Discover Stress-Free Home Renovations When You Focus On These Air Quality Tips

Have you been thinking of renovating your home? There are plenty of good reasons to do this, from pragmatic concerns like buying a home at a reasonable price that needs some fixing, to just wanting your home to be more personalized to your preferences.

But while you’re renovating, there can sometimes be issues that may compromise the safety of the air. We’ll show you how to avoid these issues with some important safety tips.

Take Proper Precautions With Moisture Control & Floors

Most people will worry about floors and water accumulation in the more obvious rooms, like kitchens and bathrooms that are regularly exposed to direct sources of water.

However, if you’re finishing up other parts of a home such as a basement or attic, and you’re planning to lay out carpet, moisture control is essential in these spaces as well.

For example, if your basement is leaky, and you don’t address this, mold can eventually form directly under carpeting.

Once it does, not only will the carpet be damaged, the mold will send spores into the air that everyone in the house will now be breathing. Constant exposure to mold spores can lead to illness in healthy people and severe reactions in people that already have respiratory conditions.

Be Careful With Removing Old Paint

If you’re about to strip out paint from the walls, and it’s clear to you that this paint job is very old, predating 1978, you need to exercise a bit more care.

There’s a strong chance that the paint you’re about to remove may have used lead as one of the ingredients. While lead itself is not an illegal substance, its use in paint was eventually banned.

Similar to asbestos, lead, when it is in paint, on a wall, is inert, and not very harmful at all. However, lead particles, freed into the air as dust, can cause some serious health issues when breathed in by adults.

It is children, however, that are especially vulnerable to lead dust in the air thanks to their still-developing lungs. So make sure that if you’re removing old paint, precautions are taken by the workers doing the removal, and the dust is effectively contained and removed before children set foot in the space.

Replace Your Filter

Your final chore, once the major renovations are done, is to buy a new filter for your furnace and HVAC system if you don’t have any spares in storage.

Ordinary usage conditions would only require the replacement of a filter with the change of seasons, or every three months. However, with an unusual amount of work done during the renovation, this brings a high amount of particulates into the air.

Your filter will inevitably capture and hold these contaminants, as it was designed to do. But beyond a certain point, a dirty filter hampers the efficiency of your furnace, as it needs to work harder to pump air past a blocked filter. This results in you paying higher energy bills until you finally restore efficiency with a replacement.

But once your home in Beverly, MA has finished with the renovations, you’ll be in a better place, both literally and financially! Renovations add to your property value, and if you’ve done it by following our tips, you’ve done with safe air conditions that may even be permanently improved!