Why Is Good Ventilation Important?

Ventilation plays a crucial role in creating a healthy home environment and goes far beyond simply circulating air within the space, yet investing in good ventilation is often overlooked in favour of more cosmetic or structural home upgrades. While it is easy to get carried away with improving the appearance of your home, changes that improve your health and wellbeing will have a greater benefit in the long run and this begs the question ‘why is good ventilation important?’.

Be it less moisture, improved air quality or a better smell, having good ventilation holds a myriad of benefits for both you are your home. Read on as we dive into the importance of good ventilation and, crucially, offer you ideas on how you can improve the ventilation in your home. 

Keep Out Moisture

If there is one thing that strikes fear into the hearts of every homeowner, it’s mould. Condensation from your cooking in the kitchen or steam from the shower can wreak havoc on both your interior and the foundational structure of your home, and, if undiscovered or untreated for a long enough time, can leave you with a hefty price tag to remedy the damage done to your home. Good home ventilation helps you avoid these costs as it encourages healthy airflow throughout the home, giving you peace of mind that your house isn’t crumbling around you without having to make any sacrifices to your daily routine. 

Freshen Up Your Home

Stale air can impact your life in several ways, especially if you have underlying health conditions such as asthma. In a house with poor ventilation, you may start to notice a funky smell as you walk in, the lingering scent of the meal you cooked 4 days ago, or your chest might even start to feel heavy and congested. This is all to do with the airflow and ventilation in your house being poor! Consistent exposure to stale air can also lead to headaches and itchiness on the skin and even asthma flare-ups, so investing in good home ventilation is crucial not just to improve the environment of your home but also to maintain your health. 

Keep Yourself Cool

With climate change taking hold and the summer months getting hotter year on year, it is important to have your house ready for when you need to bring down the temperature. Having good ventilation allows you to have a constant flow of cool air throughout your home, which brings both the benefits from before but also means that you won’t be slow roasting yourself in your living room during those hotter months.

Cost-Effective

In the current era of rising bills and an all-encompassing cost of living crisis, improving your home ventilation system can also offer you substantial savings on your bills. While you may need to make an initial investment in a proper ventilation system (more on this to come!), once good ventilation is in place in your home there is no need to invest in the expensive maintenance and running costs of equipment like air conditioning units. Additionally, the right ventilation system can distribute heat to the most crucial areas of the home, allowing you to keep the radiators off for longer and cut back on your energy spending. 

How To Improve Your Home Ventilation

With a clear understanding of why good ventilation is important, your key consideration will be how you can improve your current setup. There are a number of options at your disposal that you can utilise to achieve good ventilation, with the most suitable depending on your budget and the level of change you are comfortable with. Installing vents around the home that lead to the loft or straight outside is a quick and easy method, as is putting extractor fans in problem areas like your kitchen or bathroom, but these options tend to improve ventilation in isolated areas rather than across your home as a whole. 

To give yourself access to all of the benefits of good ventilation, investing in a Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV) system is a fantastic option. This technology works by taking the stale air from wet rooms and areas in the home and running it through a heat exchanger where pollutants are removed. The now fresh air is then transferred back into the house to the areas where it is needed.