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Snow covered older home in New York inspected by the website publisher in 2008 (C) Daniel Friedman Find, diagnose & fix problems in building components, structure, mechanical systems

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WILDFIRE DAMAGE PREVENTION for HOMES - Wildfire building damage prevention

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The website publisher on crutches making an effort to inspect a cramped crawl space (C) Daniel Friedman courtesy Arlene Puentes, Kingston NY InspectAPedia.com® - is a free online encyclopedia of building construction, new or remodel/repair, maintenance or mechanical system or indoor environment troubleshooting.

This website is for building owners, occupants, renters, contractors, and building professionals including architects, engineers, and building inspectors.

We provide free building construction, inspection, testing, diagnosis, repair, & problem prevention advice, covering all residential & light commercial building components, materials, & mechanical systems.

Whether your building is brand new or hundreds of years old there will always be things to diagnose, fix, maintain, or indoor environment problems or air quality problems related to the building's condition.

Here you will find illustrated, detailed, in-depth research on finding, diagnosing, testing, correcting, & preventing building defects, energy conservation, & indoor environmental hazards.

Photo above: when his knee was broken, the InspectApedia publisher demonstrated that building crawl spaces should be inspected no matter how difficult the access may be. In that case the editor got help from another inspector, Arlene Puentes. [Click to enlarge any image]

We provide authoritative, un-biased research on building failures & education course material on building failures & building environmental inspection testing, diagnosis, & repair.

InspectAPedia, always FREE to our readers, is supported only by ads placed on our pages by Google. InspectAPedia tolerates no conflicts of interest. We have no relationship with advertisers, products, or services discussed at this website.

Up Front: Smoke, Fires, Building Fire Protection, Indoor & Outdoor Air Quality

Oil burner soot at a lower magnification (C) Daniel Friedman at InspectApedia.com Climate information from the U.S. government that shows that the world is heating up faster and severe storms are occurring more-frequently than many people realized and that emphasizes that every community, rural or urban, will be seriously affected.

Photo: microscopic view of soot particles. [Click to enlarge any image]

The U.S. EPA has painted what the Times calls a "grim picture" of what lies ahead, whether your concern is sudden deep freeze, heavy snowfall, smoke and unsafe air, wildifires, lyme disease, access to safe drinking water, or even adequate electricity.

How to Reduce Indoor Wildfire Smoke & Soot Hazards in Buildings

Here are 4 key steps you can take to reduce the level of smoke or other airborne particles inside your building:

  1. Close the windows and doors

    Avoid ventilating the building with outdoor air when that air is unusually heavily contaminated with smoke and debris. You'll fare better by closing the building and doing what you can to filter its indoor air.

    An exception: some fresh air ventilation systems incorporate both an air-to-air heat exchanger and an air filter. Those, equipped with a HEPA filter, might permit filtered fresh-air ventilation for your building.

    See VENTILATION, BALANCED
  2. Filter indoor air:

    If your building has forced air heating or central air conditioning, turn the system fan from AUTO to MAN or ON so that the blower fan runs continually

    See BLOWER FAN CONTINUOUS OPERATION  - Continuous HVAC Blower Fan Operation for Optimum Indoor Air Quality
  3. Clean air filters:

    Be sure that the air filter(s) in your air handling system are clean, or replace them if they're dirty and are not a washable type.

    If you don 't know where your air filters are,

    See AIR FILTER LOCATION

    To improve your air filter's effectiveness

    See AIR FILTER OPTIMUM INDOOR  - Cascaded & Optimal Air Filters for IAQ . We recommend using HEPA-rated filters as those perform best at removing small airborne particles.
  4. Portable air cleaners:

    If your building doesn't have air conditioning or forced air heating, you can still add free-standing portable air cleaners to reduce the level of indoor articles in sleeping areas and close the door to those rooms when using the air cleaner.

    While no portable air cleaner can remove the actual source of indoor air pollution, especially in a closed room of a size within the air cleaner's or "air purifier" rated capacity, these machines can reduce the level of ariborne particles.

    See details at AIR CLEANER PURIFIER TYPES.
  5. Wear an N95-rated or KN95-rated face mask even while indoors.

    Every unbiased expert agrees that wearing an N95 mask is important for protecting respiratory health such as during the COVID epidemic or in serious wildfire smoke conditions.

    Really? Well yes but ... some people who have limited lung capacity may find wearing a face mask or a true respirator difficult. Experiment. Wear an N95 mask for an hour and see if it helps you to breathe more comfortably.

Here are some of our other articles that can help with current wildfire & smoke pollution across Canada, the U.S. and extending to northern Mexico.

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InspectAPedia tolerates no conflicts of interest. We have no relationship with advertisers, products, or services discussed at this website.


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