Can This Home Be Greened? Condo Conversion
(Page 2 of 4)
July/August 2006
By Carol Venolia
COST: Bio-Floor carpet: $63 per square yard (includes carpet, pad and installation). Natural Cork plank flooring: $10 per square foot, installed (less if you do it yourself). Flor carpet tiles: $6 to $25 per 19.7-inch square tile (install them yourself).
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PRIORITY #2 How’s the air in there?
PROBLEM: With her background in environmental health, Alex knows it’s possible to have invisible problems in the air: volatile organic compounds (VOCs), mold, asbestos, inadequate fresh air. She didn’t know if the apartment had an air-quality problem, but she wanted to be sure.
SOLUTION: We called on Matt Golden, president of Sustainable Spaces, a San Francisco company that specializes in applying building science to improve indoor air quality, energy efficiency and home comfort. Golden installed an Environmental CheckUP Monitor to record levels of particulates, VOCs, carbon monoxide, temperature and humidity inside the condo for several days. Overall, the monitor indicated there were no major air-quality problems. “That makes me happy,” Alex says. “I don’t have to worry that we live in a sick apartment.”
The story isn’t over, however; Alex and Patrick should be careful not to introduce new VOC sources, such as from paints. In addition to their thoughtful floorcovering selections, they need to use least-toxic products when they paint their “scuffed” walls. Alex fell in love with American Clay’s nontoxic earth plaster and has decided to use it on the hallway and living room walls. Elsewhere, they’ll go with AFM Safecoat paints.
COST: Five days of Environmental CheckUP monitoring: $295. American Clay plaster: $75 for a bag that covers about 120 square feet (plus $250 for an optional day-long workshop on how to apply it). AFM Safecoat paint: $30 per gallon (covers about 350 square feet).
PRIORITY #3 Field of bad dreams
PROBLEM: The living room reflects Patrick’s attraction to high-tech toys: computers, electronic gadgets, surround sound and projection equipment for big-screen TV viewing. Alex worries about the electromagnetic fields they generate.
SOLUTION: Golden pulled out a gauss meter, which measures electromagnetic fields (EMFs). To everyone’s relief, he found no significant EMFs in the bedroom; bedside clocks or televisions on the other side of the wall can create fields that may disrupt sleep and other biological processes. (Golden is careful to say that the evidence about health effects of EMFs is still mixed, but he agrees with Alex that it’s a good idea to avoid high fields for prolonged periods.)