Dirty air ducts and vents aren’t just irritating, they can make you sick. Dust particles, dirt, allergens, and other environmental pollutants can collect in your vents and pollute the air that flows through them. Since it’s wintertime, your business is probably relying on a central heating system in order to stay warm and keep your employees and patrons happy. But what do you do when your heating system is producing foul-smelling, dirty air? Worse, if your air vents have dust buildup, this can make your entire heating system less efficient, and therefore much more expensive to run.

If you’re concerned about indoor air quality in Norcross, GA, then follow these 3 tips. Here is what an indoor air quality consultant recommends to businesses like yours.

Address the Source

The source of your pollutants is the air around you. While you can’t necessarily clean the air, you can clean the filters that catch pollutants in your air supply. If filter maintenance goes ignored, then pollutants will settle in your rooms and vents. Experts recommend that you change all HVAC filters every 3 months, at least. You may even want to hire an indoor air cleaning service to clean the filters once a month between changing them.

If your business sees children or pets, then you should change your filters monthly.

Fix Leaks

But what if you’re on top of your HVAC system’s filter maintenance needs? What do you do when filters aren’t the problem? Move on to addressing another possible source of vent and duct buildup: leaks. Leaky ducts are less efficient, as they leak air into the space between walls and your attic rather than directly toward you. Also, they spread debris throughout your structure and can make your electric bills astronomically high.

Hire an indoor air quality control team to inspect your vents for signs of leaks, then address them right away. Ducts can be repaired fairly easily, but the hard part is finding the leaks to begin with.

Clean Ducts

Dusty, dirty air vents are a problem on their own, and even if you address the two above concerns, you’ll still need to have the ducts cleaned so they stop spreading pollutants and foul odor throughout your business. After all, your indoor air should be indoor-quality air, not polluted and dusty, outdoor air that can make you, your patrons, and your employees ill.

Hire a team to determine your duct cleaning needs, identify buildup, spot mold growth, and immediately attend to affected areas with minimal interference with the structure of your building. They can even find pest activity in ducts and address these issues before they make you very sick. After this, the last step is to clean the vents themselves. This is fairly simple, and it’s a regular task you or your cleaning staff should do regularly anyway. Take a dryer sheet and rub it over the surface of a vent register to collect dust.

These are just 3 simple ways to address and improve indoor air quality in Norcross, GA. You can get in touch with a professional team, like Air Quality Systems Incorporated, to learn more about your business’ specific needs.