Air is Like Food...

If you put unhealthy food in your body over time your health will decline.
If you breathe unhealthy air your health will decline.

Is Your Home Making
You Sick?

Building Scientists tell us that the air we breathe inside our home is actually air that leaks in through wall cavities, floors, crawlspaces and basements. These are not sources of fresh, clean air! These are the dark spaces of a house that aren’t thought about or cleaned routinely. The air from these sources can aggravate our allergies, leading to sinus infections and generally degrading our health.

As outdoor air seeps into our house through these unseen spaces, it carries dust, pollen, mold spores, chemicals and moisture with it.  When this collection of particles passes through the dark spaces of the house, it settles in over time and combines with moisture and other indoor air particles.  This can create a soup of allergens, bacteria, toxins and volatile organic compounds (VOC's) that fills the air we breathe inside our home.

Dampness

An Enemy You Can’t See

Increased dampness in a home causes building materials and carpets to degrade faster and release smells. The embedded chemicals like formaldehyde in our modern building materials release faster when exposed to moisture. Damp spaces are more prone to dust mites, cockroaches and pests which are also human allergens.

People create indoor dampness through breathing, cooking, cleaning and showering. Four quarts/day/person or 1,500 gallons per year are generated by a family of four inside the house. This indoor flood seeks the dark, cold spots in the house because the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that moisture always goes from wet to dry and from warm to cold. This means that the warm-occupant-produced moisture is constantly settling into the cooler spaces within the house, further feeding the unseen dampness problem.

Ultimately, the dark, damp and unseen spaces of the house produce a stew of airborne gasses and particles that can degrade the health of the people who breathe the air drawn from these spaces into living spaces.

How People Experience
an Unhealthy House

You may find yourself using air fresheners and candles, avoiding certain rooms or noticing you or your children don’t feel well in certain rooms. These are typical indicators that your home has an indoor air problem that could be degrading your health.

When you see your doctor, they typically try to connect your symptoms to conditions inside your body that cause fever, not to external factors such as the home you live in. This is shocking, especially when leading researchers tell us that as many as half of the “homes, schools and buildings in the United States have an indoor air quality problem due to moisture and mold.”

1. Continuous
Fresh Air = Healthy Air

The common perception is that open windows provide continuous fresh air. They don’t. Windows only provide fresh air in close proximity to the windows--when they are open. When the windows are closed, continuous fresh air is achieved through a balanced air management system that draws air in through a tube, filters it and then silently distributes it evenly throughout the house. Simultaneously, the system silently expels damp, stale air out of bathrooms, laundry rooms and kitchens. This keeps air moving, fresh and healthy throughout the house.

2. Properly Sealed & Insulated

In a home, the air leaks in through floors, walls and attic, so these need to be sealed with non-toxic foam or caulking to ensure your family isn’t exposed to air from the damp, dark spaces of the house. In new construction, the walls are built using a breathable membrane, like Gore-Tex clothing, which blocks bulk water and leaking air but still allows the house to breathe. This ensures you breathe the air you choose to breathe, not the air that randomly leaks in through the dark, damp spaces.

Properly Sealed helps ensure healthier air because it also prevents pests and rodents from living in your breathing space.

Properly Insulated not only makes your home more comfortable and energy efficient, it also eliminates the cold areas of the home where dampness accumulates causing unhealthy air to happen.

3. Non Toxic Materials

Reduce or eliminate as many chemicals as possible within the house to avoid breathing them in. This means using low or non-toxic paint and building materials, eliminating internal sources like air fresheners and being cautious about which personal care items or cleaning supplies we store under the sink. Although none of these may cause a problem by themselves, it’s the collection and mixing of all these chemicals in the air that places a total burden on our health.

4. Cleanable Surfaces

Carpet, drapes, upholstery and bedding harbor all sorts of human allergens such as dust mites, dust, and pollen, as well as create places for bacteria and dust mites to grow. If you are personally sensitive, it is best to properly clean your wall-to-wall carpeting per manufacturer’s instructions or eliminate it, and to deep clean upholstery and bedding on a regular basis.

Houses should not have dirt floors. Unless the soil in a crawl space is sealed with an air tight liner, a house with a crawl space has a dirt floor. A person may never go into the crawlspace of his or her house, but an estimated 40% of the air we breathe in living spaces is sucked up from the crawl spaces and basements.