For the Home Archives - Smart Health Shop

Harmful Effects of Air Conditioner on Your Health

Do you use the air conditioner to just cool your home? An air conditioner is more than a cooling system and serves more than one purpose. Installing a new air conditioning unit in a home or office is also an investment. Discover interesting facts about why people install air conditioners in their home or office.

The AC Keeps Your Home Cool

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The primary function of an air conditioner is to keep your space cool in warm weather. According to the Guardian online, “nearly 200 US cities have seen record heat up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit.” More homeowners are relying on the air conditioner to set the temperament in their home. In fact, many air conditioners are forced to run at full capacity under extreme heat. If your air conditioner is expected to hold up under the increased usage, it must be running efficiently.

An Air Conditioner Promotes Clean Air

An air conditioner acts very similar to a filter by removing moisture and humid air from your home or office. Like a sponge, your AC absorbs the moist air. An inoperable or poorly operating air conditioner can be uncomfortable and create enough humidity for mold growth. Mold and mildew can also cause poor indoor air quality.

To resolve indoor air quality issues, it’s always best to hire a professional from Cutler Air to assess, repair, or replace your complete operating unit. To make adjustments to improve your air quality with your AC, clean your vents and improve your airflow. The air conditioner pulls in air from outside, cools it down, and distributes it to your home. Tiny particles like dust and dirt can quickly invade your AC filter. The experts suggest changing your air filter every six weeks to improve your indoor air quality .

Get Regular Maintenance On Your Air Conditioner

If you want to extend the life of your AC, it’s important to get the proper maintenance. For example, the winter is a great time to get routine maintenance on your air conditioner. In fact, during the off season, homeowners can find great prices on HVAC services. Trust an expert to have the knowledge and expertise to get your air conditioner running properly. More importantly, most professionals provide a warranty on their services to give you a peace of mind during a cooling emergency.

Conditions like asthma or respiratory breathing issues can make it difficult to comfortably use an air conditioner without triggering some of your symptoms. Keeping your unit clean and running properly is the key to better air quality, saving money, and getting the most out of your unit. While your air conditioner can be used to maintain your indoor air quality, you should never overload your unit to get it to function. A professional will have the tools to help you maximize the use of your AC and it keep it in top working order to set the comfort levels of your home or office.

Simple Ways To Improve The Air Quality In Your Home

As a homeowner, you clean your home to the best of your abilities to make sure your space is livable. However, sometimes we need to do a thorough clean and check for air pollutants in our home. Air pollutants are harmful since we breathe them in and they negatively affect our bodies. There are many medical illnesses that people develop because of these pollutants. If you continue to live in a home with poor air quality, the likeliness of you developing allergies, lung cancer, asthma, and other respiratory diseases increases. This is why it is important to use these simple ways to improve the air quality in your home.

1. Check for Leaks

If there are any leaks or places that have free-standing water in your home now is the time to eliminate them. You can do this by sealing any holes that may be present. This will help to reduce mold in your home. You want to eliminate the mold in your house because as stated by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) people that are sensitive to mold can develop nasal stuffiness, throat irritation, coughing, wheezing, eye irritation, or, in some cases, skin irritation.

2. Read the Labels on Your Cleaning Supplies and Other Household Products

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According to the American Lung Association, some of the products that are used every day in households release dangerous chemicals such as VOC (volatile organic compounds). These types of chemicals being released are the cause of chronic respiratory problems, allergic reactions, and headaches. They can be found in items such as detergents, carpet cleaner, plastics, and more. It is important to read the labels of products before you buy. You want to make sure they either don’t contain or have a reduced amount of VOCs, irritants, fragrances, and other flammable ingredients.

3. Take Care of Your HVAC system

A great place to start improving your home’s air quality is your HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system. You can clean and change the filters on your HVAC system about every three months. You can also call a Straightline Heating and Cooling professional to schedule a regular maintenance appointment. They can inspect your HVAC system thoroughly to ensure that it runs efficiently.

4. Let Nature into Your Home

Time to let nature in and one way is by bringing in house plants. At Live Science, it has been reported that the pores on the surface of a plant’s leaves can absorb gases such as VOCs. It is also necessary to improve your home’s ventilation. According to the United States EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), you can lower the air pollutants in your home by increasing the amount of outdoor air coming inside. Improving your air quality is as simple as opening a window, a door, or turning on a fan.

By controlling the amount of air pollutants in your home you can improve your air quality. You can do this by checking for leaks to get rid of mold, reading labels of household products, buying house plants, and taking care of your HVAC system. These are all simple steps that take a minimal amount of time to complete.

5 Ways You Can Keep Your Home’s Air Clean

If you’re getting more frequent colds, there could be many reasons why. The first thing you should look at is the amount of air pollution in your home. If there’s not enough air circulating in your home, you could have mold, or other pollutants in the air in your home causing you to get sick. Adding house plants, changing your air conditioner’s filter, installing an air cleaner, using a mechanical ventilator to improve ventilation, and moving your furniture around can help improve the air in your home. Surgi’s Heating & Air Conditioning also has a list of ways to improve air quality here.

5 Tips for Buying an HVAC System for Your Home

The HVAC system is complex and many homeowners do not understand how to buy the right system for their home. With so many features and benefits that come in the descriptions of products, it may seem daunting to start looking for a machine. However, buying one does not have to be difficult.

Here are five tips to follow to buy your next HVAC system:

1. Check the SEER, HSPF, and AFUF Ratings

When electricity bills are high, all you think about is how you could save money. SEER, HSPF,and AFUF ratings are designed to inform the buyer of the efficiency of the machines. If you check the SEER ratings, you will be able to find the latest energy-efficient machines that help offset your utility costs. Generally, higher ratings are assigned to machines that use more energy.

2. Make Sure You Know the Size of Your HVAC

You want to know the optimal size of your unit, so it does not bring problems later on. Again, it is a matter of being energy-efficient. Excessive or insufficient heating or cooling can change the quality of your indoor air. Insulation will prevent drafting in terms of unbalanced heat and cooling and consequently save you energy.

3. Invest in a Programmable Thermostat

Photo via Flickr by Dept of Energy Solar Decathlon

Knowing what temperature your home is set on can save you money. A programmable thermostat enables you to set the temperatures in the most energy-efficient way based on the usage of different parts of your home. The thermostat can help to maintain good indoor air quality. Investing in top-notch indoor air quality is wise.

4. Do an Analysis of Costs and Benefits

When buying a home, the prices of both the HVAC system and the home are evaluated. This is because the system’s installation cost can effect the buying process. For those who are not able to pay the mortgage, they thoughtlessly jump in for a system upgrade. See if the price of your home is sufficient to upgrade the system. Keep in mind that the furnace lasts 20 years compared to the conditioner which lasts 10 years.

See if there is any bad ductwork, as 30% of energy can be wasted through the ducts. Signs to look for are loose and broken parts that are condensed and dusty. In this case, you will be needing a device restoration, unless the previous owner had a dehumidifier installed.

5. Examine the Refrigerant

Refrigerants named R-22 were usually used for old homes. It is recommended that you buy a new device if your system uses this type. Stay healthy at home by choosing the right HVAC, as outdated refrigerants are not safe for your family.

As a new homeowner, you probably felt lost when you were told that you needed to have a unit installed or replaced. Use these tips to determine the appropriate system for your home and to keep your family safe and comfortable.

5 Ways You Can Keep Your Home’s Air Clean

If you’re noticing stale air in your home, having allergy symptoms, or have one of these three signs that your air duct needs cleaning from Air-Specialty, there are several steps you can take to reduce air pollution in your home. Adding house plants, changing your HVAC filter, installing a whole-home air cleaner, improving ventilation with a mechanical ventilator, and rearranging your furniture can all help alleviate your home’s air pollution in different ways. Taking these steps improves air circulation, removes pollutants, or removes moisture from the air so mold doesn’t start growing. We’ll show in more detail how each step works to help improve the air pollution in your home.

The Best Deal You Could Find For Pest Service

The presence of pests is not only disturbing – they come to transmit diseases for humans. We often find these tiny creatures sneaking around our home and do invasion at night. They can even hide in an unexpected place or inside our bed. As soon as you find these insects, it is essential to rid them off as they give bad impacts for our health. Below, we will tell you why it’s important to get help from the professional pest service.

Pests Can Be Dangerous

Do you know that spiders have the ability to bite? And even in some cases, their bites can be incredibly dangerous! The cockroaches can spread germs or bacteria and disease from their gut, once they walk upon your food. Rat bites’ can cause a rat-bite fever, and their urine spreads leptospirosis. You may also experience sleep deprivation, anemia from loss of blood, and itchy skin from the bed bugs.

Pests Can Cause Incredible Damage

Most of the time, these tiny creatures cause not only physical harm for human but also can harm your home and your belongings as well. For example, rats can contaminate your food so you need to throw out all of your groceries or they might bite your food storages until it’s broken. Also, if you don’t realize the presence of termites, they can damage your house’s structure as they can be undetected for a long time and eat all of your wood properties, even bed bugs are so irritating so you need a professional pest control service to get rid of them and its better to try new mattresses to have a great comfortable sleep.

It’s Much Easier than a DIY Approach

You can find many traps for pests being sold everywhere or spray the insect repellent around your home. But the next problem is do you know what to do afterwards or how to solve this issue right after they are trapped inside? Pests control experts know the best thing to do, as they can handle this problem efficiently and they have the right equipment to shoo the pests away. Trying to spend a huge amount of time, energy and money to rid them off by your own can be exhausting like doing a never-ending job.

It Can Save Money in the Long Run

Many people avoid calling pests control experts because of the costs. However, doing prevention is better before it’s too late. Once the termites or other destructive pests ruin your house’s structure, there will be more and bigger costs needed to fix everything.

You Can Sit and Relax

The biggest advantage of pests control service is that you can sit and relax, as you know that you are choosing the best option for prevention of pests. You don’t need to worry any longer about the spiders and bed bugs that crawl while you sleep or the cockroaches and rats that eat and harm your food in the middle of the night.

Those are the reasons why we recommend you to do checking on regular basis to make your home a safe and comfortable place. Pest control in Sydney provides the service you need to clean your house from all kind of pests and get your money worth, as they will definitely offer you their best deal.

WHAT IS NATURAL GAS AND WHY IT’S THE RIGHT OPTION FOR YOUR HOME

Natural gas is a fossil fuel in the form of gas. Natural gas is a mixture of hydrocarbons which has a large expandability, high compressive strength, low specific gravity and is naturally present in the form of gas. The main benefit of natural gas is as an energy source, namely as fuel for households and industry. In addition, natural gas is also used as industrial raw material and hydrogen gas production. So that natural gas is safe to use in homes, the gas plant adds a small amount of odorous sulfur-containing compounds, so that leaks can be detected and stopped immediately before an explosion occurs. However, natural gas is far cleaner than other fossil fuels, such as coal and oil.

Natural gas warms our homes, powers our household appliances generate electricity, and even fuels vehicles. These versatile and abundant resources contribute to reducing emissions worldwide. Although natural gas is widely reported, many people still only see it as a resource for heating and cooking at home. So when there is a problem with your gas, you need to immediately contact western plumbing supplies that will repair and check your gas pipeline problem as soon as possible. We cannot underestimate this problem, because it will be very dangerous if let alone, especially if you get the wrong handling.

Natural gas is indeed widely used in human life until now. Natural gas is proven as a natural potential that can meet various human needs. Even so, as humans, we need to know how to use natural gas more wisely, because this is a non-renewable natural resource. If used excessively, then the natural gas on our earth will be exhausted. The natural gas is also often used as a source of household energy, for example fuel for cooking uses natural gas because it is safer.

The use of natural gas is the right choice because the cost is far more affordable than another, especially for decades using natural gas, there has never been any interference at all. The natural gas is also beneficial for the health of the environment around us. The source of human life depends on the air we breathe. To maintain the health of our environment, surely the air quality needed must be clean. Meanwhile, natural gas which has a clean nature was able to reduce emissions from the use of other fuels in life. If you have this, then the use of natural gas would be better for the environment. Besides that, the air will always be clean and safe from harmful pollutants. Consequently, the personal environment will be healthier, if only the environment around us also supports to be healthier. Creating effective safety programs is needed while using natural gas.

In some countries that have 4 seasons, usually in people’s homes, they have coolers and heaters for use during certain seasons. The extreme weather changes allow them to have to use this kind of natural gas source. Natural gas is used as a source of natural energy for the manufacture of heating and cooling machines both in housing and offices. Can you imagine if you are in an area that is experiencing summer heat, and there is no air conditioner (AC) in your home? That is the importance of the benefits of natural gas.

Tips for Keeping Your Water Clean

If your water doesn’t taste as fresh as you like, or if you are struggling with hard water, you are probably looking for a solution as soon as possible. From drinking water to laundry, cleaning, and other needs, having hard or less than ideal water quality can lead to a lot of daily challenges. Drinking it tastes bad and using bottled water gets expensive and is also bad for the environment. Your hair, skin, clothes, and even dishes suffer when cleaned with hard water. Here are some ways to mitigate these problems.

Address Boiler Issues

If your water boiler has developed a deposit and thus a scale formation, it needs treatment. You can protect your boiler against mechanical problems and also neutralize the scale in your boiler with a pretreatment. Residual minerals will be removed and your water quality will improve. This may sound intimidating, but simply search the web for boiler pretreatment akron to find the professional who can help treat your boiler and bring your water back to life.

Find the Right Filters

Water filters can make a world of difference in your water. You may need simply a pitcher filter or a larger home filter system. Your needs will vary based on the type and amount of impurities that need to be removed from your water. It’s a good idea to get a water test to find out what kind of contaminants you have and learn how to best deal with them. There are several types of water filtration methods available, such as activated carbon, reverse osmosis, distillation, and even UV purification.

Help Protect Water Sources

Another thing to consider is where your water comes from. Once it gets to your home, you may still need to purify it, but what about if the source runs out? Your water may come from rivers, aquifers, streams, or lakes. Keeping these bodies of water safe will help ensure you have water available. You can help preserve these sources by coordinating with your community and water utility provider.

Water is a crucial element in daily life. Plants, pets, people all need it – and it should be clean and healthy water. You can learn how to purify and clean water for a multitude of purposes with the above tips. Knowing how to attain clean water and how to address issues with water systems helps keep you healthy – and helps keep the planet healthy, too.

Amazing Bedroom Décor Ideas for Children

A child loves to blend colors and imaginations in their thoughts. They can make a ship out of a cloud. You need to keep these things in mind when you plan the bedroom décor for your child. A bedroom is a place where your child gets to rest. Even though the body relaxes, the mind is onto something every moment. This is the reason why you should keep an interesting décor for the bedroom. Here are some ideas to make your child’s bedroom their favorite place.

Balance the Color Choices

You must have a balanced choice of colors for your child. Not too bright not too dark. Colors which creates imagination and illuminates the room with energy and positivity should be your first choice. Irrespective of the other rooms in your house, you need to pay special attention to your child’s bedroom. For girls or boys, always choose bright and bold colors. The concept of blue for boys and pink for girls is very cliché. Nowadays kids love all kinds of colors.

The best you can do is to try out different designs. Alternatively, you can also use superhero and Barbie wallpapers or paintings. No matter if the bedroom is small or big, you can add some creativity to the wall facing the bed. You can also use some lighting effects to reflect the colors and brighten up the room.

Quality Pieces of Design

Most parents aim for a theme based bedroom for their kids but that might not be the best option. Bedrooms are meant to reflect the personality of the person. As a kid, he or she needs to build a strong personality. Allow your kids to explore their preferences and choices. It is better to try out small pieces of designs in the room to enhance the creativity levels. Designs are like investments, if it is a good one, you’ll profit from it. As the child grows up, their interest keeps on changing. The boy who was a diehard fan of superheroes is now a pop-music lover. You need to keep that space open so that they can evolve.

Never rush for themes as decorating a bedroom require a lot of monetary and physical expenditure. Rather you can use different wallpapers. If your child has grown up to a teenager, then let them choose their bedroom décor. Allow them to explore their choices and preferences. It will reflect their personality and creativity levels as well. It is better to decorate the room with temporary accessories rather than stacking up permanent elements. For example, install bookshelves, desktop tables, wall hangings, etc.

Create a Focal Point

It is good to have a focal point and every room needs one too. It has its own unique decorative pattern and style. To design a child’s bedroom you need to think like a child. Look out for their likes, dislikes, choices, preferences, interests, etc. You need to blend beauty with personal meaning while designing your child’s bedroom. Before anything else, keep one thing in mind that your child’s bedroom needs space too. So just don’t bump into designs which will fill the entire room. Do not clutter the room, rather use shelves in place of cabinets.

Keep as much open space as you can. You can try out something unique which will both leave out space and help your kid keep things organized. For example, you can install an L-shaped long and solid wood work with dressers and cabinets. It would look decorative, add to the beauty of the room and keep a lot of o space open.

Have a Plan

Planning is the most important part of home decoration. Try installing loft beds in the kid’s room. It will help create some space in the room irrespective of what is the size of the room. The space left beneath it can be used for placing the study desk or bookshelves. This leaves out a lot of space in the room even if the room is small. You won’t feel like the room is small. You need to create a dream bedroom for your child keeping in mind that there is ample space to move around.

Painting the walls is not always a good idea. Instead of it, you can try installing wall hangings and abstract painting frames. A lot depends on the interiors of the house as you cannot have completely different designs for different rooms. There must be some relation and connection with the colors, textures, and designs.

Make an Impact

Everything you do or plan to do must have an impact on your actions. Whether it is the colors or the design or the placement of furniture, everything has an impact. You need to know which one is having a positive impact on the design and which isn’t. Changing the color from pink to mauve won’t help in enhancing the design or the girly thing in the room. You need to think of something more balanced and proper. Blending too many colors in the room isn’t a good idea as well. This is a very tricky thing when it comes to choosing the right color that matches the design of the room.

Your child needs to enjoy being at home and being in their room. After a long tiring day at school, every child wishes to cherish the quality time in their own room. For this purpose, you need to make their room spacious and colorful. The choice of furniture and other accessories of the room add on the beauty of the design.

Choosing distinct things might just ruin the beauty of the interiors of the room. After all, it’s a bedroom and good sleep is most important. It is better to keep a couple of wall or bedside lamps so that your child doesn’t have to sleep in the dark. To conclude, you can choose designs of your will but keep in mind that your child is comfortable with it. The child needs to love spending time in their room.

13 garden maintenance tips throughout the seasons

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Gardening is a tedious activity, and it is quite safe to say that it may not be one of the first things on your agenda after winter goes and spring sets in. However, you can’t just leave your garden as is; there are still things you can do to ensure your garden looks pristine and beautiful throughout the year. Sure, you may be inclined to get things over with during spring, but for determined green thumbs, gardening is a season-to-season endeavor.

Understand that maintenance is a never-ending process, and this is especially a truism if your front lawn or backyard have been established just a handful of years ago – or if you are looking to accentuate the overall look and feel of your garden throughout the seasons, evolving it each year.

In light of this, mentioned below are season-to-season garden maintenance tips everybody can perform to transform your garden into your personal little piece of heaven.

Maintaining your garden in spring

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1. Start anew

Give those beautiful, uplifting little spring flowers a fresh start by keeping the garden nice and clean. Begin by doing away with all the dead plants and leaves scattered throughout the yard, pick up the withered branches, clean everything. As soon as you open your yard for the new season, it is vital to check for dead plants, short trees, and shrubs. Cut all the perennials you neglected to do so during fall. Moreover, invest in good bug killer sprays to keep infestations at bay.

2. Get some fresh compost and fertilizer to feed the land

When it comes to plants, shrubs, and trees, it is a good idea to fertilize them during spring because of the warmer climate. As for annuals or planters, you can add the fertilizer once or twice every month.

3. Get some annuals for your garden

At the very start of spring, try to embellish your flowering bushes and/or garden bulbs with annuals such as violas and pansies as these are cool-weather plants. As soon as you enter May, you can start planting early summer annuals such as begonias, dahlias, and impatiens. Planting all three of these late spring annuals will accentuate the aesthetics of your garden, filling it with bright and uplifting pops of color throughout summer.

Moreover, these annuals will also last the whole summer with proper care.

4. Don’t forget to water everything you plant

When it comes to new plantings, many people neglect watering them on a daily basis. It is vital to understand each new planting needs day to day watering in the first week. And after one week, you have to water them once or twice every week. New planting needs water to thrive and grow quickly.

5. Have a good irrigation system in place

In spring, you won’t need to water your entire yard on a daily basis, which gives you a couple of months before summer, where you can check the efficacy of your irrigation system. Make sure it works effectively so that you can be prepared to water your garden every week when the summer kicks in.

Maintaining your garden in summer

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6. Pruning the bushes

When the summer heat kicks in, it is time to properly prune all those spring bushes; you are going to see plenty flowering during spring – for example, rhododendrons and lilacs.

7. Take extra care of the roses

It is a good idea to fertilize roses during the hot months of summer – however, it is important not to procrastinate pruning those rose beds throughout the season. Remember, summer is also the time when insects like whiteflies and red spider mites come out, so keep a couple of bug killer sprays handy.

8. Water the garden effectively

Now that the summer months are here to stay for the next couple of months, you are going to have to water your garden on a daily basis. However, this doesn’t mean flooding the garden. Set your irrigation system to water the planting, trees, and grass frequently and in short bursts, don’t let the water running.

Maintaining your garden in fall

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9. Cutting unwanted plantings

The optimum way of prepping your garden for fall is to get rid of plantings and flowerings that are not in season. So, start cutting shrubs and plants that show signs of withering so that flowers and annuals can show through during fall.

10. Get some seasonal planting varieties

September and October are good months to plant some seasonal additions in your garden – for example, go for planters such as ornamental kale or asters and fall grass.

11. Prepare for spring

During the end of fall, it is better to start thinking about planting spring plants and bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. You can do this in the month of October or in the first week of November.

Maintaining your garden in winter

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12. Secure the shrubs and trees

Winter is the time when you start to preserve certain types of plants and trees. For example, pine trees, evergreen bushes, and holly can beautifully accentuate the look of your garden during the winter. The best thing you can do to protect these plants and trees is to spray them with anti-desiccants. This can help inhibit the leaves from drying out.

Moreover, the chemicals will also serve as an added layer of seasonal protection, especially when you talk about all that moisture build-up in winter. Furthermore, you can also prevent your shrubs from being damaged during heavy snowfall if you wrap them with twine.

13. Analyze the structure of your garden

Winter is the best season to analyze every aspect of the design and structure of your garden. That is primarily because during colder months, a lot of the flowers, as well as the foliage, will quickly clear out. This is where you can think about accentuating the overall design of your yard so that it looks nice and clean throughout the year.

You can go for simpler things, for example, a retaining wall or dogwood branches, both of which can help add to the style and structure of your garden in winter and beyond.

Final words

So there you have it – a short but sweet and simple guide to how you can maintain your garden throughout the seasons. Use these to preserve the beauty and add value to the look and feel of your garden.

Author Bio:

Alycia Gordan is a freelance writer who loves to read and write articles on healthcare technology, fitness, and lifestyle. She is a tech junkie and divides her time between travel and writing. You can find her on Twitter: @meetalycia