Practice These Air Quality Tips & Survive Your Next Home Remodeling Project

Should you remodel your home? In most cases, the answer is usually yes. It’s a beneficial move whether you just bought a house but haven’t moved in yet, or have lived there for a while and would like some improvements.

While you’re improving the structural quality of the home itself, don’t forget that this kind of work can affect air quality. If you want to make sure the air in your home is as good—or better—than it was before, we’ve got some air quality tips you should take to heart.

Carefully Inspect Unused Spaces

One great home remodeling option that suddenly gives you a lot more “house” in your home is finishing up spaces like basements or attics.

These spaces often have a lot of extra room that goes unused, so you can turn them into additional bedrooms, workspaces, hobby spaces, home theaters, or anything else you can imagine.

But if these spaces have gone unused all this time, you should thoroughly inspect the condition of these spaces, especially if there’s a possibility they may have been vulnerable to the elements.

Leaks in these spaces can create an ideal environment for mold, which sends spores into the air that can compromise lung health as people breathe it in every day.

If rodents have gained entry, their residue, such as droppings, urine, skin or fur, can remain virulent for long periods of time. Making physical contact with this residue, or even sweeping it up and breathing in the residue as dust, has a strong likelihood of causing an infection.

Block Work Areas

If you intend to continue to live in a home that’s being remodeled, it’s important to make sure that workspaces are properly blocked against air contamination.

This doesn’t have to be elaborate. Plastic sheets covering the exposed areas do quite a lot to contain dust particles, and keeps them from spreading to other parts of the home.

Another great tip to reinforce this strategy is to mist down the work area with water. This does a lot to keep dust adhered to moist areas, so not as much of it flies into the air, and stays there, waiting to drift into other parts of the home.

Replace Your Filter

After all the other major work is done, there’s only a little bit of housekeeping left to really wrap up a remodel. You need to get a new filter for your HVAC system and replace the old one. While three months is about the usual interval between changes, this is a very different situation.

Remodeling creates much more airborne dust and dirt than ordinary home life, and your filter has caught much of it. Now, that extremely dirty filter is both not as effective at catching other particles, and is forcing your HVAC to work harder, will drive up your bills until you replace it.

With that final task complete, however, your St. Michael, MN home will be in better shape than ever! You may now have a home that suits you even better, and you might have even increased its property value. If you followed our tips, you’re probably enjoying better air quality than ever before too.