5 Signs of Poor Ventilation In Your Home

Our homes are our sanctuaries and we want to keep them as healthy as possible so identifying signs of poor ventilation is a great place to start. Ventilation simply put is removing the “bad” air from inside the home and replacing it with fresh air. This can be done in a few different ways. Mechanical ventilation is the most common. This is where an exhaust fan is utilized to exhaust the stale/contaminated air out of the home. Other methods are considered natural ventilation where you rely on opening windows or doors to allow the fresh air to come in and push the stale air out. There are more nuances to these but the basics are either you are controlling the ventilation of the home through an exhaust fan or you are letting nature control it through openings in the home. Now that we have an understanding of ventilation let’s take a look at some of the signs your home is not being properly ventilated.

Mold or Mildew

The easiest place to look for this is in the bathrooms as that is where it will be most prevalent. If your bathroom is not properly ventilated, it won’t take long for the constant presence of moisture to create a mold and mildew issue.  This typically happens for one of 3 reasons:

1. A bathroom exhaust fan is not present. Without any way of mitigating moisture, it will be very difficult to control moisture build-up. We would highly recommend installing an exhaust fan.
2. The current exhaust fan is not being used properly or is not working. This could be either it doesn’t get turned on or is not run for a long enough time. For most bathrooms, the fan should run for at least 20 minutes after the shower has been used. A solution for both of these is to install a humidity sensor that will automatically sense the humidity level of the room and turn the fan on or off accordingly. If you are in the market for a new exhaust fan you can look for one that has this feature integrated into the fan. For existing exhaust fans, a wall switch (like the Air King DH55) can easily be added.
3. The current exhaust fan is not powerful enough for the room. In general, you will need at least 1 CFM (cubic feet per minute) of ventilation for one square foot of space. For instance, a 10-foot by 10-foot bathroom equals 100 square feet, requiring at least 100 CFM of ventilation. The challenge is that just because a fan says it delivers a certain amount of CFM, it might not. Factors such as how the fan was installed, how much ducting and many more factors can decrease the fan’s airflow. The solution might be to upgrade your fan to a higher airflow. If installing a new fan is not an option, running it longer is a work around. You can also consider a humidity switch as was discussed above.

Dust

This seems like a little bit of an odd one. All homes have dust – right? While that is true, let’s take a look at how dust accumulates. In order for dust to build-up it cannot be moving around. It has to settle in one place. If your home is being properly ventilated a good amount of the dust should be exiting the home. It will not be 100% but it should be noticeably less. Having an exhaust fan running continuously can help the build-up. National building codes now require a whole-house continuously running exhaust fan to be installed in a central location of the home. This is a great first step to having a properly ventilated home.

Musty Smell

Does your home smell musty, especially when you come back after being away for a few days. This is a tell-tale sign of poor ventilation. The smell is typically coming from a build-up of moisture somewhere in the home and is usually because fresh air is not getting into the home. As with the other signs, having properly operating exhaust fans – especially a whole house exhaust fan will greatly reduce moisture build-up and the musty smells that it produces.

Sickness

Does it seem like someone is always sick in the household? A contributing factor could be poor indoor air quality. If things like mold and mildew are present in the home and are not mitigated, they will cause a constant state of unhealthy air to be breathed in by all the inhabitants of the home which could lead to sickness. Poor ventilation can also contribute to illnesses being passed from one member of the household to another as well as prolonged illness. Have you heard the term “go out and get some fresh air”? A second best to that is making sure the air inside is fresh. While having a properly ventilated home is not going to protect you from ever being sick, it could greatly increase your health by reducing the factors that lead to you being sick. If you are in a season where it seems like someone is always sick, try looking at your home’s ventilation and make adjustments to increase the amount of ventilation and especially the amount of fresh air coming into the home.

Hot or Cold Rooms

Here is another item that most people would not consider as part of signs of poor ventilation but do you have areas of your home that are either too cold or too hot? While there are multiple factors that could contribute to that – poor insulation, HVAC system issues, poorly installed windows and so forth, a hidden item might be ventilation. How ventilation plays into this is by making sure there is a good airflow through the home. This allows the conditioned air to be properly distributed through throughout the home. Without airflow your HVAC system might be pumping cool air (during the summer month) into the house but without good room to room airflow, some rooms will not be cooled as well as others. A simple way to demonstrate or test this is to go to the room furthest away from your HVAC system on a hot day where the air conditioner is running. Close the door for a little while and see what happens to the temperature of the room. It will probably increase compared to the rest of the home. This happens because the cooler air from the other rooms is not able to be circulated as it needs to be. While in theory each room should be able to be cooled (or heated in the winter) on its own – in reality, it just doesn’t happen that way and the home relies on the air being circulated.

Is your home showing signs of poor ventilation? We hope that this article can help you identify and correct them. Air King offers a full line of ventilation solutions that can help the overall indoor air quality of your home. To learn more about Air King exhaust fans and fresh air intake, visit airkinglimited.com.

Rental season is here – is your ventilation ready for guests?

With a growing number of families owning rental properties or being part of a service like Airbnb there are always things to take care of. Is the rental clean, did anything break, when are the next guests coming and so forth. Then there are things that are not as much at the forefront of our minds but could have an impact. One of these is the ventilation in the rental. Yes, we are talking about the exhaust fans in the bathrooms. Now before you just tune this out with an “Are you kidding me” hear us out on this one.

We have already addressed the importance of proper ventilation within a home and especially in the bathrooms in some of our previous posts. Now we want to apply that to a rental property. It’s just a fact that most people are not going to take care of the place they are renting as well as if it were their own home (for those who do – thank you!). That means things like exhaust fans probably are not going to be used to their fullest potential – as in they won’t be turned on. This can lead to problems such as mold, mildew, or moisture damage in and around the shower. No one wants to have to spend extra time and money cleaning or repairing something that could be avoided.

Here are a few things to consider on how to combat the issue:

NOTE: All electrical work must be done in accordance with all local and national codes. If you are unsure, hire a licensed electrician to do the work.

1.     Add a motion sensor (or occupancy sensor) to control the exhaust fan. There are models that have this function integrated into the unit or you can add this feature as a wall switch. This will ensure that the exhaust fan turns on each time someone enters the bathroom.

2.     If it is a fan/light combination, wire the light and the fan together. This way every time the light is turned on, the fan will also be turned on. This can usually be done very easily even after the fan is installed.

3.     Add a humidity control to the fan. As with the motion sensor, there are many exhaust fans that have this function built in but there are also wall controls that can easily be added to most installations such as the Air King DH55.

4.     Install a dual speed fan. These fans have a low speed that runs continuously, providing constant ventilation. The high speed provides ventilation when the bathroom is in use. A wall switch or a built-in humidity and/or motion sensor can control this.

5.     Think about installing a larger CFM exhaust fan. While the general rule of thumb is 1 CFM of exhaust per square foot, this is a minimum, not a maximum. Generally, rentals are going to be used a little harder than normal living. Instead of an 80 CFM fan for your 80 square foot bathroom, a 100 CFM fan will be more effective. You don’t need to go crazy, but something in the 10% to 20% extra ventilation should do the trick.

With so many other things to be concerned with on your rental property, why not eliminate one of them by ensuring your bathrooms are properly ventilated. Happy renting.

For more information about Air King’s ventilation solutions including motion sensing, humidity sensing and dual speed fans as well as wall control switches, visitwww.airkinglimited.com.

Get ventilation sensitive – using a humidity sensor with your exhaust fan

Thinking about how to improve your bathroom might not be something you spend a lot of time dwelling on and if you do it is probably how you want to replace the vanity, that new shower head or even how you are going to completely remodel. Even when you clean the bathroom, probably more thought goes into what a hassle it is and how much mildew is building up after just cleaning it.

While a complete remodel of the bathroom might be out of reach, there is a fairly simple upgrade you can make to your bathroom that will at least help with the cleaning process – adding a humidity sensor to your exhaust fan.

A humidity sensor will automatically turn the exhaust fan on when the humidity level of the room reaches a preset point and will stay on until it falls below that point. Here is how it works; you start the shower, which instantly raises the humidity level of the room so the fan turns on. After your shower, there will still be residual humidity in the room, so the fan will continue to run until that humid air has been exhausted out of the home. This helps prevent the build up of mold and mildew, both like warm humid environments. As an added bonus, it is all automated, nothing for you to do.

Adding a humidity sensor can be done fairly easily. If you need to install a new fan or replace an existing one, there are many options that have a built in humidity senor. If replacing the fan is not something you need to do, humidity sensing wall switches are available. These simply replace the current switch the fan is wired to.

To learn more about integrated humidity sensing fans or humidity sensing wall switches, visit www.airkinglimited.com.