LEXINGTON, Ky. — Americans spend $20 billion a year on allergy related issues. A lot of this money is wasted on gimmick products and drugs that may do more harm than good. Consumers continue to suffer while spending money just looking for relief. What if the focus was more on prevention than the “cure”?
The following information does not come from a doctor and cannot be considered medical advice, but let’s talk about the causes and misconceptions of allergies and some of the practical ways to actually prevent them. If you don’t know what’s causing your allergies, then it can feel like grasping at straws to find the best solution. The first thing anyone suffering from allergies needs to do is be specific. This helps achieve accuracy in addressing the solution.
“Seasonal allergies” is a common phrase but is not specific enough to identify precisely what is causing discomfort. If it’s spring, it is probably ragweed, tree pollen, or mold. Each has different treatment options. Dust mites are a major allergen (their feces actually — gross!), and it might surprise you to learn that addressing the dust in your home is not, in fact, the best solution for dust mites. If you do not know the actual cause of your allergies, how can you know how to treat them?
Most people’s allergens fall into several basic categories, but let’s focus on breathing-specific allergies and other issues related to indoor air quality such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and moisture. Indoor air quality (IAQ) has a dramatic effect on most respiratory and even skin issues. Most of us spend more time indoors than outdoors, especially post-COVID where more people work from home than ever before. There are many studies showing the average air quality in most homes is three times as polluted as the air outside. The more time we spend in our concentrated environment, the more likely we are to have allergies and the more severely they will present.
Allergic to your home’s air
The fact for a lot of us is our homes make us sick. I’ve spent the last 30 years inspecting attics, basements and crawl-spaces, and can tell you most of our homes are a lot dirtier than we realize. If you live on a crawlspace, chances are 25% of the air in your home came through the crawlspace first. Pretty much every crawlspace has mold, mildew, dead things and even sewage leaking from old plumbing pipes — not what you want to filter your air with.
Many basements are not much better. Foundation leaks that allow them to be damp or outright wet make for a great place for bad stuff to thrive. Bugs, mold, mildew and chemical off-gassing all thrive in dampness. Even homes that are not on a crawlspace or a basement have an attic, and just because that space is above does not mean it does not affect the air in the home.
For years, IAQ testing has been done by sending off a dust sample from a home to have a lab analyze it and tell us what is in it. Almost without fail, it has a large quantity of attic insulation in every dust sample tested, meaning you are breathing fiberglass insulation in your home. Or it can be worse. When we clean out an attic, we regularly find dead mice and their droppings, snakes, bats and bird’s nests, and once a petrified cat.
Most homeowners have no idea that they are breathing air that has passed through these spaces, but the fact remains that a primary path for air coming into our homes is through the attic or crawlspace. If we are filtering the air in our home through polluted spaces no wonder so many people have allergies.
What about in home filtration?
But wait, we have portable air cleaners in our home, filters on our HVAC, and air quality devices in our ductwork; isn’t that good enough? Not really. The first priority to relief is controlling the source of the pollution. Think of dirty air leaking into your home like water leaking into a boat and an air filter like a water pump. If the pump is big enough it can keep up with the leak, but wouldn’t fixing the leak make more sense?
Most air filtration systems are nowhere near big enough to keep up with the quantity of dirty air leaking into your home. The average portable air filtration system covers less than 400 s.f. and costs $500 or more. To get decent filtration, the average home would need 7-8 of these at a cost of more than $3,000, and then the cost of electricity to run them. It makes a lot more sense to fix the holes in the boat than to install 7-8 pumps in the boat.
But what about filters in my HVAC? Surely that filters all the air in my home, right? Well, yes, and a resounding NO! HVAC ducts must be sealed! Prior to 2015, the building code did not require HVAC duct systems to be sealed airtight, and several studies suggest that HVAC duct systems built before 2015 leak as much as 40% of the air that moves through them. The sad part is, half of that leakage is bypassing the filter so it’s pulling air from dirty places and not being filtered or treated by any of your air quality devices.
A lot of companies specialize in selling appliances (like the pump in the leaky boat) without considering where the leak is coming from. The best results come from a wholistic solution. Let’s fix the leaks and then we can clean the air in a much more controlled environment. Air quality devices on an HVAC system that has not been air-sealed are just not effective without sealing the ducts, too.
The good news is there is a lot we can do to improve our home’s IAQ, and most of the solutions not only improve IAQ but also make our home more comfortable and energy efficient. We can achieve perfect indoor air quality. We know the causes, we know the solutions, and in most cases it’s relatively easy. The vast majority of the time, it’s a surgical solution that does not require remodeling level disruptions. Some basic solutions to improve air quality are pretty simple:
1. Duct Sealing: it’s relatively inexpensive, and if the ducts are not covered by drywall, it can be done without damaging anything. The results are measurable, so you know that the improvement worked.
2. Crawlspace Encapsulation: Builders have known for 40 years we should not be ventilating crawlspaces, but unfortunately most houses built on crawlspaces today are still ventilated. A growing industry of crawlspace encapsulation companies retrofit existing crawlspaces. Proceed with caution when hiring one, and make sure to get multiple opinions and estimates. In my experience, most of these companies are not as building-science based as they should be and are not doing the quality work they should be. As always, check Google reviews and BBB ratings before a major purchase with a company you have never dealt with.
3. Attic Encapsulation: Once you live in a home with an encapsulated attic, you will never again live in a home that is not encapsulated! The air quality is second to none. The comfort, efficiency, sound dampening, and, quite frankly, the lack of dust and humidity is nothing short of amazing. As mentioned above there are a growing number of companies offering this service, and some that are not doing the whole job and even cutting corners. Make sure the company is extracting the old insulation (completely, not just halfway), and make sure to check references like BBB and Google reviews. I always recommend doing business with a local company that has a brick-and-mortar location.
4. Indoor Air Quality Devices: Ultraviolet lights, advanced filters, dehumidifiers, steam humidifiers, ionizers, flux capacitors…the list of choices of IAQ devices on your HVAC system can be confusing if not daunting. There are many worthwhile IAQ devices out there (and many that I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND), but keep in mind that these devices are the pump in the leaky boat and they are only part of the solution. Make sure that anyone recommending them is addressing the wholistic problem and at least talking about the greater issue. Adding these appliances without addressing the leaks is a waste of money. Only with a wholistic solution are you able to get the best results. Be wary of service technicians pushing expensive appliances to fix issues without addressing what’s causing the issues. The HVAC industry as a whole is fighting big companies’ business models that are based on bait-and-switch tactics pushing incomplete solutions overpromising results. Look for solutions not Band-Aids. The pump in the boat (or 7-8 pumps) is a Band-Aid; fixing the leak is the solution.
5. Humidification and Dehumidification: Moisture plays a huge role in air quality. Your nasal passages, lungs, eyes, and your skin are all healthiest at specific moisture levels. Certain allergens like dust mites, mold, and mildew thrive with high levels of humidity but can’t survive below certain levels. Have you even heard a doctor tell someone with bad allergies to move to the Southwest? That’s because the humidity is so low that mold, mildew, and dust mites do not exist. With an air tight enough home and proper humidification, it’s possible to control the climate in your home right here in Kentucky just as if it were Arizona.
In summary, the air in our house is 3-5 times as dirty as outdoor air and is likely causing, or at least aggravating, our allergies. Medication is treating the symptoms but not addressing the source. By addressing the root cause, we can do more to prevent allergy issues which could make medications unnecessary or at least reduce our dependency on them.
The first step in addressing indoor air quality is tightening the home and addressing leaky crawlspaces, basements, and attics. Only then should you focus on IAQ appliances like filtration, purification, and humidity. By taking a wholistic approach, it is possible to get your home to hospital-grade air and control your home’s climate to fit your specific needs. After all, your home is your castle…shouldn’t it be the healthiest, most comfortable place on earth?
—By Jamie Clark with Synergy Home
