A comfortable office in your Lakewood Ranch, Florida, home can help you increase your productivity. Make sure your home office isn’t too hot or too cold so that you can focus on your work. You should also improve your indoor air quality to prevent allergy and asthma symptoms or distracting, unpleasant smells. You can make your home office more comfortable by adding plants, cleaning regularly, maintaining your HVAC system, and using an air purifier.
Adding Plants
The right plants can make your home office look more welcoming, reduce stress, and remove harmful pollutants in your indoor air. For the healthiest, most comfortable air, keep a plant or two in every room of your home, not just the office.
The gel inside the aloe vera plant is great for cuts, burns, and dry skin. This attractive plant is also good for removing pollutants. Chrysanthemums or mums, Chinese evergreens, peace lilies, or spider plants can also help you clean your indoor air. Chinese evergreens are beautiful, and they can help you get rid of harmful chemicals in your home’s air like formaldehyde and xylene.
However, keeping too many plants or watering plants too often could increase the humidity in your home office and make the environment feel hot or stuffy. High humidity can cause mold growth, which leads to musty smells and damage to walls, ceilings, furniture, or carpets.
Cleaning Regularly
A cluttered or dirty desk is distracting and uncomfortable, especially when you need to find a certain item. Clean your office and the rest of your home often to get rid of dirt, dust, pollen, pet dander, mold, and other contaminants. You should vacuum and dust every couple of days. Also, take your shoes off when you enter your home and keep pets out of your office to avoid pollutants. Clean your air registers with a damp cloth and wash your kitchen or bathroom exhaust fan covers with soapy water every three months.
Maintaining Your HVAC System
To prevent an inconvenient, uncomfortable breakdown, have your heater and air conditioner inspected by a professional twice per year. Regular maintenance also saves money and keeps your indoor air quality high.
Change your HVAC system’s air filter once per month to make sure it can remove pollutants effectively. You should also keep leaves, branches, pollen, grass clippings, dirt, and other contaminants away from your outdoor unit. Use an awning and a fence to protect the top and sides. Just leave a couple of feet of space between your unit and the fence for the best airflow and rinse your air conditioner off with a garden hose occasionally.
Using an Air Purifier
An air purifier, also called an air cleaner, with a high minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) can remove most allergens, pollutants, viruses, and bacteria from your indoor air. These devices connect to your ductwork to filter all the air in your home. You can also use a less expensive portable unit in your office during the day and move it to your bedroom at night. Most portable air purifiers weigh about 20 pounds, and larger, more powerful wheeled models are available as well.
A mechanical air cleaner forces air through a special filter that traps allergens, whereas an electronic air purifier uses electrical charges to attract allergens and pollutants. Hybrid filters use both technologies. To keep your indoor air quality high and save energy, choose an air purifier that can remind you to change or clean its air filter or let you know when the filter gets dirty by monitoring airflow. Some programmable thermostats can also monitor the air in your home, and others can remind you to change your HVAC system’s air filter.
Climatic Conditioning has over 40 years of heating and air conditioning experience, and we even installed the new University Town Center mall’s HVAC system in 2014. We’re a Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer, and we can help you install, maintain, and repair your system, as well as a variety of HVAC equipment. Call us anytime at (941) 304-4722 for more ideas on making your home office more comfortable and for great service from our skilled technicians.
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