Indoor Air Quality decisions
Honest indoor air quality decision guides for Greater Seattle — the trade-offs, sourced local cost context, and the questions to ask any bidder before you sign.
Need the fundamentals first?
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What should my HVAC do when wildfire smoke rolls in?
During wildfire smoke events in Puget Sound, the goal is simple: keep outdoor PM2.5 out and filter the indoor air repeatedly. Close up the house, run the HVAC fan on a filtration schedule with the best filter your blower can handle without choking airflow, and deploy portable HEPA units in the rooms where you actually breathe. The upgrades worth owning — media cabinets, room HEPAs, fresh filter stock — are the ones installed before the smoke arrives, not ordered after the AQI turns orange.
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MERV, HEPA, UV: what does each actually do?
MERV, HEPA, and UV are three different indoor-air tools that marketing loves to blur: MERV rates how well a filter captures particles; true HEPA is a capture standard so fine (99.97% at 0.3 microns) it needs purpose-built equipment; and UV lights don't capture anything — they inhibit biological growth on wet coils. Matching the technology to your actual complaint — dust, smoke, must, humidity — is the whole game, not buying the highest number on the shelf.
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Why is my Seattle home damp — and what actually fixes it?
Puget Sound's humidity problem is long, damp, mild winters — not the tropical mugginess people imagine when they hear 'Seattle rain.' Months of moist outdoor air, plus everything a household adds through showers, cooking, and breathing, meets cool surfaces like single-pane windows, uninsulated corners, and vented crawl spaces under mid-century ramblers. The healthy indoor target is 30–50% relative humidity; getting there is usually ventilation and moisture management first, dedicated dehumidifiers or HRVs second — not a gadget bought before you know where the water is coming from.
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Are my ducts the real problem? Leaks, airflow, and honest fixes
Your ducts are half the forced-air system: in a typical home, 20–30% of conditioned air never reaches the rooms — lost through leaky joints and crushed runs into crawl spaces and attics (ENERGY STAR figure). Uneven rooms, whistling vents, chronic dust, and stubborn bills are often duct problems wearing equipment costumes, and in Greater Seattle's mid-century housing stock, original ductwork is frequently 50+ years old. Test and seal before you replace equipment — otherwise the new unit inherits the same losses.
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