Tag:

IAQ

Is Your Home a Safe Space?

by Catherine 11:02 pm

Improving Air Quality and Home Health When You’re Stuck Indoors

The concept of “sheltering in place” is probably not new to some of you. Those with severe multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) or chronic illness know all too well the difficulties of operating with a sensitized immune system in this overly toxic world. Isolation and the need to control what materials, scents, people, foods, and chemicals enter your home are not new to me either. I had years, even after fixing my home and my body from the mold, that I could not tolerate perfumes, certain smells, cleaning products, make-up, and even putting gas in my car because of the fumes. Creating a safe home environment where I could breathe clean air made me feel safe and secure. My mold-safe home became my only true sanctuary from the scents and physical exposures that could set my immune system reeling and overreacting.

11:02 pm 4 comments

Cleaning Tips Healthy Home Interviews Mold Prevention Q & A's

My Interview With Indoor Air Quality Extraordinaire, Author, and Scientist Jeff May

by Catherine 6:04 pm

How to Know If Your House is Killing You With Jeff May

When you are looking for someone to trust on all matters concerning indoor air quality, hidden leaks, mold problems, weird or unpleasant odors, contaminated mechanical systems, and the overall “health” of your home, Jeff May should be at the top of your list. I know he is at the top of mine. As a matter of fact, I learned about Jeff and became acquainted with his expertise in the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and home inspections fields when my family was going through our mold nightmare. At the time, I was desperate to find information on how to fix our home, and found one of Jeff’s popular books, My House is Killing Me! The Home Guide for Families with Allergies and Asthma, at our local public library. It was the most comprehensive and helpful guide on the myriad things that can cause a home to get “sick” I had ever seen. Needless to say, I couldn’t put it down and later ordered his book, The Mold Survival Guide: For Your Home and for Your Health on Amazon—I can’t recommend it enough to others navigating the confusing world of mold in their home or anyone suspecting that something in their home is making them sick. To this day, I find myself referencing sections of the book when I am working on articles about below-grade spaces, like basements or crawlspaces, or wanting to understand more about proper attic ventilation or ice damming and mold growth. If it has anything to do with mold in a home, believe me, that book covers it!

6:04 pm 2 comments

Healthy Home Interviews Mold Prevention Mold Remediation

Mold Research Study

by Catherine 8:59 pm

Can One Area of Mold Growth Make an Entire Home Unsafe?

I realize that reading mold research and scientific studies about mold is not everyone’s “thing,” but unfortunately for my husband and close friends, it has sort of become mine. The many nuances of our built environments, how each component influences indoor air quality, and how indoor air quality then influences our health (good or bad) totally fascinates me. I truly cannot consume enough information on the subject these days. When a home or building with mold growth is making people sick, there is so much more going on than just the mold. Often, there are bacteria, yeasts, viruses, excess humidity, dust mites, ventilation issues, damaged and decaying building materials, and much, much more. In my opinion, examining how each of these factors influence and affect indoor air quality is at the crux of us figuring out how to prevent mold and environmental illness and how to actually make those that are already sick become well again. My belief is that if we fully understand what is causing the illness, then the cure will become clear, right?

8:59 pm 2 comments

Healthy Home Mold Prevention Mold Remediation

Practical Advice for Home Building or Renovating to Prevent Mold and Optimize Indoor Air Quality

by Catherine 9:11 pm

When you keep moisture out, ventilate properly, and use sound building materials your home can be a very healthy and mold-safe place to live.

Building a custom home is an exciting and, at times, overwhelming adventure. My husband and I collaborated on 2 such adventures when we were first married. Each home was designed and built to our specifications. All materials that were used were chosen by us. My husband was working in the building industry at the time and was able to be onsite for the majority of both builds and served as the general contractor. There was definitely a large amount of security in knowing that our homes were thoughtfully and soundly built. And, even though we were not consciously choosing “healthy” or always the most “mold-safe” building materials (we obviously had not been affected by mold yet at this time), we built beautiful homes where we enjoyed the happy early years of marriage and babies.

Then, the housing/building market crashed, and my husband was forced out of building and to look to other industries for work. We were also forced to move frequently for his work. It was then that we were relocated to homes that were found by his company and were often sight-unseen to us prior to move-in day. It was also during this time that we moved into the home with the toxic mold problem throughout the HVAC unit that made us all so sick. With the mold situation came great upheaval and new building challenges, because we were forced, under tremendous health and financial strain, to take our home almost down to the studs to have it properly remediated. (Note: We were advised that proper remediation required us to gut the interior of the home of anything the mold had touched or penetrated, so that our family could safely return, live there, and continue to recover our health. This may sound extreme; however, when someone has mold sickness and increased sensitivity, all mold, down to microscopic spores and hyphae, must be addressed. This is precisely why there are so many failed remediations.)

Even though we had built our own aesthetically-fit homes in the past, we realized how much we didn’t know about building an intrinsically healthy home. It was crazy how all of the things that seemed to matter to us before when we were building our homes, like the size of the master bedroom closet, or whether to tray or coffer ceilings, just didn’t matter to us anymore. The things that mattered to us with this re-build and that we poured our resources into were all health- and indoor-air quality-centered, like HVAC design for optimum air flow and dehumidification (dehumidification not being a request most homeowners have), using all metal ductwork to prevent dust and mold, re-grading our yard to route water away from our foundation, and on and on.

9:11 pm 0 comment

Healthy Home Mold Prevention Mold Remediation Personal Stories Q & A's

Reader Q & A: Air Quality Issues With In-Slab HVAC Ducts and Knowing When It’s Time to Call a Professional for Help

by Catherine 10:04 pm

This week, I am going to devote time to answering and sharing a recent mold/indoor air quality issue question that came my way. It concerns a very specific way of installing HVAC ductwork, where the HVAC ducts have been placed in or below the concrete floor slab. To better illustrate this to you, I asked a contractor to describe the installation process to me. Here is what he said:

“As the home is being built, trenches are dug in the soil before the concrete foundation is poured. Wooden or concrete blocks are then placed in the trenches and the HVAC ducts are pieced together and placed in the trenches on top of the blocks according to the home’s layout and the HVAC blueprint. Many times, the ducts are in direct contact with the soil. Concrete is then poured around the ducts as they lay in the trenches. Finally, the concrete slab is poured on top of the ducts/trenches to form the home’s foundation.”

This practice of in-slab ducting has become notorious for different types of problems, like functional troubles (lack of air flow or collapsed ductwork), and environmental problems (radon, odors, flooding, mold, insects). The main reason I want to address this question on the blog is because of the many indoor air quality issues inherent in this type of construction that I think people need to be made aware of. I also think this question is an important one, because it involves all of the components of needing to be a “mold detective” and a health advocate for yourself. This is because watching out for potential health hazards in your home and other frequent indoor environments can protect you from long-term health consequences. In other words, if it smells like mold, you can see it, and/or your body feels “off” in a particular environment and like something is making you sick, chances are that your body is right, and it is mold or something environmental. Thus, you have nothing to lose by taking steps to safeguard your health by investigating and fixing your environment as soon as something seems amiss.

So, let’s begin. Here is the question that sparked this post:

10:04 pm 0 comment