Closing your windows isn’t enough to protect you from wildfire smoke.
A new study just landed from the University of Montana that brings bad news: closing your windows isn’t enough to keep wildfire smoke from infiltrating your home.
Why is that? Well, depending on your home, there can still be ‘air leakage’. Building science is a constantly evolving field, and more recent developments push for something referred to as an air tight envelope. This means that when your home is built, different materials and techniques are used to fully seal the openings of your home to stop air from being able to pass through.
Photo by Lucas Hoang on Unsplash
The idea is that if your air envelope is sealed, all of the air will be supplied from your HVAC system, which should filter your air with a HEPA filter and provide better air quality to your home.
As you probably have guessed, homes are built with varyingly different techniques that depend on so many different variables: budget, materials used, and more. If you’ve ever lived in a “leaky” home with poor insulation, you probably have experienced that it’s not super comfortable to live in a home with a lot of air leaks.
Air leaking causes insulation to be less effective, leaving big temperature fluctuations, noise from the outside wafting in, and most importantly to us right now: wildfire smoke (and other pollutants) to just waltz right in. Wildfire smoke is terrible for your health, and you should mask up using an N95 or higher mask if you’re around wildfires and need to go outside.
But, what if wildfire smoke is coming your way and you’re inside?
If you live in a wildfire prone area, consider getting an air leakage and audit.
There are contractors who can come out and fully test the air leakage of your home, giving you an idea of how leaky your home is and what can be done to solve it. This audit should also give you the steps you need to seal your home, keeping wildfire smoke out (and producing better savings by increasingly the energy efficiency of your home)
If you can, keep your windows closed and only have airflow come in through your HVAC system, as well as replacing your HVAC’s filter so that it catches more pollutants.
If your HVAC filtration isn’t enough, you can look into getting a HEPA air purifier that will remove the smoke from the air. These can be found in many big box stores and online, but they can be anywhere from $50-$400 depending on the size of your home and how much you want filtered.
If you can’t afford a HEPA air purifier, it’s relatively easy to DIY your own box fan HEPA air filter. It’s cheaper than buying a pre-made one, and can be relatively fast to set up.
You can watch a video on how to make one from the This Old House here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw7fUMhNov8
It’s so important to have mitigation strategies for keeping wildfire smoke out of your home. If you’re evacuating, you should also consider covering your vents (not only to stop embers from coming through, but to stop smoke from entering).
If you let too much wildfire smoke in, it can cause havoc on your entire house. As an aside, I (the post author and coding wizard at Faura, Amanda) grew up in a heavily wildfire prone area in Southern California. During one evacuation, my dad left the windows open and smoke got into our 3k square foot home.
The entire thing smelled like a campfire, from our walls, to our curtains, and more. The cost to fix it? $11,000 in 2007 money. Long story short: don’t risk your lungs, or your wallet. Keep your windows closed, keep your air filtered, and stay out of the smoke.
P.S: Looking for more ways to stop wildfire from impacting your home? Me and my co-founder Valkyrie built this tool for homeowners to be able to understand their risk, and to immediately take next steps. It would mean a lot to us if you tried out our assessment at assessment.faura.us.
