Start with the 3-minute Readiness Check.
A short, structured self-assessment that returns a four-page profile showing whether your home is actively supportive, neutral, or quietly taxing your energy.
Take the Readiness CheckIndoor air quality & home wellness · Calgary, Alberta
Your home is shaping how you feel.
Wellness by Home is a six-point assessment of your indoor environment — air quality, ventilation, humidity, water, temperature and sound — built for Calgary’s dry, chinook-driven climate. We measure what your home is actually doing to your sleep, focus and energy, and we hand you the numbers.
- Free 3-minute Readiness Check — private, non-diagnostic, no payment details
- Read Beyond Comfort — free e-book, or paperback and hardcover
- Book a guided in-home consultation — no quote, no equipment pitch
Or call (587) 792-1456 · weekdays 8am–5pm MT · emergencies answered 24/7
Calgary & surrounding areas Environmental assessment — not medical We never sell your information
Carla Berezowski Author, Beyond Comfort · Founder, Wellness by Home™
What is Wellness by Home?
Wellness by Home is an indoor environmental quality assessment framework created by Alberta Indoor Comfort, an HVAC and plumbing company based in Calgary, Alberta. It evaluates six measurable variables in a home — air quality and ventilation, humidity, water quality, temperature stability, light, and sound — and reports where the home is supporting the people in it and where it is quietly working against them.
The framework exists because Calgary’s climate produces a specific and well-documented set of indoor conditions: relative humidity below 20% through the winter heating season against Health Canada’s recommended 30–55% range, municipal water between 10 and 20 grains per gallon, and bedroom carbon dioxide routinely above 1,000 ppm overnight in homes built tight for energy performance without matched ventilation. Those conditions are measurable. Most homeowners have never had them measured.
There are three ways to engage with it, in ascending order of commitment: a free three-minute Readiness Check, the book Beyond Comfort (free e-book or print), and a guided in-home consultation across Calgary and surrounding communities.
Wellness by Home is an environmental assessment framework. It does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness or medical condition. Guideline figures cited above are published by Health Canada and ASHRAE.
Wellness by Home™ measures and reports on your indoor environment. We do not diagnose illness, we make no health-outcome claims, and we do not sell your information.
If any of this feels familiar, you’re not alone
You may have already noticed it.
- Waking up tired even after a full night’s sleep — or waking with a headache that clears once you’re outside.
- Feeling foggy at home, then sharp the moment you leave the house.
- Persistent dryness — irritated eyes, cracked skin, static, nosebleeds — that arrives every October and leaves every May.
- Drained by evening with no clear reason for it.
- Certain rooms that just feel… off — too noisy, too still, too dry, four degrees colder than the rest of the house.
- Scale on the fixtures, film on the glassware, and hair and skin that changed after you moved to Calgary.
Most people file these under stress, age, or “just life.” Often the cause is quieter, closer, and measurable in an afternoon.
The local variable nobody accounts for
Why Calgary homes run so dry — and what it costs you.
Calgary sits at roughly 1,045 metres of elevation on the leeward side of the Rockies, in a semi-arid climate. Cold air holds very little moisture. When winter air at −20 °C is drawn into a house and heated to 21 °C, its relative humidity collapses — frequently to below 20%, and in well-sealed new builds during a cold snap, into the single digits.
Chinooks make it worse, not better. A 20-degree temperature swing in twelve hours drives pressure differentials across the building envelope that pull dry outdoor air through every gap in the house, then reverse. Your humidifier, if you have one, is chasing a target that moves twice a week all winter.
The same climate that produces the dryness also produces the ventilation problem. Nobody opens a window in February. A tight, energy-efficient Calgary home with the windows shut from October to April is a sealed box, and carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and radon accumulate in it unless something is deliberately moving air. Alberta has measurably higher residential radon prevalence than the Canadian average.
None of this is exotic. It is the predictable consequence of building for energy performance in a cold, dry, wind-driven climate. It is also, almost universally, unmeasured.
30–55%
Health Canada’s recommended indoor relative humidity range. Calgary homes routinely sit below 20% through the heating season.
Source: Health Canada, residential indoor air quality guidelines
1,000+ ppm
Typical overnight bedroom carbon dioxide in a closed room with two adults. Outdoor air sits near 420 ppm. Elevated indoor CO₂ has been associated with measurable declines in decision-making performance.
Source: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, COGfx studies
200 Bq/m³
Health Canada’s radon action guideline for residential indoor air. Alberta measures above the national average for residential radon prevalence.
Source: Health Canada radon guideline; Cross-Canada residential radon survey
10–20 gpg
Typical hardness of Calgary’s municipal water supply, in grains per gallon. Hardness drives scale in water heaters and fixtures and is the most common cause of the “my skin changed when I moved here” complaint.
Source: City of Calgary water quality reporting
The assessment
Six variables. Measured, written down, explained.
Your home is not one system. It is six overlapping ones, and they interact. A humidifier added without ventilation creates a mould problem. A high-efficiency furnace installed without makeup air creates a combustion problem. We look at all six together because that is the only way the answers are any good.
- Air quality & ventilation
- How much fresh air actually reaches each room, and what accumulates when it does not. Alberta has measurably higher radon prevalence than the Canadian average; Health Canada’s action guideline is 200 Bq/m³.
- Humidity
- Calgary homes routinely fall below 20% relative humidity in winter against a Health Canada recommended range of 30–55%. Too dry irritates airways and skin; too damp invites mould.
- Water quality
- Calgary’s supply is hard water, commonly 10–20 grains per gallon. Hardness drives scale in water heaters and fixtures and is a frequent cause of skin and hair complaints in new arrivals.
- Temperature stability
- A home that swings four degrees between rooms, or six degrees overnight during a chinook, produces the “certain rooms feel off” complaint long before anyone checks a thermostat.
- Light
- Calgary averages over 330 days with measurable sunshine — among the highest in Canada — yet many homes are configured so that daylight never reaches the rooms people occupy during the day.
- Sound
- Continuous low-frequency noise from undersized or poorly isolated mechanical equipment is one of the most under-reported causes of poor sleep quality in otherwise well-built homes.
Carbon dioxide, particulate matter (PM2.5), volatile organic compounds, radon
Relative humidity, seasonal swing, condensation risk
Hardness, chlorine and chloramine, sediment, point-of-entry filtration
Room-to-room variance, chinook response, overnight drift
Daylight access, colour temperature, evening light hygiene
Mechanical noise floor, transmission between rooms, overnight intrusion
| Dimension | Standard furnace tune-up | Wellness by Home assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Question answered | Is this equipment operating safely and correctly? | Is this home supporting or taxing the people living in it? |
| What gets measured | Pressures, temperatures, filter condition, combustion safety, electrical integrity | Relative humidity, carbon dioxide, particulate matter, radon risk, water hardness and chlorine, room-to-room temperature variance, mechanical noise floor |
| Scope | The appliance | The whole indoor environment, room by room |
| Output | Service record and any repair recommendations | Written report with measured values against published Health Canada and ASHRAE guidance |
| Ends with a quote? | Usually, if repairs are needed | No. Any service discussion is a separate conversation on a separate day. |
| Typical duration | 45–90 minutes | 90–120 minutes |
Water quality is assessed alongside air because in Calgary the two problems arrive together. If you are specifically researching whole-house water filtration and softening, or indoor air quality services in Calgary, those pages cover the equipment side in detail. This page covers the assessment that tells you whether you need any of it.
The problem isn’t you
Most homes were never built for human wellbeing.
Calgary homes are built to meet codes, hit energy targets, and stay on budget. Those are real constraints and the industry meets them well. None of them are the same as sleep quality, cognitive focus, nervous-system recovery, or emotional calm.
So we adapt. We normalise the dryness, run the bathroom fan a little longer, buy another humidifier, and push through the fatigue. The home becomes a constant, low-grade load — quiet enough that nobody thinks to measure it.
Three ways to begin
You don’t need to be ready. Just curious.
Read Beyond Comfort at your pace.
Carla’s book on how homes shape how we feel — why “fine” isn’t the same as supportive, and how small environmental shifts restore balance.
Get the bookBook a guided consultation.
An in-home assessment across all six variables, with instruments. Not a quote. Not a sales visit. You get the readings and the written report either way.
Book a consultation The book
Beyond Comfort — how homes shape how we feel.
Written for homeowners, not engineers. No jargon, no fear, no product catalogue at the back.
Beyond Comfort is the plain-language account of what we learned assessing homes across Calgary and southern Alberta: that air, water, light, sound, humidity and temperature never act alone, that people feel the misalignment long before they can name it, and that almost every one of these variables is measurable and fixable.
The free e-book is the complete text. The paid editions exist because people asked for something they could hold, mark up, and leave on the counter.
Carla Berezowski Author · Founder, Wellness by Home™
From real Calgary homes
What the readings actually turned up.
Case study · NW Calgary
The sealed bedroom
A young family could not work out why everyone slept badly in winter but fine in summer. The furnace tested perfectly. The assessment found overnight bedroom CO₂ climbing past 2,300 ppm behind a closed door, with relative humidity at 16%.
Measured: CO₂ 2,300 ppm · RH 16% · No mechanical ventilation
Case study · Inner-city Calgary
New to Calgary, and to hard water
A couple who moved from Vancouver could not shake the “why does everything feel different here” question. Two variables explained most of it: winter humidity at 14%, and incoming water at 17 grains per gallon against the 3–4 they were used to.
Measured: RH 14% · Water hardness 17 gpg · Chlorine present at tap
Case study · SW Calgary
Building around a sensitivity
An older homeowner with known breathing sensitivities wanted a home environment that placed less demand on them. Working alongside their physician’s guidance, the assessment mapped particulate levels, filtration performance and ventilation by room so the household could make informed accommodation decisions.
Measured: PM2.5 by room · Filtration rating · Air changes per hour
Names and identifying details changed. Figures above are the measured environmental readings taken during those assessments. Wellness by Home reports on indoor environmental conditions only — it does not diagnose, treat or claim to improve any medical condition, and no health outcome is asserted or implied by any case study on this page. Full anonymised reports are available on request when you book a consultation.
Where we work
In-home assessments across Calgary and area.
The Readiness Check and the book are available anywhere. In-home consultations are local, because the readings have to be taken in your house, in your weather, on your water supply.
- Calgary
- Cochrane
- Airdrie
- Chestermere
- Okotoks
- Bearspaw
- Springbank
- Langdon
- De Winton
- Bragg Creek
- Priddis
- Heritage Pointe
The framework itself is calibrated to this region specifically — semi-arid climate, chinook cycles, hard municipal water, and the building conventions common to Calgary housing stock from the 1970s through current new-build. A wellness framework written for coastal British Columbia or southern Ontario would get most of this wrong.
If your interest is specifically about making a home work as its occupants age, our home safety and aging-in-place guidance covers the mobility and layout side of the same question.
Alberta Indoor Comfort
- Call
- (587) 792-1456
weekdays 8am–5pm MT · emergencies answered 24/7 - Address
- 7131 6 St SE Unit H
Calgary, AB T2H 2M8 - Service
- Indoor environmental quality assessment, heating, cooling, plumbing and water treatment.
- Start here
- Free 3-minute Readiness Check →
Frequently asked
A few honest answers.
What is Wellness by Home?
Wellness by Home is a structured assessment framework, created by Alberta Indoor Comfort in Calgary, for understanding how a home’s indoor environment affects the people living in it. It evaluates six measurable variables — air quality and ventilation, humidity, water quality, temperature stability, light and sound — and reports where a home is supporting its occupants and where it is working against them. It is an environmental assessment, not a medical assessment. It does not diagnose, treat, or claim to cure any illness or condition.
Why is the air in Calgary homes so dry?
Calgary sits at roughly 1,045 metres of elevation on the leeward side of the Rocky Mountains, in a semi-arid climate. Cold outdoor air holds very little moisture; when that air enters a home and is heated to room temperature, its relative humidity falls sharply. Chinook winds add rapid swings in temperature and pressure that push dry outdoor air through the building envelope. The result is that Calgary homes commonly sit below 20% relative humidity in winter, while Health Canada recommends a range of 30% to 55%. Dry indoor air is associated with irritated eyes, dry skin, disrupted sleep, static, and shrinking wood and millwork.
Can carbon dioxide indoors actually affect sleep and concentration?
Outdoor air sits near 420 ppm of carbon dioxide. In a closed bedroom with two adults and limited ventilation, indoor CO2 routinely climbs past 1,000 ppm and can exceed 2,000 ppm by morning. Peer-reviewed research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has measured meaningful declines in decision-making performance at elevated indoor CO2 concentrations. CO2 is not itself the only concern — it is the most reliable available indicator that a room is under-ventilated, which means everything else in that air is also accumulating.
What does the Wellness by Home Readiness Check actually do?
It is a free, private, three-minute questionnaire about your home and how you feel in it. It returns a four-page report mapping your home across air, water, humidity, light, sound and layout, with a plain-language explanation of what to consider next. It is not medical advice and it is not a quote. No payment information is requested and your answers are not sold or shared.
What is a Wellness by Home consultation?
A guided, in-home conversation with the Alberta Indoor Comfort wellness team about how your home supports daily life. We listen first and may walk the home with you, taking readings for humidity, ventilation, carbon dioxide and water hardness. There is no quote presented and no equipment pitch. If service work is genuinely worth considering afterward, we explain why and you decide separately.
Why does none of this come up in a regular furnace tune-up?
A standard HVAC maintenance visit is scoped to equipment health: pressures, temperatures, filter condition, combustion safety and electrical integrity. It answers the question “is this machine operating correctly?” It is not scoped to the human experience of the home — how you sleep, which rooms feel wrong, whether ventilation is adequate for the number of people in the house. Both visits are worth having. They answer different questions.
Does Wellness by Home cover water, or only air?
Both. Calgary’s municipal supply is hard water, typically measured between 10 and 20 grains per gallon depending on the source and season. Hardness affects skin and hair, appliance lifespan, and scale accumulation in fixtures and water heaters. The assessment includes water hardness, chlorine and chloramine content, and whether point-of-entry or whole-house filtration is appropriate for the household. Water is one of the six variables assessed.
Is this a sales pitch in disguise?
No. The Readiness Check is free. The book is available as a free e-book as well as in paid print editions. The consultation is a conversation, not a quote. If equipment or service work is ever recommended, it is because it addresses something you have named as a problem, and it is presented as a separate decision on a separate visit.
Which areas do you serve?
In-home consultations cover Calgary and the surrounding communities: Cochrane, Airdrie, Chestermere, Okotoks, Bearspaw, Springbank, Langdon, De Winton, Bragg Creek, Priddis and Heritage Pointe. The Readiness Check and the book are available anywhere. The framework itself is calibrated to Calgary’s semi-arid climate, chinook cycles and regional building conventions.
Do you make health claims?
No. Wellness by Home measures and reports on the indoor environment. It does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or condition. Where research is cited, it is named and attributable. If you have a medical concern, speak with a physician. What we can tell you is what your home’s air, water, humidity and ventilation actually measure, and how those numbers compare to published guidance from Health Canada and ASHRAE.
In their own words
What our customers say.
Reviews left by Calgary homeowners after heating, cooling and plumbing work by Alberta Indoor Comfort.
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Jan Peterson“Terrence and James arrived promptly to replace our very old furnace. They were very knowledgeable about the product and installation process. They worked diligently and professionally and answered all of the questions we had. They left the furnace room as clean as they found. We highly recommend them. Thank you to both of you”
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May Ngu“I normally would hesitate to write a review but I thought I should for this company. Carla and her team are great to work with. I had a split ac installed on my apartment unit and no other company are willing to do the approval process and provide the detailed pricing and the exact specs. The service delivered is prompt and professional, with no hidden cost. I am glad that I’ve chosen Alberta Indoor Comfort. Thank you!”
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Bev De Paoli“Alberta indoor Comfort replaced my old furnace several years ago. They were fast and efficient with a one day install. I decided to order my A/C from them because of their good services and products. Their quote was exactly what I paid. They were on time to install the unit. No mess left behind. I am very happy with their products and service. I will continue to use their services in the future. Very happy with their service and products. They always follow up on any work or installs they do.”
Reviews are reproduced as they were written. They describe heating, cooling and plumbing work, not the outcome of a Wellness by Home assessment.
Request service in Wellness By Home
Tell us what is going on and we will get back to you with a time. No obligation, and you see the price in writing before any work starts.
Have a question?
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Carla and the team read every message. Most replies within one business day. No pressure, no automated funnel.
Our promise Your information stays with us. We don’t sell it, we don’t share it, and we don’t add you to a generic mailing list. If you take the Readiness Check or download the e-book, you can unsubscribe with one click.
Or call (587) 792-1456
What you get either way
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The price you approve is the price you pay
You see the number before anyone starts. It does not move on the day, and anything extra is approved in writing before it happens.
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The person in your home works for us
Our own technicians, on our own payroll. If something needs putting right, there is no subcontractor to chase.
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Someone answers at 2am
No heat, no cooling or water escaping is an emergency. The line is answered around the clock, every day of the year.
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Your details stay with us
We do not sell them, we do not share them, and we do not add you to a generic mailing list.
Start where you are