RESOLUTIONS! Keep your home happier and healthier this year
The new year is coming soon and, as is tradition, it’s time to make some resolutions.
Many of us make personal resolutions to improve our daily lives—exercise more, eat better, lose weight, put family before work—but what about making New Year’s resolutions for your home? For 2020, consider making these resolutions for your home and suggesting these ideas to your home inspection clients.
Make It Safe
So many homeowners focus on making their homes beautiful, but have they also made it safe? There are a few things every homeowner should do to ensure they’re not living with a potential health or fire risk.
First, check your house for radon. Radon gas is a serious public health risk in British Columbia (BC) and the leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. Most people are exposed to radon in their homes, schools, and workplaces. It is when radon gets ‘trapped’ in a building and accumulates to high levels, that the risk of lung cancer rises to actionable levels. In 2014, the BC Lung Association (BCLA) completed the largest single-community radon testing effort performed in Canada to date in the community of Prince George, BC. Not only were home radon concentrations tested, but homeowners were guided through a building survey. The survey was designed with months of communication between stakeholders from the private and public sectors across BC, and internationally. The main purpose of the survey was to determine any association between high or low indoor radon concentrations and building characteristics such as age of construction, heating type, number of storeys, etc.
As long as we’re talking about colorless, odorless deadly gas, it is absolutely essential that every homeowner installs a working carbon monoxide detector on every bedroom floor in addition to smoke detectors. If a chimney flue or furnace vent gets blocked or leaks, carbon monoxide can back up into your house and kill you. Like a radon test, a carbon monoxide detector is a small investment for such an important safeguard.
Homeowners also should pay attention to the lint in their clothes dryer. Sure, you clean the little trap inside the door, but most homeowners neglect to clean the ducts and vents behind the dryer. A little lint may seem innocent, but it’s highly combustible. Vancouver sees around 20 house fires a year due directly to a dryer. If you notice any decrease in performance, it’s getting too hot or it’s not hot enough, that’s probably an indication that you have a problem down the line, so investigate that promptly.
Finally, make sure your house can breathe. It’s surprising how many bathrooms and attics aren’t properly vented outside the house and how many homes have vents that are covered by shingles. Poor ventilation makes your home a prime candidate for developing mold, which comes with its own host of health hazards.
Reduce Your Energy Footprint
Reducing your energy footprint is good for the environment and for your wallet. Start with your HVAC ductwork. Ducts are notorious energy wasters, leaking your heating and cooling air through holes and loose connections. Sealing and insulating your ductwork can improve the efficiency of a home’s heating and cooling system by as much as 20%, which can amount to annual savings of $200 or more. Having a more efficient system also helps extend the life of your furnace, air conditioner or heat pump.
Ducts are often hidden inside walls, ceilings, attics and crawl spaces, which can make this a difficult DIY project for the average homeowner. Depending on the size of your home and the accessibility to your ductwork, a professional heating and cooling contractor could charge from $1,000 to $4,000, plus the cost of materials, to do the work. However, insulating your ductwork may qualify you to receive a rebate from your state or local municipality.
If a homeowner decides to take the do-it-yourself approach, it’s important that they use a duct sealant called “mastic” or metal-backed tape to seal the seams, holes and connections. Because of its name, duct tape sounds like it would be a good solution, but it is not. Be sure to seal connections at vents and floor registers, as these are the most likely places leaks will occur. After sealing ducts, wrap them in fiberglass insulation. Most hardware stores will have insulation wrap products made for ducts.
Purify Indoor Air
Poor indoor air quality is among the top environmental health hazards, especially during winter months when windows and doors are sealed up tight. Indoor air is full of potential contaminants such as dust, mold spores, pollen and viruses. To help eliminate harmful lung irritants, maintain your HVAC system and change your furnace filters regularly. Use the highest quality filters you can afford and change them every month during peak heating and cooling seasons.
Use localized ventilation in kitchens and bathrooms to remove cooking fumes, smoke and excess humidity. Make sure ventilation systems exhaust the air outside your home, rather than into your attic crawl space or between ceiling joists. If you have a fireplace or a wood stove, be sure to burn real firewood instead of pressed wood products that may contain formaldehyde. And consider using a portable air cleaner to help cleanse air in single rooms. Types of portable air cleaners include mechanical air filters, electrostatic precipitators, ion generators and ultraviolet lamps. Just know that each type of air purifier is designed to remove specific pollutants and that no single portable purifier will remove all pollutants. Be wary of air cleaners that generate ozone, a known lung irritant.
Control Temperature
You can cut your home heating and cooling costs each year simply by installing a programmable thermostat. Programmable thermostats are designed to adjust the temperature according to a series of settings that correspond to the time of day. This allows the temperature to change so that less energy is used when no one is at home, and the thermostat automatically adjusts the temperature to the preferred setting for when you are home. Because these adjustments are made automatically throughout the day, homeowners can use energy as efficiently as possible.
In addition, weather-stripping doors and windows, filling holes in walls and using seasonally appropriate drapery are ways to help control your home’s temperature and cut energy costs. In the winter, heavy draperies help keep heat in and cold out; in the summer, lightweight sheers aid in cooling ventilation.
Making simple changes such as these can improve your health, well-being, state of mind and finances as 2020 begins. And, unlike your determination to give up sugar once and for all, many of these resolutions are easily accomplished by a single task. Take one improvement at a time and you’ll be living in your best home in 2020.