Our homes should be our safe sanc­tu­ar­ies. They should nur­ture our well being on all lev­els. But the mod­ern home often does not.

Increas­ing num­bers of peo­ple are devel­op­ing ill­nesses like envi­ron­men­tal aller­gies, sick-building syn­dromeand mul­ti­ple chem­i­cal sen­si­tiv­ity due to chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal tox­ins found inside mod­ern homes.

Until about 25 years ago, indoor air pol­lu­tion was  rare. But a few fun­da­men­tal things have devel­oped in build­ing prac­tices that have affected the envi­ron­men­tal qual­ity inside our homes.

Syn­thetic Chem­i­cals. At the turn of the cen­tury and for thou­sands of years before, our home and work envi­ron­ments were free of man-made chem­i­cals. This is no longer true, there are cur­rently more than 4 mil­lion reg­is­tered syn­thetic chemicals.

Approx­i­mately 80,000 are in com­mon use.We don’t know the long term effects of these chem­i­cals on the human body. In par­tic­u­lar, we don’t yet know the effects of expo­sure to com­bined chem­i­cals in a sealed environment.

Increased Energy Effi­ciency. In solv­ing one prob­lem, mod­ern home con­struc­tion has cre­ated another. Improved tech­nolo­gies have been intro­duced that seal homes more tightly.

How­ever, a tightly sealed home that has no air leaks must have a ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem to replace humid and stale air that can be laced with bac­te­ria, mold and off-gassing toxins.

In many areas, there are no build­ing reg­u­la­tions requir­ing ven­ti­la­tion or HVAC sys­tems. For opti­mal indoor air qual­ity, it is very impor­tant to under­stand and bal­ance the sys­tems in a high per­form­ing house.

House Sit­ing  In order to sur­vive, ancient humans care­fully observed their environment. Human dwellings were con­structed to fit into the land­scape in ben­e­fi­cial ways. They were sited to cap­ture and use needed shade, sun or protection.

It’s only a soci­ety that is over pop­u­lated and dis­con­nected from the envi­ron­ment  that would pri­or­i­tize sit­ing a house pri­mar­ily for view or prox­im­ity to town.

Thus we see inap­pro­pri­ately sited homes (ie: north facing/unprotected) with mold prob­lems or houses demand­ing costly sys­tems and energy to main­tain the mod­ern expec­ta­tion for uni­form tem­per­a­tures 24/365.

Green Home Solutions:

  • Be vig­i­lant in using chem­i­cal free build­ing materials
  • Prop­erly install and use a ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem in your new tightly sealed home.
  • Care­fully observe your pro­posed build­ing site and choose a loca­tion that max­i­mizes the envi­ron­men­tal qual­ity of the home.
  • Work with a com­pany that con­sis­tently researches and under­stands build­ing mate­ri­als, per­for­mance build­ing, energy effi­cient sys­tems and healthy homes.