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Comment by rlt | Hacker News Reader

Getting an air quality monitor was enlightening and terrifying. My child’s room (which unfortunately doesn’t have great ventilation) would sometimes hit 4000 ppb VOCs, which I tracked down to some of her stuffed animals…

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Ventilation got worse in the 70s as there was a big push to eliminate leaks in houses to improve HVAC efficiency.

Still not sure how post-Covid, we haven't concluded that improving indoor ventilation should be a massive public health priority.

Because it's difficult. How do you solve for this problem in a house without internal ducting in temperature extremes throughout the year?

I'm curious, how long has ventilation ducting been part of housing codes, in other words how old are houses that have that problem?

Many (most?) houses in the north/north-east do not have ducts. It's very rare for me personally to come across central air in the NY area.

Seems like there'd be a lot of tension between that goal, and reducing energy use.

It's not 100% solvable, but it's possible to recover a lot of the thermal energy of the air you exhaust and put back into the air you're intaking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_recovery_ventilation

Can you recommend a product?

I have an older generation Awair. It’s a little expensive but I like it.

I also have a couple different Austin Air purifier models. Also expensive but seems to work well.

You could try running a cycle in the dryer with those stuffed animals. Maybe the dryer filter would pick up something.

Which monitor do you use?

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