Studies show that we spend close to 80% of our time indoors.  That’s a lot!  What is inside your home with you is more important than ever.  In older homes, gases produced from objects and furnishings in the home could escape the home more easily.  Now, special care must be taken to enhance indoor air quality.  Green building  incorporates ways to address these potential problems.  Look for carpets and paints that don’t outgas harmful vapors into your home.  Look for other building materials and sealants that address this problem.  Green homes incorporate a mechanical fresh air induction system to provide the necessary ventilation that you and your family need to be safe.  All combustion devices are sealed and use air from the outside to operate.  New filtration systems have been devised that are much more efficient than what you may have now.

Some of the products we used to ensure indoor air quality are shown above.  That Honewell central vac does a great job getting dirt out of the home, not just redistributed inside.  For HVAC we went with American Standard 16 SEER 2 speed units.  Added to the bottom of each air handler we added American Standard electronic air cleaners.  They super clean the air and even let you know when it's time to wash out the filters.  That other little box is called a Honeywell outside air intake control. It controls the amount of fresh air metered into the home.  Your energy rater sets those dials based on the size of the house, the number of bedrooms, and your tightness of home specs, and it lets in the correct amount of fresh air.

Some other strategies for green building include sealed combustion fireplaces.  Mine's a Martin unit with a special coating on the glass so it looks like it's not even there.  For paint the Sherwin Williams rep fixed me up their complete line of low VOC paints with no indoor smell.  My hardwood is a brazillian cherry engineered plank.  Even though Brazillian Cherry is a rain forest tree, my hardwood uses 30% of the solid stuff.  And it's still 3/4" thick. That makes it line up with the stair treads thickness for easier install.  For carpeting we went with a Shaw carpet called Grand Prix.  This one is reasonably priced and made with less petroleum product.  My installer sends all of the leftover scraps back to the manufacturer for reprocessing. Costs him a little more, but he says it's the green way to go.  Even my carpet cushion has recycled content. and environmentally friendly adhesives.  Even got my cabinet guy to look at the materials used in construction of my cabinetry.  He went with no formaldehyde plywood, used poplar for the insides and doors, and a low VOC finish for the outsides.  Said the way he worked it out it wasn't really any more expensive and it was good to convert to green.