If you follow social media accounts focused on tips to improve your indoor life, you may have heard of house burping. While you would be right to be skeptical of trends on Instagram and TikTok, the practice of house burping has deep roots overseas and is backed by real home performance science. Today, we’ll look at what house burping is, how it can benefit your home, and options to automate it with a home performance renovation.
What House Burping Is and Where It Comes From
A German tradition brought to the US by social media trends, “house burping” is the practice of opening your home’s windows daily (once or twice) regardless of the outside temperature. This action is said to eliminate moist and stale air, including air pollution that regularly builds up in a home. As for its efficacy, it is rooted in real air-quality science: the air inside a home should be regularly exchanged with fresh outdoor air.
The Comfort, Efficiency, and Health Benefits of Home Ventilation
House burping is a specific type of home ventilation—the opening of all of a home’s windows at least once per day to help keep the home safe and livable. Let’s break down some of the benefits:
- Removing Moisture: In Germany, some leases require daily house burping to help reduce moisture buildup and prevent mold growth. Learn more about the connection in our article, Temperature & Moisture: The Conditions for Mold in Homes.
- Improving Air Quality: From cooking odor to dust, pet allergens, VOCs, and mold spores, air quality is both a comfort and a health issue. Burping the house can help with this—as long as outside doesn’t have worse air quality.
- Reduce Air Conditioning: While house burping should be done regardless of temperature, doing it during times of day to help cool or heat the home provides a useful side effect.
Automate with Whole House Ventilation
It’s up to you to decide whether you want to use this manual option or invest in a ventilation system that does it automatically. A whole home ventilation system uses a large fan attached to an attic exhaust vent to exhaust air from the whole home while refreshing it with air from open windows or the cracks and seams every home has. This exchange means less to no work (if you set the fan on an automated schedule).
Learn more about this in our blog post, What is Whole Home Ventilation?
Whole Home Ventilation Services in St. Louis
At Greenmark Home Performance, we’ve been helping homeowners in the St. Louis area improve their homes’ ventilation, air quality, and comfort levels for over 10 years. Contact us to get started on a comprehensive whole home evaluation to identify all the issues with your home and then we’ll help you install a whole house ventilation system, along with air sealing, ventilation, and remodeling solutions for improved air quality and energy efficiency. Give us a call at (314) 845-9144 or fill out our contact form to learn more. Talk to you soon!
