Do Plants Help Indoor Air Quality
The air you breathe inside your home can contain some nasty stuff. From volatile organic compounds to byproducts of combustion, you can find a little bit of everything in your home’s air. If you’re one to do all you can to protect your family, this fact might come as quite a surprise.
Fortunately, there are actions you can take to help improve your home’s air quality while improving your family’s health in the process. One popular idea in Deptford is to utilize air-purifying plants. Below, you’ll find a guide to how plants can help your home and why it’s so important.
What About Other Options?
When thinking about improving indoor air quality, a lot of options come to mind. Opening windows is one idea, though that’s not an option when the weather outside is too hot or cold.
An electronic air filter is another possibility. However, while electronic air filters can be effective at removing pollutants from your home’s air, they can also be quite expensive to purchase and run. Additionally, they contribute to air pollution by using electricity that’s often produced by fossil fuels.
On the other hand, plants help filter the air, work in all seasons, and don’t require any electricity or filters to operate. These factors make plants an excellent option to help improve the quality of your indoor air, and one that we at JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning highly recommend.
How Do They Do It?
Given that plants require almost no outside input to purify your home’s air, it can almost seem like magic that they are so effective. Purifying the air with plants, though, is actually far more scientific than magical.
The leaves of plants have pores on their surface. While these pores are typically reserved for absorbing carbon dioxide, they are large enough to absorb other gases, as well. It just so happens that these gases make up many of the most common indoor pollutants, such as benzene, formaldehyde, and many others.
Once these harmful gases, along with carbon dioxide, have been absorbed by the plant, they are stored in the cellular structure of the plant, where they can be broken down through the process of photosynthesis. For indoor pollutants, this separates the different elements in the pollutants to a form in which they can be broken down and consumed by the organisms living in the soil that the plants grow in. This means that the indoor pollutants are rendered permanently harmless, all thanks to the plants growing in your home.
Much More Than That
An important aspect of photosynthesis is that it doesn’t just produce the necessary fuel for plants to grow and thrive. It also releases excess oxygen, which your plants release back into the air in your home.
This is another reason that we at JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning love plants. In addition to removing gases that are harmful to your health, plants release oxygen which is helpful to your health. This is something that even the best air filters and purifiers can’t do, making plants a great choice for cleaning your indoor air.
Special Considerations
Though they’re not as expensive as electronic air filters, plants still represent a fairly significant upfront investment. Therefore, it’s important that you set your plants up for success by following a few growing tips.
First, make sure that your plants have enough room to grow. Small pots may match your decor, but they could cause your plants to become rootbound, which could significantly stunt their growth, and thus their ability to remove pollutants from the air in your home.
Second, it’s important to ensure that your plants receive adequate sunlight. While it’s a good idea to choose plants with lower light requirements to account for cloudy days, you still want to keep your plants in a room that receives generous amounts of natural light.
Third, you’ll want to do your best to check the moisture content of the soil daily. Since many home environments are low in humidity, the soil that your indoor plants are in could dry out more quickly than the soil you use outside.
If you follow these simple tips, though, you should be well on your way to having a beautiful indoor garden that provides ample amounts of fresh, clean air.
Professional Assistance
At JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning, we can help you maintain your home’s air quality in many ways. We offer a full slate of HVAC services that will keep your furnace and air conditioner running smoothly to keep the air in your home comfortable and healthy. We also install ductless systems that help protect the air outside your home by using less energy than their centralized counterparts.
We’ve been proud to serve our community for almost 40 years, providing superior results for thousands of satisfied customers. At JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning, we work hard to take an individualized approach to each job we work. Instead of applying a “one size fits all” solution to a problem, we strive to understand the individual needs. If you need help with heating and cooling repairs, installations or indoor air quality, give us a call today.
