus on the time-tested ways you can improve your IAQ. 

1. Ventilation

As a result of our daily living, contaminates build up in our homes. Each time we exhale we release CO2, when we cook all kinds of contaminates are released into the air, we use cleaning chemicals, and the list goes on. We can choose to stop breathing, cooking and cleaning, or have a strategy to combat these contaminates. A first line of defense is ventilation. It is a very simple concept – take the bad stuff and get it out of the home. Using a kitchen range hood that exhausts to the outdoors can be one of the most effective ways to instantly increase your IAQ. Add to that utilizing your bathroom exhaust fans and now that IAQ score is going to continue to rise. 

2. Dilutions / Fresh Air

Now that we know we have contaminates in the home, another effective way to combat them is diluting them by bringing fresh air into the home. There are many ways to accomplish this and it will look different depending on what area of the country you live. In mild climates, simply opening a window or door is an effective way to bring fresh air in – especially if you are utilizing your ventilation fans properly. The fans will draw the bad air out and the fresh air coming in will replace it. In areas that have more extreme temperatures a mechanical solution might be needed. This is basically a fan that brings air into the home. We have written many post about fresh air and you can learn more by reading through them. One large caution is in areas that frequently have forest fires or consistently bad outdoor air quality. In these cases, some type of filtration might be necessary for the air coming into the home. 

3. Filtration

For homes that have central heating/cooling systems, making sure your air filters are changed on a regular basis can have a big impact. Filters typically have a MERV rating. The higher the MERV rating the more pollutants it filters. A typical furnace filter is about a MERV8 which is effective for filtering out general pollutants including pollen and mold spores. A higher MERV rating will filter out more pollutants but be sure to consult your furnace manufacturer to see what it is rated for. You can read more about filters in our post – The Air Filter Debate – Is Too Much Too Much? The next time you check your filters (or your HVAC technician does), take a look at how dirty they are, and then realize that if the filters weren’t in place, you probably would be breathing that.

4. Remove

Ever walk into a laundry room and immediately are hit with a chemical smell that almost knocks you out? That is because the items you are storing in there are releasing contaminates that are just not good for you to be breathing. We already talked about using ventilation fans to take those contaminates out, but an even more effective solution is to store them outside of the living area if possible. We understand that it is not always possible or feasible to store these outside of the home but the more you can remove, the better your IAQ will be. 

5. Resist

Resist the temptation to utilize air fresheners and candles. These are effective at replacing the odors in the home with better smells but at what cost? No matter what type of candle you use, it will be releasing carcinogens of some type into the air. In the same way, almost all air fresheners (especially the more popular brands) are going to put chemicals into the air that are just not good for you. A good way to think about this is if you are trying produce the cleanest, purest air possible do you want to remove all the “bad” things or keep adding more things to it? Now before you go and tackle the next person in your house that tries to light a candle or excommunicate your kids because they sprayed an air freshener (okay that might be a little extreme), take a deep breath. If you are going to us candles make sure you are using them in a well-ventilated room (goes back to our first point) and use them for a limited time. Taking a bath with a candle or two lit in a bathroom with a properly functioning exhaust fan can be a good balance. 

For more information about how to improve your indoor air quality we suggest reading through the other Air King blog posts on related topics.