Indoor Air Quality Services in Greater Spokane, Coeur D’Alene
At Specialty Environmental, we offer a range of services to improve the indoor air quality in your home. Our solutions can help to create an indoor environment that is healthier, safer and more comfortable.
Energy Recovery Ventilator
Specialty Environmental can install an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) to remove stale air, as well as harmful pollutants from your home. While the unhealthy air from inside your house is exchanged with fresh air from outside, your home is kept comfortable and no energy is wasted.
Why energy recovery ventilation makes sense
Sealing air leaks to make homes more energy efficient also eliminates a way for unhealthy air to escape. Allergens, pet dander, mold spores, dust mites, viruses, chemicals, radon and other pollutants that might be trapped in your house can cause poor indoor air quality, which can make allergy and asthma symptoms worse and cause serious illness.
Opening a window can help circulate the air in your home, but it isn’t practical year-round. Plus, it wastes energy and invites allergens into your home. If you have a newer home, you have upgraded your home to be more energy efficient, or odors tend to linger in your home, you should consider an energy recovery ventilation system.
An energy recovery ventilator offers a simple and effective solution, replacing stale indoor air with fresher outdoor air, with little or no energy loss. Specialty Environmental’s indoor air quality specialists are trained to install the ERV to work with your existing heating and cooling systems.
How it works
A home ventilation system works much like our lungs. It draws in fresh, healthier air from outside and effectively conditions and filters the air before it’s circulated throughout your house. An energy recovery ventilator is designed to move unhealthy, stale air to the outside, while transferring the temperature of the exiting air to the fresh incoming air, so there is little, if any, temperature loss. You’ll be amazed how fresh your home can smell and how comfortable it can feel.
Vapor Intrusion Mitigation
The experts at Specialty Environmental can install vapor intrusion mitigation systems to reduce the health risks in buildings where chemical vapors from contaminated soil and groundwater may be inhaled by people indoors. The systems can also be installed as a precaution if vapor intrusion is at an increased risk to occur in the future.
What is Vapor Intrusion?
Migration of Soil Vapors to Indoor Air
This figure depicts the migration of vapors in soil gas from contaminated soil and groundwater into buildings. Vapors in soil gas are shown to enter buildings through cracks in the foundation and openings for utility lines. Atmospheric conditions and building ventilation are shown to influence soil gas intrusion. Vapor intrusion occurs when there is a migration of vapor-forming chemicals from any subsurface source into an overlying building. Recognition of soil vapor intrusion to buildings and other enclosed spaces occurred in the 1980s with concerns over radon intrusion. Subsequently, there was an increasing awareness that anthropogenic chemicals (e.g., petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents) in soil, groundwater, and sewers and drainlines could also pose threats to indoor air quality via the vapor intrusion pathway.
Vapor-forming chemicals may include:
- volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as trichloroethylene and benzene.
- select semivolatile organic compounds, such as naphthalene.
- elemental mercury.
- some polychlorinated biphenyls and pesticides.
In extreme cases, the vapors may accumulate in dwellings or occupied buildings to levels that may pose:
- near-term safety hazards (e.g., explosion)
- acute health effects
In buildings with lower concentrations of vapor-forming chemicals arising from vapor intrusion, the main concern is whether the chemicals may pose an unacceptable risk of health effects due to long-term (i.e., chronic) exposure to these lower levels.
A complicating factor in evaluating the potential chronic risk from vapor intrusion is the potential presence of some of the same chemicals from emission sources in the building
- household solvents
- gasoline
- cleaners that may pose, separately or in combination with vapor intrusion, a significant human health risk.
For an environmental cleanup project of this nature, we understand you need a company with experience to get the job done right. We are your trusted local experts for soil vapor extraction and indoor air quality services, so call us today to get started! We offer estimates in Kennewick, Spokane, Lewiston, Pasco, Walla Walla, Richland, Liberty Lake, Pullman, Coeur D Alene, Post Falls and throughout the surrounding areas.
If you’re interested in installing an energy recovery ventilator or indoor air cleaner in your home, contact the experts at Specialty Environmental to request your professional consultation and estimate at no cost. If you live in Spokane, Kennewick, Lewiston or nearby, we can help provide your family with a breath of fresh air.
Breathe EZ Air Cleaner Installation in Greater Spokane, Coeur D’Alene and the Inland Northwest
Replace your standard furnace filter with our carbon-infused electronic Breathe EZ Air Cleaner
Indoor air pollution, sometimes referred to as “sick building syndrome,” can cause health problems such as asthma, headaches, skin rashes, eye irritation, allergies and respiratory ailments. Indoor air quality is extremely important to your family’s health.
Here at Specialty Environmental, we specialize in solutions to improve the air quality in your home. That’s why we provide our customers with a state-of-the-art air cleaning device – the Breathe EZ Air Cleaner.
Contact us today to schedule an installation estimate, or continue reading to learn more about the benefits of our product versus a standard air filter.
Standard air filters aren’t effective at trapping indoor air pollutants
A standard furnace air filter won’t trap microscopic dust particles, mold spores, allergens, airborne bacteria, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and unpleasant odors.
Instead, this primitive filter allows your HVAC system to distribute indoor air pollutants throughout the house. Here’s why: A standard air filter is designed to protect the blower motor that powers your forced air system, not your lungs. This filter traps only large dust particles that can accumulate on fan blades and bearings and cause the blower to fail prematurely.
More-expensive electrostatic and pleated air filters, available at your hardware store, can trap some of the smaller particles that pass through a standard air filter. They use static cling and/or a tight weave to achieve filtration.
The trouble with these air filters is that they quickly become clogged, diminishing air flow while straining the blower motor, thus driving up your energy bills. Replacing these filters when they get dirty is expensive and irritating.
Breathe EZ Air Cleaners trap air pollutants electronically
Fortunately, there’s a way to trap airborne pollutants without paying for expensive air filters that clog up quickly and must be replaced frequently. Building scientists discovered that electronic air filtration can trap airborne pollutants effectively without clogging the filter media. The Breathe EZ Air Cleaner is one of the best examples of this new technology.
The Breathe EZ Air Cleaner doesn’t work by trapping dust particles in a super-fine fabric. It’s actually an electrically powered air cleaner that charges small and large particles and pulls them to its fiberglass media. Particles that enter the filter are given an electric charge that makes them “cling” to filter media that is charged in the opposite way.
This dust-trapping technique can work very effectively with an open-weave filter media that doesn’t restrict air flow through your unit, thus saving you money on energy bills! Breathe EZ is also infused with carbon strips that absorb odors and chemicals commonly found in your indoor air.
Reduce your radon health risks with the Breathe EZ air cleaner
Radon gas can’t be filtered, but air filtration can reduce health risks linked to radon exposure. When radon decays, it produces solid elements that stick to surfaces, such as dust particles. Breathing these dust particles can increase your risk of getting lung cancer, unless they are filtered. The problem is these particles are much smaller than what traditional furnace filters are designed to handle.
The solution is the Breathe EZ Air Cleaner. In clinical trials, this air cleaner filtered 98% of radioactive elements in the air. It can be easily installed into your furnace’s 1-inch filter space by a trained installer. All you need to do is make sure the air in your home is circulating through your HVAC system. The harmful radon decay particles will attach themselves to the Breathe EZ air cleaner, reducing your risk of lung cancer.
If you have high radon levels, we recommend installing a radon mitigation system as your first line of defense, and the Breathe EZ Air Cleaner for added protection.
Breathe easier (and healthier) by replacing your standard furnace air filter with a Breathe EZ Air Cleaner
The Breathe EZ Air Cleaner is available in different sizes, so it can readily replace a conventional HVAC system air filter. Our technicians are trained to install Breathe EZ in your existing HVAC system. We will also show you how to swap out the filter media inside the Breathe EZ in minutes. It’s a very simple process you can do yourself on a quarterly basis.
Our indoor air quality services are available in the Tri-Cities, Liberty Lake, Pullman, Coeur ‘d Alene, Post Falls and throughout Washington and Idaho. Call us or get an online estimate to install our indoor air cleaner in your home today!