Air quality, temperature, and lightings may affect your productivity as well as your health condition. HVAC system offers comfortable air temperature and ventilation to your environment. Having regular maintenance on HVAC is important because it will tell you if the system is still properly working or needs a repair. You need to check if your system has dust, pollen, debris, leaks, or ice molds. These will affect the performance of HVAC as well as the indoor air quality or IAQ.
What Is An IAQ?
IAQ is a metric that can evaluate the quality of air in your surroundings. It is vital to monitor and to have a standard IAQ because the poor quality of air may affect your health. The IAQ rating can easily be affected by dangerous gas like carbon monoxide. IAQ rating is between 0 to 500 and it is directly proportional to the health status of everyone. Having low values of IAQ represents good quality for the environment while the high values indicate toxic air.
Factors on Having Good IAQ
According to mechanical engineers and designers, it is really important to include the IAQ in designing your HVAC system. If you want to have a good quality of indoor air you must improve your source control, filtration, and ventilation structure. A demand control ventilation can consume less energy and determine the percentage of the gas in the indoor air by using the carbon dioxide sensors.
Air filters on the HVAC system can trap the dirt and pollutants from the air. Once you reached the MERV or Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value of less than 13, it means that you have good air in the surroundings. This standard came from the ASHRAE community or the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers. The filters can also control the dirt going into the HVAC coil. This will contribute to a good production of indoor air quality in your area.
Humidity is also a great factor in the quality of the indoor air. If you have high humidity, you are giving the opportunity for the moisture and mold to grow. When you notice that the humidity increases it is better to adjust your HVAC system immediately. The dew point temperature is also important, the value should in between 40-to-50-degree Fahrenheit. You must always check the filters on your indoor and outdoor unit and conduct a regular filter cleaning. The cleaner the filter is, means higher the ability to trap the dirt in the circulated indoor air.