Indoor air quality, and why this valley gives you both problems
New England houses have opposite complaints six months apart. Static shocks, cracked woodwork and dry throats in January. Sticky rooms, musty basements and a house that feels clammy at seventy two degrees in August. Same building, same equipment, and the fix for one is not the fix for the other.
What are you actually noticing
Air quality complaints are vague by nature. Pick what you have noticed and we will tell you what it usually points at.
Air quality check
A guide to the likely cause. It is not a diagnosis, and some of these have simple fixes that cost nothing.
If symptoms are health related, this is a comfort and building guide rather than medical advice, and a doctor is the right first call. What we can tell you is what the building is doing.
The same house, six months apart
Relative humidity between roughly thirty and fifty percent is the range most homes are comfortable in. Around here you spend half the year under it and half the year over it.
Too dry
Cold outdoor air holds very little moisture. Heat it to seventy degrees indoors and the relative humidity collapses, often into the teens or low twenties.
- Static shocks every time you touch a doorknob or the dog.
- Gaps opening in hardwood floors, trim and furniture joints as wood gives up moisture.
- Dry throats, chapped lips and sinuses that feel worse indoors than out.
- Dust that seems to hang around, because dry air keeps fine particles airborne longer.
- A house that feels colder than the thermostat says, so people run the heat higher.
Too humid
Valley summers are humid, and air conditioning only removes moisture while it is actually running. An oversized system cools fast, shuts off, and leaves the water behind.
- Cool but clammy, the classic sign that the system is not running long enough to dehumidify.
- Musty smells in basements, closets and around ductless heads.
- Condensation on windows, pipes and toilet tanks.
- Doors sticking as wood takes moisture back on.
- Mold in the places that stay dark, which is a building problem before it is an air one.
Worth knowing before you buy anything. A large share of summer humidity complaints trace back to an oversized air conditioner rather than to a lack of dehumidification. If your system reaches temperature quickly and shuts off, no amount of added equipment fixes the underlying cause. That is a sizing conversation, and it belongs with cooling installation rather than here.
Air quality services
Two dedicated services, plus the filtration and airflow work that sits inside every maintenance visit.
Air Purification
Whole-home filtration and purification fitted into the ductwork, so it treats the air the whole house is breathing rather than one room at a time.
Air purification Winter drynessWhole Home Humidifiers
Moisture added to the supply air at the furnace or air handler and distributed through the house, controlled to a set humidity rather than run flat out.
Whole home humidifiers Included in serviceFiltration and airflow
Filter selection, return air capacity and duct condition. The cheapest air quality improvement in most houses is the one already installed, being maintained properly.
MaintenanceA better filter can make your air worse
This is the most common thing we correct on air quality calls, and it is almost always well intentioned.
- MERV is a filtration rating. Higher numbers catch smaller particles. It sounds like more is simply better, and for the filter alone it is.
- Filters also restrict airflow. A dense filter in a system that was not designed for it starves the blower, and restricted airflow causes frozen coils in summer and high limit lockouts in winter.
- A choked system moves less air overall, which means it filters less air overall. The high rated filter can end up cleaning less than a lower rated one did.
- Depth matters more than rating. A four or five inch media cabinet filters far better than a one inch filter at the same MERV, because the larger surface area does not restrict flow the same way.
- What we do about it. Check static pressure, then either match the filter to the system or, where it is worth doing, fit a proper media cabinet so you can have both.
Assessed in your house, not from a catalog
Air quality equipment is easy to oversell, because the symptoms are uncomfortable and the causes are invisible. We would rather measure what is happening in your house first.
That means looking at humidity levels through the seasons, at how the system actually runs, at return air capacity, and at whether the building has a moisture problem that no equipment will solve. Sometimes the answer is a bathroom fan that vents into an attic, and no purifier fixes that.
We work out of Broad Brook under Connecticut heating license HTG #0398155/S1 and Massachusetts plumbing license PL #172086, and our technicians are NATE certified.
Before you buy equipment
Tell us what the house is doing
Which rooms, which season, and what you have noticed. The more specific you can be about when it happens, the more useful the visit is.
Next steps and neighbors
Find out what is actually causing it
We measure humidity, airflow and filtration before recommending anything, and we will tell you when the fix is free.