Did you know that the number of pollutants inside your home can be as much as five times higher than those found outdoors? Taking into consideration the amount of time many of us spend inside our homes every day, finding any way to reduce this number has got to be good for our health.
One of the most significant, but often under valued ways to do this, is to use solar energy, something which many people associate with simply reducing their energy bills. While solar power does of course do this, it can also help you lower the levels of pollutants inside your home.
Here are 3 important ways that solar power can help you breathe cleaner air inside your home:
If yours is one of the many millions in America using a wood stove or open fireplace during the colder months, there’s a strong chance that you’re regularly breathing in small particles and pollutants that can irritate your eyes and lungs, and ultimately, lead to breathing difficulties and exacerbate allergies. If you use gas to power your home and cook with, there’s the added risk of carbon monoxide emissions, which can be deadly if not monitored and treated.
A home powered by solar energy, on the other hand, means that you’ll rely a lot less on fossil fuels, and can enjoy much purer air inside your home. Not only that, but if yours and every other household were to make the switch to solar, the overall level of pollutants in urban environments would be significantly reduced, helping to reduce the pollutants that make it into your home, and into your lungs.
2. By allowing you to better control the indoor temperature
Having to regulate the indoor temperature can contribute significantly to poor indoor air quality, as it leads to an increased use of fossil fuels, and an increased number of pollutants.
If you have a solar panel array on your roof, sunlight is prevented from directly hitting the roof and heating up the building during the summer months when you want indoor temperatures to be cooler, and in turn, stopping you from having to use your air conditioning so much. And as you probably know, air conditioning units can be major polluters when the filters and in fact, the entire system, isn’t cleaned regularly.
During the winter months, your solar panels will be soaking up the sun’s rays even on a cold day, giving you the ability to warm up your home easily without having to switch on the heating, and increase the number of indoor pollutants.
3. By allowing air to circulate
For improved indoor air quality, clean air must be allowed to circulate, and this is best achieved through an air conditioning system. However, many households can’t afford to run their A/C as often as they’d like, because it’s connected to the power grid, and those costs continue to rise.
If your home is solar powered, however, you can afford to run your air conditioning system as often as you like, since you’ll be using solar power which is considerably cheaper than power sourced from the grid.
In short, homes powered by the grid will never have as pure indoor air as those powered by solar, giving you even more reasons to make the switch to cleaner, greener energy today.
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