Tweak Your HVAC for Quality Sleep
Quality sleep is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your health and your happiness! There are things you can do to tweak your HVAC for quality sleep. If you happen to be having some trouble with sleeping at night, or you would like to make your sleeping experience a little bit better, there may be some HVAC solutions that can help you get closer to the goal of quality sleep.
Here are a few things that you can consider tweaking or experimenting with:
- thermostat
- dehumidifiers
- fans
- humidifiers
- digital hygrometers
Quality Sleep – How to Prepare
We often prepare for the next day by going over our schedules, making/packing lunches and even choosing the clothes we will wear the next day. How often do you think about preparing for quality sleep? Our bodies naturally drop our temperature when we prepare to fall asleep and this helps us to relax. When you keep the temperature in the bedroom cool as well, then you benefit even more from this process. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the optimal temperature in your bedroom for a good night’s sleep is between 15.5 and 19.4 degrees Celsius.
In the cold winter months it is much easier to maintain this optimum temperature for sleeping. Keeping the bedroom at this temperature can even save on your heating costs. Many of us want the bedroom to feel warm and cozy when we head to bed. However, this doesn’t produce the atmosphere we require for the best quality sleep possible. It will not be cost effective however, to keep the temperature down using the air conditioner in the hot summer months. Often times the addition of a few fans to circulate the air within your bedroom is a more efficient way to keep your body cool at night.
Another alternative to assist with keeping the bedroom cool for a good night’s sleep is to look into zone-control air conditioning systems. Systems such as this allow you to set different temperatures for individual rooms. With a zone-control system you have the capability of lowering the temperature in just the bedrooms at night without cooling off the entire house. This will significantly decrease the cost of your energy bills.
Is it too Humid?
When the humidity in your bedroom is too high, the circulating air can feel very thick and muggy. This can make it very hard to relax. It can also be a contributing factor in making it harder to breathe. Having a high humidity level in your bedroom can also pose the issue of attracting unwanted insects. It may even promote the growth of mold. No one wants insects in the house, let alone in our bedrooms! The growth of mold in our homes can pose an irritation to our respiratory systems as well, and therefore affect our sleep in a negative way.
On the other hand, a bedroom that is too dry can pose some issues as well. Having the room too dry can cause your throat and nasal passages to feel scratchy. This can cause you to cough and can contribute to you having a sore or achy throat. These affects are not optimal for getting quality sleep either. This is why it is so important to have the humidity level just right in the bedroom.
Products for Humidity
A product that can assist with maintaining the correct humidity in your bedroom is a digital hygrometer. A hygrometer is an instrument used for measuring the amount of humidity and water vapor in the atmosphere, in soil, or in confined spaces. These can be purchased from your local hardware store for just a few dollars. They are a very simple tool to use and can provide the information we need in order to know what we may need to adjust.
With an inexpensive digital hygrometer, you can easily measure the humidity level in your bedroom. The humidity level that you are trying to maintain is between 40 to 50 percent. If you test the humidity, and the levels are way too high, you can use a dehumidifier. A dehumidifier is an electrical appliance which reduces and maintains the level of humidity in the air, usually for health or comfort reasons, or to eliminate musty odor and to prevent the growth of mildew. It can be used for household, commercial, and industrial applications.
If the levels tested are to low, you can use a humidifier to increase the humidity. A humidifier is a device that increases humidity (moisture) in a single room or an entire building. In the home, point-of-use humidifiers are commonly used to humidify a single room, while whole-house or furnace humidifiers, which connect to a home’s HVAC system, provide humidity to the entire house. You can easily work with these appliances to obtain the optimal atmosphere in order to obtain the quality sleep that you are after.
Creating Air Movement
Having the option to turn on a fan in the bedroom is a great idea. The downdraft that will come from a ceiling fan will create a cooling effect on your skin while you sleep. This will keep your body temperature at a more comfortable range for a good night’s sleep. You can also have a floor fan or a small blade fan on your bedside table. Fans will help with air circulation in the bedroom to keep it fresh and will allow breathing to be easier and more comfortable.
Another bonus to having a fan run in the bedroom while you sleep is the steady hum – the white noise. Often times we can fall asleep easier and quicker if the room is not completely quite. The white noise can also help you stay asleep by drowning out any outside noises that might otherwise wake you up in the middle of the night.
In Conclusion
We all would love to crawl into bed after a long day and get some quality sleep. We hope that when we wake up the next morning we feel refreshed and ready to tackle the day that is ahead of us! With the above information, we hope that you can make the necessary changes to your sleep preparation. Everyone deserves some quality sleep!