When Your Home’s Shut Tight, Controlling Dust Is a Must

There’s good news and bad news about controlling dust in your airtight, energy-efficient home. The good news is that dust from external sources is reduced because air exchange between the indoors and outdoors of the house is minimal.

The bad news is that the overwhelming majority of household dust actually originates indoors. With the reduced air circulation in today’s homes, that dust can accumulate to levels that pose both health and housekeeping issues. Susceptible individuals may find that allergies are triggered by exposure to dust. The continuous accumulation of dust on surfaces can pose a never-ending challenge when you’re cleaning, as well. Here are some tips for controlling dust where it starts: inside the home.

• Keep your furnace filter clean. All the air in your home passes through the filter daily. Changing the filter every month during heating season helps maintain optimum filtration and keeps the filter working to reduce dust. Consider also upgrading to a more efficient filter with a MERV (minimum efficiency reporting value) rating of 8 or more.

• Change sheets, blankets and bed covers weekly. Two of the major constituents of household dust are skin flakes and fabric fibers. Bedding is ground zero for accumulations of both. Weekly washing controls the levels in the home. To avoid dispersing more dust ingredients into the air, take care not to shake or agitate bedding while changing it.

• Pay attention to floor coverings. Regular vacuuming, especially in high-traffic areas, controls tracked-in dust. Large area rugs should be taken outdoors a few times a year and beaten vigorously. Smaller rugs can be shaken outside to remove dust.

• Don’t stir up dust — remove it. Dusting with feather dusters and plain rags sends dust airborne. Use electrostatic dusting cloths that attract and capture dust instead. Where possible, dust by hand instead of vacuuming to avoid stirring up dust in the vacuum exhaust.

For more ways of controlling dust and improving air quality in your home, contact the experts at Sobieski Services.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC & plumbing systems).

Image Credit: Here’s Kate