#1: How is Your Home's Air Quality?

How is Your Home's Indoor Air Quality?

The air inside the average American home can be up to 10 times more polluted than outdoor city air, according to the EPA. This statistic becomes even more significant when one factors in the calculation that the average person inhales about 9,000 breaths of household air every day.⁽¹⁾

Because homes today are being built more tightly than ever in order to increase energy efficiency, there’s a greater need than ever for controlled ventilation and air filtration. Tightly-built houses that do not have an adequate flow of fresh, clean air can develop what has been labeled the "sick house" syndrome, wherein the occupants of the house become physically ill because of the bad air they continuously breathe while inside the house. Cigarette smoke, fumes from cooking, gases from carpet, furniture and building materials, dust, dander, plant spores, mold — all need to be pulled out of the house and replaced by clean, fresh air several times a day. Plus, your home’s carbon monoxide level could be up to six times higher than the outside air, making you feel sluggish, uncomfortable and sleepy.

Experts say that the air inside a house should be completely exchanged about once every four hours. In drafty old homes, this occurs naturally, as stale air seeps out and fresh outside air is drawn in. But in tightly weatherized houses it can take up to ten hours for one air exchange.

Honeywell Fresh Air Ventilation System

To ensure that there’s continuous air exchange in the Project House, and that we don’t lose any energy in the process, we’ve installed four Honeywell "Perfect Window" Energy Recovery Ventilators (E.R.V.) The Honeywell E.R.V. uses patented technology that exchanges stale indoor air for fresh outdoor air, yet retains the energy used to heat and cool the home.

How it works

The "Perfect Window" ventilation system we installed in the Project House is connected to our heating and cooling system, but the E.R.V.’s can also be used as stand-alone systems. For example, you may choose to exhaust stale air from the kitchen, utility rooms or bathrooms (eliminating the need for noisy ventilation fans) while directing fresh air to bedrooms and living areas. The unit itself can be installed in conditioned spaces such as basements, utility rooms or closets.

Honeywell Electronic Air Cleaner

We’ve made sure that the Project House has plenty of continuous fresh air, but we also want to ensure that the air is fresh and clean. If you could see the air you breathe under a microscope, you might be in for a surprise. Just think of what you see when a ray of light shines through a window. Those little floating particles are only what you can see with the naked eye. Visible dust makes up only 1% of all the particles in the air. In addition to that dust and dander, there’s a virtual soup of particles too small to be seen. These unseen particles ride gentle air currents inside your home and remain airborne for a long time.

Relatively heavy dust particles (more than 5 microns) tend to settle out of the air in 20 minutes or less. They form the dust that’s easily wiped away on tables and other surfaces. Middleweight particles (from 1 to 5 microns) like fungi, bacteria and tobacco smoke may remain airborne for hours before falling out of the air. Lightweight particles, like viruses (less than 1 micron), can remain suspended in the air indefinitely and can gain easy entry to your body through respiration, placing a burden on your body’s immune system.

Honeywell E.A.C. Captures the Smallest Particles

The Honeywell Electronic Air Cleaner captures more than 94% of the particles .5 microns or larger from the air that passes through it. The E.A.C. traps more than 90% of fungi and ragweed pollen antigen from the air passing through it, more than 70% of the bacteria and cat antigen and nearly 60% of the dust mite antigen.

This remarkable "capture" rate is accomplished by capturing most of the larger particles on a pre-filter screen. The smaller particles that pass through the pre-filter then pass through a series of high-voltage ionizing wires (more than 8,000 volts), where they all become electrically charged.

The particles then advance through the cell to the collecting section. The charged particles are attracted like magnets to a series of oppositely charged collector plates. The electronically filtered air is then circulated back into the home.

Contact Information:

Honeywell
1-800-345-6770 x529

⁽¹⁾ Source: Popular Mechanics September, 2001