Indoor Air Quality
"a key component to building green"

Indoor Air Quality involves appropriate ventilation and limiting emissions from products by using natural fiber. Additionally, avoiding volatile organic compounds and balancing the impacts from the use of everyday cleaning products.

Payback time calculations for Building Green vary based upon application. Generally, components amortize themselves in ten years or less. Building Green also increases property and resale values as well as preserving the environment for future generations.

Energy Efficiency and Indoor Air Quality must be balanced. For example; you could actually over insulate your home building it so with insulation that you affect the Indoor Air Quality. Balance is derived from an entire system design that is in balance with itself and nature.

Sources of Indoor Air Quality

Second Hand Smoke - smoke from tobacco products used by other people.

Carbon Monoxide - kitchen stoves, heaters, fireplaces, wood stoves and chimneys.

Asbestos - usually found in older homes in pipe and furnace insulation as well as exterior siding.

Formaldehyde - usually found in household furniture and carpet products, used mainly as a preservative.

Lead - usually found in older homes in pipes and in paint.

Household Cleaning Products (non-green products)

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) - usually found in paints, stains and varnishes.

Radon - a colorless, odorless, tasteless, naturally occurring, radioactive noble gas that is formed from the decay of radium. It is one of the heaviest substances that remains a gas under normal conditions and is considered to be a health hazard.

Pesticides - a substance or mixture of substances used to kill a pest

Biological Pollutants - biological contaminants include bacteria, molds, mildew, viruses, animal dander and cat saliva, house dust, mites, cockroaches, and pollen.

Nitrogen - a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78% by volume of Earth's atmosphere.

Factoid - How about a wood stove? Did you know that a rotting tree lying in the forest produces the equivalent amount of CO2 as that of the same log burning in a wood stove.