National Indoor Air Quality Awareness Month

Posted by Andre & Erika Lacroix on

How to get better Indoor Air Quality in your home

By Andre Lacroix, Indoor Air Quality Expert; IAQA, BPI, ISAQ, NCHH, NEHA, BHA & AARST

national indoor air quality awareness monthWhile air pollution gets a lot of attention, the air inside homes may be more dangerous.

October is National Indoor Air Quality Awareness Month for good reason. This is the time of year we are typically spending even more of our time indoors. This is also the time of year many of us expereicnce a spike in allergy/asthma symptoms, increase in “colds” or sinus irritation and infections as well as more coughing and sneezing!

Don’t be so quick to blame all these health effects on the colder weather or seasonal allergies, maybe the cause is lurking INSIDE your home?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), you’re likely to experience up to 100 times greater exposure to air pollutants indoors than outdoors.

Unfortunately, most people spend about 90 percent of their time indoors, even more so for our infants and elderly, being exposed to those potential sources of pollution that often lead to discomfort and illness.

That’s why ventilation is critical to a healthy indoor environment. People with asthma, allergies and other sensitivities breathe easier with clean air. Adequate ventilation can improve indoor air quality by removing airborne irritants, pollutants and lowering the likelihood of mold and mildew.

Only recently have home designs really taken into account the need for fresh air indoors. In older homes, windows and the rest of the home leaked so much air that mechanical ventilation wasn’t required. Also, in the days before most homes had central air conditioning, people more often opened their windows and doors for cooling and ventilation, allowing airflow through the house.

Most homes, even older ones, have some sort of mechanical spot ventilation fan, usually in the bathroom areas. Spot ventilation is the use of exhaust fans (such as kitchen, bath, or utility fans) that quickly remove moisture and pollutants from the area. Depending on your home, spot ventilation is usually part of an overall strategy of either natural ventilation or whole house ventilation.

Daily activities like showering and bathing introduce moisture into the air, so it’s important to have ventilation to manage humidity. Humidity – moisture in the air – can get out of control and cause poor indoor air quality that can lead to adverse health effects and damage to the home. Ventilation is also vital for fresh air in the house when a gas furnace operates to avoid any problems with carbon monoxide.

What can you do to make your Indoor Air Quality better?
It’s EZ – Mechanical Ventilation!

indoor-air-quality-cleveland-oh-ez-breathe-2Whole house mechanical ventilation maintains the
overall indoor air quality of the home by moving air continuously, compared to local exhaust fans in kitchens and bathrooms that remove high volume
of pollutants from rooms where they are created.

The amount of whole house mechanical ventilation required is determined using a formula based on the size of the building and the potential number of occupants, resulting in a desired cubic feet per minute of air movement.

Whole house mechanical ventilation can be accomplished using a single ventilation fan, air exchanger or other method; or use a combination of these to achieve the required airflow.

If you’re building a new high-performance home or updating an existing home, you will likely encounter the need for whole-house ventilation. Homes built to tighter standards require ventilation systems. That means creating a path to exhaust the stale, dirty air. You want to build tight and then ventilate right.

With a ventilation system, there’s a continuous flow of fresh air to reduce humidity, odors, particulates, VOCs and other potentially harmful substances in the air. Mechanical ventilation also provides a much more even temperature and comfort level throughout the home, improving the overall indoor air quality!

ez breathe ventilation

Written by Andre & Erika Lacroix

We are a 2nd generation family owned and operated business that has been working in homes with basements and crawl spaces for over 40 years.  We have been waterproofing and sealing about 500 foundations a month during that time as the largest Waterproofing contractor in the Midwest with 15 locations servicing 8 states.

20 years ago we would seal a foundation and recommend a standard dehumidifier to address the additional water vapor (humidity in the air) inherently found in below grade environments, such as basements and crawlspaces.  Back then, dehumidifiers were the industry standard to help with this problem. However, many of our customers were looking to us as the “foundation expert”, asking…

“What else do you have? I really am not getting results with this messy, expensive dehumidifier. My foundation is dry, walls are dry, floor is dry, so why does it still smell and feel like a basement?” 

We needed to find something better. Our company’s core values include offering world class customer service to every customer, every time.   So, we challenged our Research and Development department to find a real solution for our customers to combat not only the moisture, but also the odors, pollutants and unhealthy environment our customers were concerned about. We found, tested and installed a ventilation product for a period of three years. We private labeled that product as the EZ Breathe Ventilation System. The feedback in those first three years from our customers, as well as our installation crews, did not live up to the standard of quality to be included in our waterproofing process that offered a life time warranty. Once again, we needed something better.

We valued not only the results, but what we were learning from our customers. So, we went back to the drawing board, took matters into our own hands and made quality improvements to that first generation ventilation unit.

Our own EZ Breathe Ventilation System was born…reengineered, redesigned and much improved! We quickly learned that our crews were thrilled with the quality improvements, ease of operation and installation, but more importantly, our waterproofing customers loved the new, improved EZ Breathe unit as well.

Their feedback told us the air in their basements and crawlspaces felt better, but their entire home was benefiting from their EZ Breathe as well. We received countless letters thanking us because their whole house felt different, less odors, fresher air upstairs too, family members were feeling better, needing less allergy medicine, husbands were no longer snoring, children were no longer coughing as much, the home and it’s family were living healthier lives!

It was time for us to move beyond simply offering this innovative technology to just our waterproofing customers. Our passion and commitment to helping people improve their indoor air environments is what drove us to incorporate EZ Breathe Ventilation Systems as an independent company in 2003. We strongly believe that homeowners everywhere deserve a healthy indoor air quality.

We have spent the last 20 years dedicated to learning about the relationship between our home and our health; indoor air quality, the home as a system, building science and how it relates to indoor air quality as well as the challenges our modern day practices pose to the quality of air we breathe in our homes.