Ventilation isn’t something that has been needed throughout human existence since nature does a perfect job ventilating the air. But ever since we started building airtight houses we’ve experienced dire consequences on health and performance due to the contaminations of unventilated areas, and ventilation has been absolutely vital ever since. Many of our new clients get shocked and have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that the air they’ve been breathing inside their home is more polluted than the outside air. So in this article we will go through reasons why it’s important to ventilate your home, how ventilation works and the consequences of both ventilating and not ventilating our homes. Let’s get right into it.

The importance of ventilating your home

First of all, fresh air is a cornerstone for any living organisms health, And with in mind that we spend 90% of our time indoors it becomes obvious that we need high indoor air quality (IAQ). This is however not the case in the majority of the modern worlds homes, and the reason for that is that our houses are contaminated with pollutants such as:

• Toxic VOC chemicals (from building materials, furniture, cooking, etc)
• Airborne particles (such as pollution from outside and viruses from outside. Particulate matter (PM) is in this category)
• Extensive Co2 levels (from people exhaling, cooking etc)
• Mold (created by stagnant and moist air)

These contaminations affects people’s health in major ways, such as:

• Toxic VOC chemicals possibly leads to lung disease, damage to the nervous system, headaches and more.
• Airborne particles possibly leads to heart & lung disease, asthma and more
• Extensive Co2 dampens cognitive ability, creates brain fog and makes us tired
• Mold gives us headaches, sore throats, itchy eyes, runny nose and more

With this information we see that the air we breathe inside of our homes is worse than the outside air, and this is no matter how polluted the outside air is. The reason for this is that the outside air creeps in through the cracks in buildings or because people open windows, and the result being that the inside air is 2-5x more polluted than the outside’s since the pollution from outside is multiplied with the inside pollution. It suddenly becomes obvious that we don’t only need to ventilate our homes, but also that we need to clean up the air in many of our major cities.

How does ventilation work and what is good ventilation? 

The core principle of ventilation is to supply a building with fresh air and extract the already used air out of the building. In this way we make the airtight building ‘’breathe’’ and refresh itself continuously – creating constant fresh air for us to breathe. It is however also of the highest importance that we highly filter the supplied air so that we minimize the pollutants supplied to the homes. We at Ventpro are today able to filter out 99%+ of the pollutants with the highest quality filters.

And to make sure that the IEQ (indoor environment quality) also is of the highest lvel, it’s important to strategically place the diffusers so that all of the building’s rooms have the same temperature and humidity. This is however completely missed by poor ventilation systems. A proper ventilation is then a system that sustainably supplies all of the house’s rooms with fresh air at the same level of temperature and humidity, and good ventilation does this with sustainable products so that the service becomes as cheap as possible and so that the environment is taken care of during the process.

What are the consequences of not ventilating our homes? 

• Deteriorating health

Poor indoor air quality leads to our health deteriorating in the ways previously mentioned such as: damaging the nervous system, contributing to asthma, heart & lung disease, headaches and much more. This comes from all of the toxic VOC and PM compounds and it has a longterm negative affect on us humans.

• Productivity

Our productivity is severily damaged by the extensive Co2 that is gathered by not ventilating the air that we breath out. This dampens our conginitive ability, gives us brain fog, makes us feel tired, gives us headaches and much more. So it’s obvious how this negatively affects our productivity. If you’re an office person, think back to a time where you felt unlogically tired at work. If you don’t really experience this feeling at other places, it’s likely that extensive Co2 is the reason.

• Discomfort

When we don’t ventilate our homes they become filled with Co2 and mold as just mentioned, and that is very uncomfortable. But our IEQ (indoor environment quality) also gets affected in other ways aswell. Such as the high humidity inside of our homes that makes the air we breathe thick, and the extreme changes of temparture we experience when we go from a room with an airconditioning on to a room without an airconditioning on. This is all permanently fixed by a <strong>proper </strong>ventilation system since the temperature and humidty is then the same in all of the houses rooms.

• Money

Last but not least, if we don’t ventilate our houses they will deteriorate since they’ll be contaminated with mold and start to rut from the inside out. This will make it so that our building won’t last as long, and we’ll therefore have to renovate it if we want to live in a clean home.

What are the consequences of ventilating my home? 

• Better health

The opposite effect happens if we actually decide to ventilate our homes. We breathe fresh air and our body functions as it should, both short term and long term.

• Sustainable building

The building is also kept completely healthy and only needs renovating if we want to make an aesthetic change.

• Higher productivity

Balanced humidity, temperature and oxygen allows our body and minds to function at its best and therefore heightens our productivity.

• Higher comfort

IEQ (Indoor environment quality) is the balance of temperature and humidity inside of our homes and it’s at its best when the temperature and humidity is the same in all of the house’s rooms. This results in a perfectly comfortable home.

There are ofcourse many more consequences of breathing dirty air but these are the most prominent ones. A horrbile consequence which wasn’t mentioned in in these ones but that show the dramatic effect of not breathing clean air is that 7 million people die prematurely from air pollution.  This is estimated by WHO, and it makes total sense if we think about what would happen if more than half of the worlds population would drink dirty water. This is sadly not to well known as its not taken up in the media to often, and this sadly leads to people not prioritizing cleaning up the air in their home. So do your friend group a service and spread the message by sharing this article.

Alright. Now you know the basics of why it’s important to ventilate our homes. This article doesn’t go very much in depth nor does it tell you exactly how to ventilate your home. But if you are interested in any these topics or want to know more about how we can help you, go ahead and write us your questions on our Line or Messenger right now and get in contact with us personally!