Indoor air quality problems impact the lives of numerous people across the world. Did you know that most people spend 90% of their time in indoor environments? Health concerns, loss in productivity, liability issues, and decrease in a property’s value can result from poor air quality in the property.
What is Air Quality Testing?
Indoor air quality (IAQ) refers to the quality of the air within and around structures and buildings and is directly connected with the comfort and health of those buildings occupants. There are many factors that can affect air quality–gases such as radon and carbon monoxide, particulates and microbial contaminants, such as mold are just a few of the culprits for poor indoor air quality.
Air quality testing will reveal whether or not the air within and surrounding your house is healthy and to what extent it affects your health and the health of your other family members.
When Midwest Mold Removal performs an air quality test, you will be provided with information on the state of the air quality within your house and on the factors that contaminate it. Mold testing is one small part of what air quality testing is all about. It means taking different samples from hard surfaces, as well as from the air, which we then analyze to determine if your house is infected with mold.
Our Process
When you have the specialists at Midwest Mold Removal come to do your air quality testing, we will visually inspect your property’s heating and ventilation appliances to check for combustion safety concerns (carbon monoxide), problems with the furnace’s filter, and to determine where you stand with respect to ventilation. It includes:
- Visual inspection of the furnace or heating system to look for obvious damage or defects
- Assessment of the filter’s size, effectiveness, and installation
- Measurement of the flow-rates of your bathroom exhaust fans, whole-house fans, and fresh-air intake ducts
- A report of your property’s actual ventilation levels and what we recommend it to be at
During the testing, we will measure several different environmental factors with specialized meters. These numbers will allow us to see how the air quality in your home really is, and to help determine exactly what factors may be the most important to address and improve on.
What we test for:
- Temperature
- Relative Humidity
- Carbon Dioxide – in parts per million
- Carbon Monoxide – in parts per million
- Total VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) in parts per billion
We will also take an indoor air quality sample in your property, as well as one from outside your property, so we can see if there are abnormal levels of mold spores in your home. This will tell us what the mold spore types are and the amount that you may be breathing into your lungs.