Luckily DH had two cheap air quality meters from Temu. He wanted them for safety when using the compressor in the garage to fill his own scuba cylinders and in his pre-sober days when he was distilling moonshine in the same lair. To that end, he did a side by side reading with a higher end one at the professional scuba air fill shop and thinks they are bang on accurate enough to take seriously despite the bargain price point.
HCHO: formaldehyde (good = less 0.125)
TVOC: Total Volatile Organic Compounds (good = less than 0.3-0.5)
PM2.5: particulate matter 2.5 microns or less (good = less than 5-12)
PM10: " " 10 microns or less (good = less 150)
CO: carbon monoxide (good = less than 9)
CO2: carbon dioxide (good = less than 1000)
I'm not sure what had been going down in the kitchen, but ours was very upset about formaldehyde, volatile compounds, and carbon dioxide and it was also giving our carbon monoxide and PM2.5 scores the side eye.
I ran our HVAC fan for 15 minutes and knocked CO2 down to the 800's and then opened the windows for another 15 knocked it down to the low 400's which seems to be where it has stayed. So yes, these air quality monitors are great to have on hand and if it throws some alarms, by all means ventilate and see if you can move those numbers in the right direction....
But I had a theory that our status quo life would ramp the numbers back up to the danger zone again and that I could use that rate to calculate how often we need to ventilate. It turns out that with general household activities and no ventilation, these numbers have stayed pretty stable ever since the 30 minutes after first plug in.
I have spiked CO2 somewhat consistently when spraying down counters with undiluted vinegar... That seems to make sense because I can see a CO2 in its chemical formula (CH3COOH) which is about as sophisticated as my high school chemistry will support. Maybe if I tried diluting my vinegar to 1:1 as some resources suggest would mean it doesn't spike quite so high? Either way, I find the spike dissipates about as fast as it takes for the smell to dissipate, so I don't think it is a pervasive problem.
Some other tests in the hopper-- impact of cooking pizza, candle burning, and renovations.
Of the metrics that seem to have stable baselines, it looks like only the super fine particulate matter PM2.5 is a bit higher than guidance... Checking how to reduce that, the internet suggests:
- ventilate (but PM2.5 did not seem to move with 30 mins of ventilation and outdoor PM10 figures are currently higher than our indoor PM10 reading)
- reduce outdoor particle entry with doormats (done) and shoes off at door policy (half-observed)
- clean home regularly (... work in progress for us all-- we currently have a robo vac doing a once over of the main living space daily, but we also have 2 double coated dogs)
- control humidity to suppress mold (currently 24% which is under the safe 30-60% EPA guidance and we live in an arid climate)
- use low-emission cleaning products and air fresheners (vinegar and baking soda are our defaults... I haven't lit a candle in over a week and do not habitually do so)
- maintain your hvac system (just serviced 5 days ago and uses a MERV 13 filter changed monthly)
... so I'm not seeing any smoking guns on ways we can further reduce PM2.5... I can try running our portable HEPA filter right in front of it to see if that has an effect? 15 minutes of high powered filtration in, that score has not budged though.
edit:
* Running the pizza oven definitely requires ventilation!
* Weekly habit of lysol spraying shoes and phone also triggers an alert. Need to research more eco-friendly cleaning approaches for these (or skip)
No comments:
Post a Comment