If I seal everything up how will my house breathe?
You’ve probably heard that statement before…it’s kind of funny if you think about it. In reality it’s us, the ones inside the home, that needs to breathe. And today we need to control that air inside our homes and make sure it’s of the best quality…hence another term you might have heard used today, indoor air quality.
Let’s talk about where the phrase “houses need to breathe” came from. To do that we need to go back in time to when people first started building homes. They were like the log cabin pictured above. The main purpose was for shelter. If you wanted to cool off in the summer you went outside and fires were used in the winter to keep warm. They were super leaky structures that NEEDED TO BREATHE…and did so very well. Now let’s flash forward to the 1970’s when HVAC systems being installed in homes become commonplace.
When people wanting to be more comfortable inside their homes added these systems we changed things. People started seeing their energy use go up with higher utility bills and became concerned with making their homes more efficient. The motto today is “build tight and ventilate right.”
To do this we air seal the space, properly size the hvac system, and mechanically exchange fresh filtered air. Controlling these allows us to have energy efficient and comfortable homes with good indoor air quality.
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