Part 1 Indoor Air Quality, Mold & Moisture, VOCs
Part 2 Renovations and New Building Construction | This page -- See below.
Part 3 Electrical and Magnetic Fields in the Home and Office
Part 4 Radio Frequencies (Cell Phones and Cordless Phones)
Additional Articles:
USA TODAY ^{in MS Word format}
Essential Wellness September 2005
Kansas City Wellness September 2005
Copy of Power Point Slides ^{in MS Word format} presented at Healthy Home Lectures

Healthy Homes: Part 2
Renovations and New Building Construction
by Oram Miller, BBEI

Note: This is Part 2 of a four part series on healthy homes from a Building Biology perspective published in Living Well, a monthly magazine providing health-related topics to the Fairfield, Iowa community. Part 1 covered Indoor Air Quality and was published in the March 2004. Part 3 was published in the May issue and featured Electrical and Magnetic Fields. A fourth article discussing Radio Frequencies (Cell Phones and Cordless Phones), is expected to be published in autumn 2004.

This month's article is on the Building Biology approach to healthy renovations and new home construction.

Turning to today's topic, the March 30, 2004 edition of USA Today reports, "Profit-driven developers and builders are going green because today's sustainable buildings are price-competitive with conventional ones." The article goes on to say, "Manufacturers and suppliers of green building materials are rushing to cash in on an expanding market. The initial cost to go green may be slightly higher, but the payback in energy efficiency, water conservation and worker productivity easily recoups those outlays, experts say.

"'To build a green building is only very marginally more expensive, and that margin is decreasing all the time,' says Scott Lewis, a green building consultant here. As cost fades as a hurdle, green building is gaining virtually unassailable status as the right thing to do."

We are very health conscious here in Fairfield and want to build new homes according to proper Vastu. Wonderful articles and lectures have been presented in our community on sustainable design and renewable energy, which we have an obligation to incorporate into our new building design. It is indeed, "the right thing to do."

We can now add health promoting features for occupants, which is the focus of Building Biology, that result in cost savings in heating and cooling bills plus lower out-of-pocket medical bills as a side benefit. This is in keeping with the national trends in the building trade. An example of the Building Biology approach is the building of walls and foundations that do not produce mold and keep your furnace and air conditioner from running as often, saving you money every month.

Thicker walls made with materials recommended by Building Biology include clay-treated wood chip blocks made by Durisol in Canada and air- or kiln-dried wood log from such companies as New Homestead USA. Studies show that homes built with these materials may have a lower "R-value," that is, the measure of how well a wall transfers heat or cold, as measured in the laboratory, but that is misleading because these walls outperform standard wall construction in the field. Homeowners love the quietness, even temperatures, comfort and the safe, solid feeling of walls with greater mass and they pay less in fuel bills.

Healthier choices of heating and cooling systems are also recommended by Building Biology to promote steady temperatures and to save you money. The sun provides abundant free energy that can be harnessed through the use of what is known as "passive solar design." While this is already being practiced in current home design in Fairfield, Building Biology also recommends using walls with "thermal mass" that store winter heat and summer cool and re-radiate that heat and cool back into rooms in the evening and through the early part of the night. This provides significant savings in heating and cooling costs, a fact that is backed up by research and the experience of thousands of homeowners in the USA and Canada, including people here in Fairfield.

Thicker walls also have the property of absorbing excess moisture from the indoor air, a phenomenon called hygroscopicity. The indoor relative humidity stays at a comfortable 40-60% year round vastly reducing the chance for mold to grow. Because these walls have the capacity to allow water vapor to gently diffuse in and out without losing heat, they never promote mold growth within them, even if a water leak occurs.

These "breathable" walls also allow what toxic vapors may develop indoors to slowly diffuse to the outside, keeping the indoor air fresh and clean. Homes built with a vapor barrier and standard insulation do not allow this to occur because they try to keep all air inside (unless an air-to-air heat exchanger is installed, a must for super tight homes with vapor barriers). Mold is the unfortunate result in standard walls in spite of the best of intentions and design, even with the use of an air-to-air heat exchanger. Instead, thicker walls that "breathe" allow air and water vapor to slowly diffuse through them without loss of heat, preventing mold growth in the process.

These walls also promote the right balance of ions in indoor air, a very healthy feature, which leads to greater alertness and overall health for occupants. Outdoors, Nature maintains a balance of ions of approximately 60% negative ions (the good kind) and 40% positive ions (the not so good kind), particularly near the seashore or a waterfall. Choosing thicker, breathable walls and avoiding synthetic fabric carpeting, upholstery, drapes and latex wall paint provides a more natural 60% to 40% negative to positive ion ratio in indoor air, just like outdoors, keeping you healthy.

Electrical wiring can be arranged in new and remodeled homes to reduce or eliminate electrical and magnetic fields (which are not the same), particularly in sleeping and day work areas. European research shows that doing so removes the suppression caused by electric and magnetic fields of the production of melatonin by the pineal gland when we sleep at night, which is so important in proper hormone balance, cancer protection and the functioning of the immune system.

Chronic fatigue, allergies, insomnia and hyperactivity in adults and children all improve when electrical and magnetic fields are reduced in the sleeping area. This can be assessed and remedied in any existing home and avoided altogether in new home construction and remodeling by carefully following a comprehensive wiring plan developed by Building Biology.

The choice of building materials also affects the health of occupants in a new home long after the "new home smell" has dissipated. Building Biology teaches that chemicals in materials such as found in glues, adhesives, cabinetry, paints and carpets can outgas for months and even years at very low levels, adding to the "rain barrel" effect as pioneered by William Rae, MD, Director of the American Environmental Health Center in Dallas, Texas. These chemicals, which are stored in human fat cells, linger in the body for months and cause ill health by such means as biomimicry; that is, the tricking of human biochemical pathways into functioning as if normal triggers where present when they are not. This causes the release of endogenous biochemicals (that is, naturally produced within our body) when they should not be released and upsets the balance of our health.

Building Biology also has protocols for a healthy, mold-free foundation and slab, plus healthy choices for roofing, siding, kitchen and bathroom enclosures and cabinetry plus all finishes, paints, and flooring. Building Biology explains why it is so important to avoid wall-to-wall carpeting, particularly in sleeping areas, and instead to choose non-carpeted floors with area rugs that can be taken outdoors and aired out. You will save money over the life of your home and be allergy-free and healthier in the process.

Building Biologists spend time evaluating the full range of existing homes, from new ones to century old classics. Constantly seeing the threats to good health in these homes that we are taught to recognize, even in new ones, has inspired me to promote healthy choices and strategies in new home construction and remodeling while continuing to inspect existing homes. That is why I have compiled a 194 page manual incorporating protocols that my profession recommends for new home construction. This manual is being provided to members of the building trade and the general public here in Fairfield and across the country and Canada. The goal is to make new construction even healthier than it already is, thanks to the dedication of local builders who are moving in this direction and avoiding the problems of standard construction. These Building Biology protocols offer a chance for us to go even farther.

The best time to use this knowledge is at the design phase but many of these features can be incorporated at any step in the process. It is up to homeowners to ask their architects, designers and builders to include them in the design of new homes. When builders see that the public wants and is willing to pay for these features, they will provide them for you. You as the homeowner will reap great rewards once you build such a house, including greater resale value, though you may never want to move! Your monthly mortgage payment will be slightly higher, but that increase will be offset by lower fuel and health care costs and you will enjoy more comfort and greater health.

I hope I have inspired you to consider adding these features to your plans for remodeling your existing home or designing and building your dream house. This will bring even greater benefits to you and your family over the life of your home and will help Fairfield become a leader in incorporating healthy building design and sustainability into the revival of the ancient knowledge of Maharishi Staphatya Ved.

Please attend the lecture series for more information on this topic. To contact the author, Oram Miller, Certified Building Biologist, call 952-412-0781 or email info@createhealthyhomes.com.