Did you know....According to the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, dust mites are found in most homes. While dust mites are not parasitic and do not bite, people can be allergic to them. Symptoms include sneezing, itchy, water eyes, nasal stuffiness, runny nose, stuffy ears, respiratory problems, eczema and (in severe cases) asthma. 
Dust mites need high temperatures (75 to 80 degrees F) and high humidity (70 to 80% relative humidity) to survive. One study showed when humidity is 60% or lower, the dust mite population stops growing and dies out.
Control humidity for dust mite management
At the top of the university’s list for eliminating problems due to dust mites is controlling the relative humidity (RH) in the home. Keeping the RH below 50% is the key. The best way to reduce the RH in your home is to install an Aprilaire whole-house dehumidifier. Unlike a portable unit that only removes moisture from the room it is in, Aprilaire works with your HVAC system to deliver dehumidified air to your entire home. And, unlike portable dehumidifiers that require constant cleaning and emptying of the tank, an Apriaire whole-house dehumidifier only needs the filter cleaned once a year.
Aprilaire - protecting your health for over 50 years!
Hey, lemme tell ya why!
No doubt about it!
Can't live without it!
- Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen
I was suggesting to our contractors that they provide us with some success stories; you know, ways that they sell and use Indoor Air Quality products to provide their homeowner customers with solutions to their problems.
Then I thought, what a great idea to ask HOMEOWNERS!!! So here I am. How about it homeowners? Or anyone else for that matter. Do you have a particular problem with your indoor environment that was helped with indoor air quality products?
Maybe air that's too humid or too dry? Or someone with allergies who could use a cleaner environment to live and breathe in?
Anybody use a room air purifier? A portable dehumidifier? How about an installed humidifier or air cleaner that works in every room automatically.
Any success stories you want to share with the world????
We get questions all the time regarding the use of UV lights in residential HVAC units. Where is the best place to position one? How do they work? What is the best use of them?
For a time, Aprilaire offered our own line of UV products. Our recommendation was always to position UV lights near the peak of your A/C’s evaporative coil or “A” coil. Place it in such a way that the coil and drain pan are fully expose to the light. These are the components most likely to contribute to microbial growth as they contain the three things most needed to support it, moisture, a food source, and a dark environment. Plus, even if your home has a whole-house air cleaner, anything growing on your A-coil can enter your air stream after the air cleaner.
Conversely, UV light is not terribly effective as an air cleaner for several reasons. The first is a question of exposure. Particles tend to zip through your air ducts at around 300 feet per minute. What this means is that their actual exposure time is a fraction of what would be required to destroy organic particles. Put another way, if you were baking cookies in your oven (oatmeal raisin, of course) you might be able to tap the edge of the hot baking sheet without getting burned, but if you held your hand there, you would definitely get a serious injury. The concept is the same with UV light. Most particles require a minimum amount of exposure to be considered destroyed, and this can be from a few seconds to a few minutes. And in order to get that exposure time, a particle would have to zip in front of a UV lamp many times. Hopefully, there’s an actual air cleaner on your system to trap those particles so that they don’t get a second chance to zip through your ducts. They would get trapped the first time.
The second reason is simply that, with an air cleaner, once that air cleaner has trapped the particle, destroying it is a little redundant. If an organic particle can’t get back into the air stream, does it matter if it’s alive or dead? Generally not.
So there we go.
Hot days in urban areas mean possible elevated levels of ground level ozone. Ground level ozone is formed when pollution from power plants, factories and other industrial sources, vehicle exhaust, and volatile organic compounds chemically reacts with hot temperatures, high humidity and atmospheric stagnation. In these conditions, the Air Quality Index will reach the orange level, which is considered unhealthy for people in sensitive groups and others, including people who are not in sensitive groups but who are engaged in strenuous outside activities or exposed for prolonged periods of time. People in those sensitive groups include those with respiratory diseases, such as asthma, older adults, and active adults and children. When an air quality watch is issued, people in those groups are advised to reschedule or cut back on strenuous outside activities during the watch period.
People with lung diseases such as asthma and bronchitis should pay attention to shortness of breath, or respiratory symptoms like coughing, wheezing and discomfort when taking a breath, and consult with their physician if they have concerns or are experiencing symptoms. Ground level ozone can irritate the respiratory system, reduce lung function, aggravate asthma and chronic lung diseases, and, over time, cause permanent lung damage.
You can escape from these outside atmospheric conditions by installing a whole home air cleaner from Aprilaire. These air cleaners attach to your air handler and clean the air circulating through your entire home. Go to
www.aprilaire.com to learn more about protecting your family and cleaning the air in your home.Wisconsin weather sure is whacky. Today is June 30, 2009. At the time I am blogging this, it is 61 degrees outside with a relative humidity (RH) of 72%. Last week at this time, we had temps in the high eighties and low nineties with high humidity to boot. Air conditioners and dehumidifiers were working as hard as they could to remove heat and moisture, giving homeowners ultimate comfort and protection.
No air conditioning required
72% RH is a perfect breeding ground for things like mold and dust mites. Some people would say their air conditioning will take care of excess humidity. However, at 61 degrees, your air conditioning is not going to come on. At this point, you have a decision to make; you can either suffer the consequences of high humidity, or you can install an Aprilaire whole-house dehumidifier to protect your health and home.
Aprilaire is the perfect solution. It installs with your home’s HVAC system, out of sight and out of mind, quietly removing moisture from your entire home. And, unlike portable dehumidifiers that only remove moisture from the room they are in, there are no tanks to empty and clean on a daily basis.
Call your Aprilaire dealer today and request an Aprilaire whole-house dehumidifier. You'll be glad you did.
But the real cool part came in when the test guy took a tool that shows infrared of leaks in the building. Pretty cool. Great way to see where your house is leaking so you can go buy a caulk gun and fix the problem!
Pretty photos:
A whole home air cleaner from Aprilaire is a great way to help remove smoke from the air in your home; not only from wildfires but also in the winter when you’ve got the fireplace burning or even from cooking. Now if your in an area close to a wildfire where the smoke is heavy you should leave the area immediately there is no air cleaner that will keep you safe in that situation.
So, I commented, sharing my blog post about the nastiness of some blog strategies used for marketing.
I figured this amazing tactic, linking my blog post to hers, was so clever that, in our little blog strategy world, it should at least count as much as an original blog post.
You see, we have blog post quotas. And our Blog Nazi keeps her Blog Nazi Boot planted firmly in our collective behinds in order to make sure we all perform at least to quota.
Well guess what? Blog Nazi, while acknowledging that what I did was positive, would not budge on my quota. Not an inch! So here I am, making stuff up again! What good is that!?!??
On second thought, if B.N. DIDN'T have a large boot, and DIDN'T exercise it's influence, and just left us bloggers alone, you would be alot less informed about indoor air quality!
Maybe we should get paid per post. Maybe that would be a better motivater than a boot!
Maybe not.
Did you know...Medical professionals recommend the use of a dehumidifier to prevent mold growth in 
homes. One such professional is Dr. Alan Green, M.D. Dr. Greene has dedicated a section of his website to address mold and how to prevent its growth. The importance of this lies in health-related issues such as allergies. Prevent mold, reduce allergy symptoms.
Relative Humidity is the Key
Dr. Greene recommends the use of a dehumidifier to maintain relative humidity (RH) levels between 35% and 50%. Aprilaire recommends you take this one step further; install a whole-house dehumidifier. A whole-house dehumidifier provides many advantages over a portable.
- Whole-house versus one room - you live in more than one room of your house, it doesn't make sense to dehumidify only one room.
- Out of sight - Aprilaire installs in conjunction with your HVAC equipment, out of sight and out of mind. A portable dehumidifier sits in your living area where you can see and hear it.
- Maintenance – an Aprilaire unit only requires cleaning of the air filter once per year. A portable unit requires daily emptying of the tank and periodic cleaning. What a hassle!
Aprilaire - protecting your health for over 50 years!
When most people think of a green home they think of a new home, but with about 100 million existing homes a major impact can be made by making them more earth friendly.
A major contributor to making a existing home green is indoor air quality. Improving indoor air quality is also probably one of the easiest, and least expensive ways to make your home more healthy and earth friendly.
A great starting point to save energy is a programmable thermostat. An Aprilaire programmable thermostat installed costs less then a night out on the town. Plus in a short period of time you will have saved more money on your heating and cooling bills than you dished out to put it in.
Talk about your win/win situations! Save some money and save the planet by understanding how to program your thermostat today. Many people don’t understand that you only need to make your home comfortable when you’re in it which can save you lots of money while saving energy.
As an example: A programmable thermostat allows you to set the temperature at 75 degrees when you’re there and then let it rise to 80 degrees when you leave for work. This means that your air handler operates less often and saves you money. There are programmable thermostats that can set days of the week, weekends and vacations. Aprilaire offers numerous models of programmable thermostats such as: 8363, 8365, 8366, 8570 and 8870 models for different applications.
Go to Aprilaire.com and understand how you can save money and the planet today!
Did you know....dehumidification is a natural byproduct of the air conditioning process. However, using your central air conditioning as a dehumidifier can be costly in a couple of areas. Incorporating a whole-house dehumidifier with your central air conditioner will improve your comfort and save you money on your utility bill.
Costly to Operate
As you know, running your air conditioner is not cheap. At the heart of the system is a large compressor that uses lots of electricity. As such, you pay a fairly high price to stay comfortable in the heat of summer.
Using your air conditioner as a dehumidifier is even more costly, as you typically need to overcool your home by several degrees to achieve your relative humidity (RH) target. Now your RH is good, maybe, but you're cold and not comfortable.
A whole-house dehumidifier from Aprilaire is your solution. First, it uses a much smaller compressor, consuming a fraction of the power of your air conditioner. Now that your RH is under control, you can actually raise your thermostat several degrees and maintain maximum comfort. This translates to an energy savings as high as 74% in the summer!
Call your Aprilaire dealer today and discover how you can maintain maximum comfort and save on your energy bill.
Are you like me and want to have the air in your home as clean as possible? Wanting clean air and having clean air isn’t always the same. You may have an air cleaner installed but how do you know it’s actually cleaning the air. Aprilaire makes air cleaners that not only clean the air in your home they also tell you when the air cleaner is operating. The models 4200 and 4400 have a MERV rating of 13 and the model 5000 is equivalent to a MERV 16. All three include an active control which has 4 active cleaning options; Constant cleaning 24/7 365, Automatic which is one 30 minute cycle per hour, Event clean which is one 3 hour cycle and Allergies which is one 24 hour cycle. Pressing any of these selections allows you to clean the air in your home above and beyond the normal air cleaner operating time during the heating and cooling operation of your HVAC equipment. To learn more visit www.aprilaire.com.
This is a piss-poor example of a blog. Actually it's a good example of a piss-poor blog.
Take special note of the text under Humidifiers Do It For You: "Most of us is uncomfortable with dry air" ? It gets worse.
Obviously some stupid ecommerce online directory site hires idiots who don't even know the language, let alone the products, to write content to get you to find them and buy.
I absolutely hate that marketing tactic.
I promise I won't write spammy crap in my blog. Sure I do this to help our search strategy and to build awareness of our products. And ultimately sell. I'm the manufacturer, baby! It's what I do.
But at least I know the product and the issues related to my blog content.
"Get in the 21st century", you say? "Hiring bloggers is a big part of every day online marketing".
SO - FREAKING - WHAT??!?!?
Because I'm a marketer, I have to love infomercial, embrace scare tactics, condone green-washing and now ineffectual blogging? I don't think so.
Go ahead and go to Amazon and buy an Aprilaire Humidifier. It IS a great product. I just hope you got there without having to put up with the language. Most of us Aprilaire bloggers I hope, is doing much better!
Thanks for listening to the rant.
It is Thursday, June 18, 2009 in Madison, Wisconsin. The temperature is 66°F. No need to run the air conditioning with this temperature. But are you comfortable? Probably not. Why? The relative humidity (RH) is a whopping 88%!
A whole-house dehumidifier is the solution
Dehumidification is a natural by-product of air conditioning. However, only 10% of what an air conditioner does is dehumidify, and it is controlled by temperature, not RH. The solution to maintaining your comfort on these very typical days is to have your Aprilaire dealer install a whole-house dehumidifier. It works in conjunction with your home's HVAC system to remove excess moisture from your entire house, not just a single room like a portable dehumidifier. And because it controls to RH, not temperature, you don't over cool your house to remove moisture.
Call your Aprilaire dealer and get your whole-house dehumidifier installed today!
I had a great comment to one of my blogs yesterday in regards to the need for proper humidification. Wellsacs7 wrote:
"I know how valuable it is to have a humidifier in your home. I know that having a humidifier all year around is great, but they are increasingly important during the months where heating a home is essential."
This comment is dead-on correct. In the winter months, your furnace or heat pump not only heats the air, it dries it out. The dry air can cause all kinds of problems related to your comfort and health, not to mention your home and possessions.
Thanks for the great comment! Keep 'em coming.
Still, they recommend keeping the place clean, and that's where an air cleaner with a clean air cleaner filter can help.
And, humidifiers can help with skin irritations and respiratory problems.
Don't want to listen to Aprilaire bloggers? Who wouldn't want to listen to the experts from the Mayo Clinic?
It's times like these when a dedicated dehumidifier can really help with that clammy basement, or those evenings when you're trying to get to sleep, but sticking to the sheets isn't helping. It's too cool to run the air conditioner, but dehumidifying will help your comfort level.....and your mood.
Then there are
GadgetS!!!!
As much as I hate to give these guys a link, there it is.
Do you really want to protect your family with a gadget?
If you want a cute toy, go to Toys R Us (or online) and buy a cute toy. If you want effective air cleaning, do your homework. If you insist on a portable, buy the most you can afford in HEPA filtration with a FAN! If you want air cleaning in every room, buy an air cleaner installed with your HVAC system.
Yes, mold is a nasty thing, especially if you are allergic. AIr cleaners can trap some airborne mold spores but the real key is to dehumidify and ventilate properly.
