Q–My home is 1,750 square feet, with 1,200 square feet on one level and 550 square feet on a second level, which is 3 feet lower. My home is heated by electric baseboard units and there are no ducts or cold air returns.
The problem is my home is extremely dusty, with continuously stale air and a slow air exchange, except on windy days.
Are there any self-contained tabletop air cleaner units that are reliable and can handle that much square footage? Are there other solutions?
Greg Kravetz,
Michigan City
A–There are a number of things you can do to improve the air quality in your home but first you should determine whether there is a particular source of that stale and dusty air, suggests David Price, an environmental scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency.
For example, you could have a mold problem behind your wallboard, paneling or carpeting, especially in the lower level of your home, which sounds like it could be below grade. “This would be especially true if you ever have had a problem with water seepage or dampness,” he says.
Remove pieces of those materials and check for mold growth, which is a biological pollutant and can aggravate asthma, throat irritations, allergies and lower respiratory infections.
Also check the filters on kitchen fans to make sure they are clean and not clogged. “Check to see if the kitchen fans are operating correctly because one that is wired backwards will just push dirty air into the house,” says Price. “Also make sure the ductwork is big enough.”
Price says pet dander and candle burning can also be a source of biological pollutants.
Also check bathroom exhaust fans to make sure they are exhausting air outside of the home and not just into the attic, which would just be pushing warm, moist air into an area and could promote mold growth.
The next step is to clean up and correct any of those problems, says Price. “For example, if you have wall-to-wall carpeting you might want to consider going to hardwood floors and area rugs, which can be sent out to be cleaned,” he says.
Also, clean the house on a regular basis and consider investing in a high-efficiency vacuum cleaner to minimize dust. Wet-wipe furniture and wash your bed linen often. Get rid of any standing water.
Then, you may want to try to increase the ventilation in your home. “With baseboard heat, you have no active ventilation–just passive ventilation that comes in through the cracks in your house,” Price notes.
A simple and inexpensive way to ventilate is to run a bathroom fan, continuously if needed (make sure the fan is rated for this).
“Keep the windows closed in the bathroom when you run the fan so it draws air from other parts of the house,” says Price. “When a bathroom fan is drawing air out of a house, an equal amount of fresh air is coming into the house through cracks.”
A second, more expensive step would be to install a fan and ductwork system that is dedicated to ventilating the house, says Price. It will probably cost anywhere from several hundred dollars to a $1,000.
You can also consider installing ceiling fans, which will circulate air and make you feel more comfortable. “But if there is mold in the house, those ceiling fans are just going to circulate dirty air,” warns Price.
If these solutions don’t work, you can then consider an air cleaner, says Price. Tabletop models will not be big enough to clean the entire house but you can move one from room to room: Place it in the living room in the evening, for instance, and in the bedroom when you’re ready to retire for the night.
“But remember that an air cleaner will not make much of a difference if you don’t get to the source of the air quality problem,” says Price.
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