How toxic is your indoor air?

Bad air inside your home… What’s your number?

Back in the days of minimal insulation and lots of gaps and cracks in building envelopes, toxic air was more easily flushed away.

Now, many designers and builders have created a new problem as they push to achieve a higher degree of airtightness in homes to save energy and thereby supposedly create ‘healthy homes’.

According to BRANZ, research has found that excess moisture and contaminates such as CO2 and VOCs exceed recommended levels in many NZ homes, compromising the safety and comfort of occupants.

The World Health Organization says that poor air quality can lead to diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.

Everyday living activities can cause the quality the air inside your home to deteriorate. Contributing factors can include nasty building materials, excess moisture, wood burners, gas appliances, furnishings, packaging, smoking, household cleaners, adhesives, paints and varnishes, air fresheners… The list goes on. Carbon monoxide can even come in from combustion engines being run in attached garages.

At Premium Homes we take indoor air quality seriously because the Foreverbreathe system that we build helps to manage it using natural, sustainable, non-toxic building materials. We encourage owners of our Foreverbreathe homes to monitor the quality of their indoor air 24/7.

The uHoo devices that we recommend measure conditions and contaminates, combining the result to provide a virus index. That’s right, the people at uHoo say that research has proven the correlation between air quality and coronavirus.

In addition to measuring indoor temperature and humidity our homeowners monitor the following:

Air pressure, CO2, Total VOCs, PM2.5 (small and potentially harmful particulates), CO, NO2 and ozone. These factors collectively provide a Virus index number.

Our clients have 24/7 access to their air quality stats and virus index… What’s your number?

Interested in finding out more? Here’s a link to the resources section of the uHoo website.

Explore Air Quality Insights and Tips | uHoo Resources (getuhoo.com)

And talk to us about building a home from natural materials that will give you better air quality while achieving those energy savings through enhanced airtightness.