Survive Your Upcoming Home Remodel With These Air Quality Improvement Tips

You may now be at the point in your life where you’ve bought a home, but you’d like to make some changes to it before moving in to make it more your own.

Or maybe you’ve saved up the money, or taken out a home equity loan to finally make some big improvements to your current home.

Remodeling is always a great idea, but don’t forget that while you’re doing the work, you need to make sure you don’t compromise your air quality! We’ve got some important tips to help with this.

Let the Pros Deal with Asbestos

Newly built or younger homes don’t have this issue, but if your home was constructed before the 1980s, and you’re about to start tearing walls down, check for asbestos first.

It was a very popular material in building back in the day, thanks to its flameproof properties which made it great for structural reinforcement.

It was, sadly, later discovered that it was also highly carcinogenic, which is why it became a banned substance for use in future buildings. Asbestos, when it is still inside walls, undisturbed, is inert and harmless.

However, anything that breaks it up, such as cutting through walls, and reducing it to dust in the air brings out its cancer-causing properties. If inspectors confirm you have asbestos in your older home, have professionals come in to remove it and restore safety.

Thoroughly Inspect Unused Spaces

An understandably popular remodeling choice for bigger homes is to add a big chunk of new, usable house space by finishing rooms like basements and attics.

However, if these spaces have been neglected for some time, such as having holes in the roof, or a leaky basement, you should be very careful about safely examining these areas for health risks.

Chronically wet basements can be an ideal breeding ground for mold, which then sends spores into the air. Spores, when breathed in, can cause a variety of different respiratory illnesses in people, and can be even more damaging for those with conditions, like asthma.

A roof with breaks or defects may have allowed animals in, such as mice or rats. Any residue from these rodents, whether it is droppings, urine, skin or fur particles can still be virulent. Breathing these particles or even contact with exposed skin can result in infection.

Put a New Filter In Your HVAC

When the cutting, hammering and building has all settled down, you’re still not quite done. A final, but very easy air quality chore remains, and that’s replacing the air filter in your HVAC with a fresh, new one.

If you have no spares in storage, just buy one at your hardware store. You normally only need to do this every three months, but a remodeling has put an unusually high amount of dust and dirt in the air, which your filter has been capturing.

Now, however, that same extraordinarily dirty filter is forcing your HVAC to work harder to compensate for the extra barrier of dirt, and that means higher energy bills until you replace it. Once you have, however, you’ll enjoy what everyone in Tyler, TX deserves. A home that is built just the way you want it, with more comfort, more value, and maybe even increased air quality.