Should You Choose Professional or DIY Air Quality Testers?

Professional air quality testers are people who can be hired to come to your home or office and test for a wide variety of possible contaminants in the air.

Perhaps you may think that there’s nothing wrong with the quality of your indoor air. After all, the air smells just fine. The problem is, you can’t always detect unhealthy air quality air by the smell alone because some dangerous and frighteningly common contaminants, such as radon and carbon monoxide have absolutely no taste or smell.

The only way to detect these particular hazards is by either hiring professional air quality testers to analyze the air or by purchasing an air quality tester of your own.

There are a lot of different air quality testers on the market, so it helps if you have some idea what type of contaminants you are looking for. This is why a lot of people opt to enlist the services of a professional the first time, until they know just what kind of contaminants they are dealing with.

A professional should have a wide range of air quality testing equipment, which would allow him to check your air for a variety of different substances, such as gases, particles and biological contaminants.

For an average homeowner to test for all these things would require several different types of testers, an unnecessary and rather pricey investment.

For example, you could buy a particle tester, which may give you acceptable readings…for particles. Yet at the same time you may have unacceptable levels of radon gas or carbon monoxide that the particle counter doesn’t pick up. For that you would need different equipment – either separate radon and carbon monoxide detectors or a multi gas detector, a piece of equipment that can be quite costly.

By the same token, even a multi gas detector will miss mold spores, germs and many other types of contaminants, so you can see why it is important to know exactly what you are testing for.

Calling in a professional air quality testing company when you first buy a new home can give you an idea of what types of contaminants are present. That way you will know whether or not you have a problem to deal with before you buy the home or if you should even buy it at all. After that, if you choose to buy the home you can invest in an air quality monitor that targets whatever specific contaminant seems to be an issue in that particular location.

Poor air quality doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t buy or move into a particular home. It is an indication of an issue that needs to be dealt with, either by improving ventilation, fixing leaks or removing old carpet or tile. Once you identify the source of air contamination you can usually improve the air quality.

Also, once you have identified the problem you know what type of air quality tester you should buy to keep an eye on the situation in case the problem returns.