Twin Cities’ residents may love their attached garages in the spring and summer, and that feeling usually intensifies during the winter, when they can avoid the sting of snow and cold air by parking their car right in the garage, and dash into their home through a garage door.
But that entryway — not to mention the garage itself — also may affect your indoor air quality this winter.
Once you open that entryway door, however briefly, the emissions from your car can enter your home. This is difficult to avoid, especially because if you’re like a lot of people, you close your outside garage door as soon as possible. Your goal is probably to keep as much cold, outdoor air out of your garage; the problem is, you don’t give the garage time to air out from the emissions from your vehicle. Additionally, any small leaks around the inner garage door also enable contaminants to seep in from the garage.
Vehicles aren’t alone in affecting your home’s indoor air quality. There are secondary sources of pollutants in garages, including those from gas-powered tools and appliances, such as snow blowers and space heaters. Be sure to start these items in your driveway, as far away as possible from the inner garage door that leads into your home.
If you’ve become aware of these pollutants from a room situated over your garage, look for any cracks or holes in the walls between the house and the garage, and through the ceiling, and seal them closed with caulk. Also inspect your garage drywall, and finish it with drywall compound and paint.
Installing a garage exhaust fan may be another good way to improve your home’s indoor air quality, by lowering the garage pressure enough for air to flow from the house to the garage — not from the garage to the house. Check the pressure difference by opening the entryway door to your home a crack and feeling for air moving from the house to the garage. If air moves into the garage, the air pressure is moving in the right direction (or away from your home).
Another helpful, and often life-saving, item that you can install is a carbon-monoxide detector. Ideally, you should install one on each floor of your home, and within 15 feet of bedrooms. Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless, and potentially lethal gas.
To schedule your free air quality test and improve your home’s indoor air quality, call the dedicated experts at Marsh Heating & Air Conditioning today. We’ve proudly served residential and commercial customers in the Twin Cities area for more than 33 years.
Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about garage emissions and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Marsh Heating and Air Conditioning services Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Visit our websiteto see our special offers and get started today!
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