Keeping Your Home HVAC Healthy This Winter

When you’re trying to regulate the temperature in your home, especially during temperate extreme seasons like summer and winter, moisture is one factor that can influence it. When you walk into your home, you bring along with you all of the contaminants that you picked up along the way, which could include:

• Carbon monoxide
• Cigarette smoke
• Allergens
• Pet hair/dander

Despite these and a slew of other horrors, if you live in a temperate environment with a wet season, the one contaminant most likely to invade your home this winter is moisture.

To prevent damage to your home, we suggest setting up an uncarpeted mudroom, which is a DIY project we had brought up briefly in the past. In this article, we’ll go more in depth into what your mudroom should include to increase its effectiveness.

Shoe/Boot Storage

In general, it’s just not a good idea to wear your shoes in the house. Shoes are meant to protect your feet when you’re walking about in public, and they can quite literally pick up anything you may come in contact with, no matter how pleasant and/or unfortunate. This is especially true in the winter, when melted snow can quickly pool up and potentially create mold/mildew issues in the future.

Depending on your needs, storage bins for multiple pairs and types of shoes and boots exist, along with boot trays, which gives melted snow a place to go when it falls off of the boot. This is also a good time to remind you to have a boot brush or similar device outside your door if needed to remove excess snow before entering the mudroom.

Coat Rack

Instead of throwing wet coats and jackets in the corner, hang them up to dry in a dedicated coat rack. Not only does this prevent mold/mildew, but this also keeps those outside pollutants mentioned earlier out of your indoor environment. It’s also a good idea to include a few individual hooks for gloves, purses, and other accessories.

Key/Wallet Storage

This can be a shelf right above the coat rack, several plastic containers near the door, whichever works best for your setup. The point of this is to give you a place to store the items that you would need only when you leave the house (i.e. keys, wallet, cell phones, etc.) and in a place where you would remember them.

Supplies

The types of supplies a good mudroom would have on-hand include:

• Hand sanitizer
• Sanitizer hand wipes
• Towels
• Duct Tape
• First Aid Kit

By keeping the moisture and pollutants confined to one space, you can help keep your home environment cleaner and healthier for those in it.

How FAMCO Can Help

We are one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of HVAC supplies and accessories in the Pacific Northwest. Keeping your home environment healthy is our passion. If you have a question regarding any of our products or services, please get in touch. We’ll be more than happy to help.