A Landlord’s Guide To Maintaining Healthy Air Quality In Rental Properties
A Landlord’s Guide To Maintaining Healthy Air Quality In Rental Properties
Every day, tenants suffer due to poor air quality in their homes. Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution?
Currently, around 47% of tenants suffer from respiratory issues due to mold, which causes compromised air quality.
What are your requirements for air quality? And what can you do to generously help your tenants breathe better while under your duty of care? Keep reading to find out.
What’s Your Legal Requirement For Air Quality?
Indoor air quality (IAQ) is a widely recognized barometer for indoor air safety, allowing for more stringent rules and regulations to be crafted for workplaces and rental accommodations.
For landlords, there are very few specific indoor air quality regulations. The regulations differ from state to state. For instance, in Arizona, landlords should ensure that the air quality remains at no more than 800 parts CO2 per 1 million air particles (PPM).
There are other elements that can affect air quality, such as mold, which causes volatile organic compounds called spores to enter the air and compromise your immune and lung health. Landlords should manage these dangers to tenant health, as you could be held liable should your tenants become sick while living at the property.
Why Air Quality Is Essential For Tenants’ Quality Of Life
Air quality is naturally essential for tenant quality of life as the presence of chemicals, spores, and compounds in the air can have seriously harmful consequences for the body. Here are some of the things that can happen if you do not take stringently cautionary measures for air quality:
Mold Poisoning
Mold presents a serious risk to your health, not to be taken lightly. It can cause short-term effects such as sneezing, coughing, and watering eyes. It can also cause long-term illness such as issues with focus and memory.
Allergies
Poor air circulation ultimately means there’s no way for the air to disperse and reduce the amount of allergens like pollen and dust incrementally building in the air. So, you are more likely to suffer unbearably agitated allergies when your home is not meeting proper air quality and circulation standards.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
When you’re not paying even the minimum amount of attention to air quality in your properties, this can lead to the presence of carbon monoxide in the air. Without legally mandated carbon monoxide sensors, the level of the gas in the air could lead to death, or to an explosion. Carbon monoxide is highly toxic and flammable, so it’s in your best interest to mitigate the amount of the gas in the air – you will most likely receive a conviction should you fail to adhere to carbon monoxide protective laws.
Emphysema
If there is a chemical substance leaking in the air at your properties, or asbestos is present, this will lead to emphysema and even cancer for your tenants over a long-term period. Proper air circulation and air quality monitoring can, however, prevent this from happening.
How To Maintain & Regulate Air Quality In Your Properties
Maintaining and regulating air quality in your properties is relatively simple, involving only two steps – monitoring and air circulation.
Air Quality Monitoring
The baseline requirement for air quality monitoring is installing carbon monoxide detectors to ensure your tenants are safe. However, there are more advanced air quality monitoring devices that you can invest in to provide clean and breathable air.
You can invest in an indoor air quality monitor, and you can invest in vape and smoke sensors. Vape detectors and smoke sensors will ensure your tenants are complying fully with any rules or restrictions you have in place regarding smoking and vaping indoors.
Air Circulation
Air circulation is an exceedingly great way to reduce the amount of allergens and dust in the air, providing your tenants with quality and breathable air to improve their health and well-being. You can achieve proper air circulation by investing in an air conditioning unit with air filtering capabilities.
By investing in an A/C unit, you can also optimize the room temperature for your tenants and make sure they get the most out of their heating and electricity bills.
When air in a room is stagnant, the heat rises in a process called air stratification, which means the bottom half of the room is cooler. By investing in air circulation, you can ensure a completely consistent temperature in the room, so your tenants are achieving maximum comfort!
Last Updated: September 2024
