Airing rooms is an essential action to protecting health

Indoor air is two to eight times more polluted than outdoor air, yet this is where we spend the most time. There are simple and effective actions we can take on a daily basis to improve indoor air quality. Airing out your home has many advantages!

Why air your house?

Our furniture releases volatile compounds, cleaning with solvents or cleaning products can discharge irritating vapours, and our clothes, sheets and carpets give off dust or contain dust mites. Ventilating the rooms in your house allows you to evacuate all these things that are harmful to health.

There are also unpleasant odours that come out of the kitchen at times (burnt fat for example). Taking a shower generates humidity, which can lead to mould if the vapour is not evacuated. Even our breathing generates CO2 that we can replace! As you know, nothing beats opening the windows to circulate a breath of healthy and renewed air around the house.

Refreshing the air in your home is also an effective way of stopping aerosol transmission of viruses, and fighting allergies caused by the lack of fresh air and the resulting poor air quality. A simple action with many benefits!

Air for 10 minutes twice a day

Would you like to live in a healthy home? It takes just 10 minutes per room twice a day. This in effect is the minimum time necessary, recommended by the World Health Organization, to refresh the air in a room effectively in order to cleanse your indoor environment. For example, you can enjoy the benefits of fresh air in your bedroom at night by ventilating prior to going to sleep. The ideal situation is to do this morning and evening, so your home is never left unventilated for too long.

However, this simple action can quickly become a bind to do everyday... This is why Somfy offers an innovative solution with Somfy air: a range of systems that create smart windows. Your home becomes a more comfortable and convenient place to live thanks to a fresh air ventilation system. In combination with a compatible air quality sensor (see below), the TaHoma app knows the right time to air your home, opening your windows by a few centimetres and locking them in the "secure ventilation" position, letting you ventilate in complete security. Now it's easy to have the benefits of fresh air, improve the quality of the air in your home and your family's well-being, without compromising on your home’s safety or energy efficiency.

You can ventilate all your rooms, even those without windows

Ventilating a room without windows is also possible! If your bathroom, your storage room or a hallway in your house has no window, you can install a CMV (Controlled Mechanical Ventilation).

As its name suggests, this is an air circulation system that refreshes the air in the room. You ventilate even without a window and thus create a perfectly healthy atmosphere!

Ventilate in all seasons

The cold and rainy seasons encourage us to stay nice and snug at home, and we don't like to think about throwing the windows open! Yet despite the cold, airing your home is still extremely important, for all the reasons highlighted above. Air must circulate at all times of the year, including the winter months, without any negative impact on your heating bill!

Even better, if you own an air quality sensor that is compatible with the TaHoma app, then it can tell you exactly when to ventilate your home. Sensors such as the Smart Indoor Air Quality Monitor by Netatmo or the Open’R by Netsecur measure several different indicators such as temperature, humidity and CO2 to determine indoor air quality. The TaHoma app can then alert you with a notification, and will send another notification once the air has been renewed.

With Somfy motorised and connected windows or Velux, you have smart windows whose opening and closing are programmed automatically to avoid you having to think about it. Combined with an air quality sensor mentioned above, you can air your house without lifting a finger. When the sensor detects that the air needs to be refreshed, your windows automatically open and you receive a notification on your app to let you know that CO2 levels are critical. They will then close again once the level has returned to normal or after a pre-defined time. And to avoid energy loss in winter, you can program the heating to turn off at the same time as the sliding window opens, all from your TaHoma application. Airing the room also reduces the humidity level, which increases the efficiency of your heating system without any impact on your bill!

In summer, during very hot weather, keep your windows closed during the day and open them late at night or early in the morning, so as to cool and air your home without having to turn on the air conditioning. In addition, you can continue to ventilate your home securely at night and create a natural draught by opening your sliding windows to the "secure ventilation" position. This allows your windows to open a few inches, which then lock to prevent intrusion.

Follow these tips and your home will be breathe, as will you! Enjoy quality indoor air, free from pollution and viruses, which can only be good for your health.