Considering the amount of time you spend indoors, your indoor air quality is important. Before closing up your home this winter, consider the fact that your attached garage could be a source of interior air problems. A Canadian study measured air quality in homes that had attached garages, and the results indicated that air seeps between the house and the garage, especially if the garage is unfinished. This study also found that people who use their garages for parking their vehicles had detectible levels of carbon monoxide and benzene in their home’s air.

If you park your car in the garage, store pool or spa chemicals inside it, or chemicals for your home and garden, you could be unknowingly creating hazardous air conditions indoors. Every time you turn your kitchen or bathroom fans on or your HVAC turns on, you could be bringing in chemical vapors from those products. Running any kind of ventilating fan creates negative pressure inside your home and pulls in air from the attached garage.

Solutions exist, however, to improve your indoor air quality without abandoning your garage as a place to store your car or chemicals.

• Seal any air leaks between the door to the house and garage with weatherstripping.
• Look for cracks between the shared wall in the garage and the house. Use caulk to seal them. Pay attention to the seams between the wall, the floor and the ceiling. If your garage has unfinished drywall, tape the seams between the sheets.
• Install a variable-speed fan in the kitchen or bathroom, and make sure it vents to the outdoors. If you have a lot of chemicals in the garage, or store vehicles or lawn and garden equipment inside, consider running the fans on low continuously. After you park your car, run the fan for a few minutes to clear the air.

If you’d like to learn more about improving your indoor air quality, contact Bailey’s Appliance & Air. We serve the CSRA and are here to help you.

Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about indoor air quality and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

Bailey’s Appliance & Air services Augusta, Georgia and the surrounding areas. Visit our website to see our current promotions and get started today!     

Indoor air quality photo via Shutterstock