Ventilation plays an important role in your home. The right ventilation brings utmost comfort. The most important thing about having good natural ventilation around the house is energy efficiency. You can significantly decrease your monthly electric bill by enjoying natural airflow around your house. Additionally, it is one of the steps towards living sustainably.
Apart from enjoying all the perks of natural ventilation, you will also breathe fresh air. Improving your ventilation around the house requires a few important decisions in terms of design, layout, and materials used when building your house. The building materials used greatly matters. While most synthetic materials produce VOCs or volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, flame retardants, and other harsh chemicals that diminish the quality of air that circulates around your house, more eco-friendly materials, on the other hand, do otherwise.
In todays’ fast-paced era where most constructions are pre-designed and people living in high-rise apartments have no choice but to deal with the existing design. On a brighter note, there are ways to improve your ventilation around the house without having to alter the design. Rather, you can consider a few factors to optimise and maximise ventilation.
Cross ventilation is a design where the opposite sides of the building are the source of natural airflow. It is an in and out pathway that allows fresh air consistently. There are several kinds of cross ventilation that you can do to enhance airflow.
By simply adding some house plants around your space. The stale air that circulates will be replaced with new fresh air. It helps purify the air that flows around the space while adding natural aesthetics.
Sliding Window– 50% opening that allows a natural breeze to come in.
Louvres – It can let up to 95% of the breeze come inside your home.
Casement Window – It redirects breeze through the window and it catches and deflects air from different angles.
Technically speaking, the wind does not blow through a building, rather, the air is stuck in areas with lower air pressure. To magnet the breeze into your space, windows with large openings on the leeward or downwind side areas of the house is ideal. As for smaller openings, areas with high pressure or upwind is ideal. Window openings near the middle of the high-pressure zone are more effective and efficient to collect fresh air because is pressure is at its peak when it is near the windward wall.
This technique is used for a spacious home with insufficient airflow because of the proximity of other buildings around the area. Hence, balanced ventilation systems are utilised to increase airflow. Balanced ventilation systems can be rendered through ducted or point-source. A ducted system brings in natural airflow in areas around the house where households mostly hang out. As for bathrooms and kitchens, the exhaust is the best way to eradicate air pollutants.
Ventilation is an integral part when designing a house or any building. Proper and sufficient ventilation will improve the quality of living in your residence while living sustainably and saving a lot of money from your electric bills.
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