7 Tips to Building Healthy Homes

Green building is a great way to differentiate your buildings from others. Green building is getting more popular these days, and more buyers are looking for homes that are built with ecofriendly materials. However, there are also other things you can do to make sure that the house you build is safe for the people who are moving in.

The National Center for Healthy Housing has developed a list of things you can refer to when checking if the home you are building can be considered healthy. A lot of evidence points to the fact that houses can greatly contribute to people’s poor health. Cases of lead poisoning, mold formation, lung cancer, and asthma are just a few examples.

With a little planning, you can take your green building practices and give your system a healthy spin. Here are a few examples:

• Keep your workspace dry – Mold formation can be a potentially dangerous situation for homeowners. To avoid this, keep your workspace dry and in an environment with a controlled temperature.
• Keep your workspace clean – Employing a building system where dust and debris is reduced will make sure that the homeowners move into a cleaner home. Invest in upgrading your equipment and hiring skilled craftsmen to minimize material waste, at the same time helping the environment.
• Keep your workspace well-ventilated – Ventilate the rooms in the house while building it to prevent contaminants from being concentrated indoors. Make sure a good flow of air goes through the living room, kitchen, bathrooms, and fireplaces. Even if it’s acceptable in some building codes to let some gas models of fireplaces vent indoors, opt for the healthier option of installing models that vent outdoors.
• Keep the house safe – Put extra safety features on all floors of the house. Gas poisoning can happen quickly and silently, so it would be good to install carbon monoxide detectors in addition to smoke detectors. Also provide alternative means to get out of the house in case of fires or other emergencies. Advise the homeowners to have their HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) systems inspected annually to make sure that they’re properly cleaned and maintained.
• Keep the house contaminant-free – Use paint that has low VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) levels to keep contamination out of the house. It’s also good to include a mud room in the house plan so that shoes, boots, and umbrellas can be kept there before entering the living space.
• Keep the house well-maintained – It’s a good idea to give homeowners a checklist of things that they can inspect in terms of regular maintenance. Some homeowners (especially first time homeowners) might overlook some things.
• Keep pests away from the house – Make sure that cracks and openings are sealed so as not to invite pests into the house. Educate the new home owners on how to keep the house pest-free by keeping food in sealed containers, using non-toxic pesticides, and keeping cracks and openings around the house sealed.

It may also be a good idea to give the homeowners a safety manual which they can read through so that they can have a better understanding of how they can keep their home safe. Here are a few things you can include in the manual:

• Keep the house dry to discourage the formation of mold and pest infestation which causes or triggers asthma attacks.
• Keep the house clean to maintain a contaminant-free environment.
• Keep the house pest-free by using non-toxic pesticides. Recent studies show a correlation between pest infestation and asthma episodes in children.
• Keep the contaminants out of the house. Chemical exposures have more intense effects indoors than outdoors. Examples of such contaminants include second hand smoke, volatile organic compounds, lead, pesticides, and others.
• Keep your house well-ventilated to encourage better respiratory health.

Building green would be more effective with a better understanding of how to make a house safe. There are many instructional materials available in the market to help you understand this further.