house burping

The idea for this practice, called Lüften in German, is that once or twice a day you should open the doors and windows for five minutes to let the stale air out and the fresh air in. Lüften translates literally as ‘airing’ or ‘ventilating’ but in English we have taken the image of the parent patting the child on the back to encourage it to burp, to bring up air after feeding. From this we get the term house burping.

In older houses the battle used to be to stop up all the cracks and prevent draughts.  In today’s tightly sealed houses we have to think of ways to allow for air flow.  Air burping is done with vigour.  All the doors and windows must be open to allow for the stale air, cooking smells, and moisture to depart and clean dry fresh air to enter.  After five minutes you shut up shop again and the house, which has not lost much heat in such a short time, quickly heats up again.  But you have to brace yourself for the shock of ventilation for it to be effective.

Air burping is said to prevent mould as well as improve air quality.  In Germany it is long established, so much so that landlords can write it into their agreements with tenants.  It was noticed in the early days of COVID when Angela Merkel recommended it as a cheap and easy way to ward off the virus, and has surfaced on social media recently in an enthusiasm humorously described as Make America Fresh Again.