Happy new year! If you are thinking of adding buying or selling your home to your goals for the year give me a call so we can start making a plan to make it happen. Wishing you all peace and love for 2017!
Make sure the clear the snow around the fresh air intake to prevent CO poisoning.
http://globalnews.ca/news/3139588/experts-warn-homeowners-to-shovel-vents-to-prevent-co-poisoning/?sf47618408=1
Tis’ the season… for frozen deadbolts, door handles, and frosty windows. These are your home’s weak points in cold climates, and here’s what you can do about it!
Indoor humidity contributes to air quality, and most of us are breathing poor quality air in our homes and don’t even know it!
There are at least two easy things you can do to help make your home’s air healthier and maintain proper humidity.
1) Change your furnace filter about once a month. This is an inexpensive and easy way to trap contaminants.
2) Keep your indoor relative humidity at a healthy level. The comfort zone is anywhere from 35% to 50% humidity. You’ll need to adjust lower than 35% if you live in a cold climate like Winnipeg.
Humidity inside your home means comfort for everyone, and provides for better sleep. However, anything above 35% can lead to condensing windows, frozen locks, and even mold growth in homes where the temperature outside gets below -20 Celsius. If you are lucky enough to have an HRV, or even a central exhaust system for your home, they can manage indoor humidity for you. An HRV system uses existing (stale) indoor heated air to take the chill off of (fresh) outdoor air before introducing that outdoor air into your home. A central exhaust simply exhausts stale indoor air and replaces it with fresh outdoor air but does not transfer the heat to the new air. The latter uses more furnace energy to then heat that outdoor air, but still maintains humidity for your home. For the rest of you, it’ll require dehumidifiers, or opening doors/windows periodically to maintain proper humidity.
The following chart is a general guideline for correct relative indoor humidity, based on outdoor temperature, for a healthy home. Older homes change air more freely and can have higher humidity than newer homes can. This will help keep doors and locks from freezing up, and windows from fogging over.
