Building Your Sustainable Home

G'day and welcome.  Building a sustainable home requires discipline.  Making sure you get what you want and pay for.  Be informed about the decisions you make as you will paying it off for a very long time.  Architects, Building Designers, and Builders work for you, make them work for you, don't be afraid to ask questions until you get the answers, and don't be put off.  If they don't want to do it the sustainable way (and its meets the Building Code of Australia and the regulations, etc) then find someone else who will, they won't stay in business if they don't change.

As we designed, made choices for products and features for our new home we learned a lot of things.  As we learned we realised that most all of the modern houses built today are toxic with high levels of carcinogenic substances, formaldehyde and volatile organic compounds contained within the indoor environment.  It's no wonder that Australia has the highest incidence of Asthma and allergies in the western world.

Too often we came across Builders saying "we have always done it this way...  because its cheaper and people need to be able to afford to buy their houses" rather than looking at the safer alternatives.  As soon as you mention something different, they immediately say it will cost you more to put you off, rather than looking at the real costs and then making an informed decision.  They have their suppliers and don't want the hassle of looking for new suppliers, building relationships, researching new products or ideas.  They don't seem to be aware of the harm they may be doing to themselves using toxic building products.

Then there is "Big Business" that gives the builders discounts, but they aren't allowed to discuss their discount with anyone else or they will lose it, a bit like blackmail if you ask me - Builders discounts aren't the same for all builders, so a small builder might get a 5% discount while his mate up the road gets a 7.5% discount, big business manipulates the market this way, particularly if they want to shift more of a particular product that may not be a sustainable product.

If we all dug our collective heels in and insisted on safe homes with clean indoor air, we may start to change the way that governments, manufacturers and builders build our houses.  The toxic building products used are not sustainable (environmentally or socially) and these bad products need to be eliminated from our buildings.  I wonder how many builders and manufacturers will be subject of future law suits for building or providing toxic products to the suburban home...  Lets stop building toxic suburbs.

We could talk for hours on the things we have learned while researching products, there is a lot to learn, so take the time and read lots and read widely.  Look for the warnings on product labels also ask for the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for the products, they talk about the exposure and safe handling for tradespeople transporting and installing the product.  They don't talk about how the product reacts under normal use conditions or what effects it will have on the users over a long period of exposure.  They are mostly used in work situation for Occupational Health and Safety reasons.  Governments need to change the way they view these documents and update them to show long term exposure effects on the end user - us, and how to safely dispose of the product when it reaches its end of life.

This site is dedicated to those people who want, like we did, to build a sustainable home:

• Energy efficient - that use no more energy than is required for our needs and using solar energy and highly energy efficient devices;
• Accessible Whole-of-Life house - that would be able to be lived in from the Cradle to the Grave no matter what age or state of health;
• Non-toxic - a building that does not use building products that contain carcinogenic, toxic, neuro-toxic, formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds;
• Sustainable - from building materials and products that are available now and will be for generations to come that work with the environment and don't polute our air, water or soils, are socially responsible and are econimically sustainable.

Big business who use bad Science to look for a quick buck are a bad combination and they are having long term negative effects on us humans and our environment...  If it's cheaper it's not always sustainable, people's health and the enviromental impact need to be addressed over the long term as part of any product development.

What we did

We designed our new home and researched products that we wanted to use. We tried to use only sustainable and healthy products, but some of these things are outside our means, so we were forced to compromise in some areas, but if everyone insisted on healthy building products then this would not be such a hard task. There were a number of criteria applied to the new building:

• We wanted a healthy house where we could breath easy.
• We wanted to have a house that would be able to be lived in from the Cradle to the Grave no matter what age or state of health.
• We wanted our house to be as Energy Efficient as we could possibly make it.
• We wanted a house where we and workmen would not be at risk when working on our house.
• We wanted to use devices that were highly efficient and produced the lowest possible amount of greenhouse gases.

Energy Efficiency

We don't want to create any more Greenhouse Gas than we absolutely have to. Australia and a number of Island nations around the world will have problems with rising sea levels as a direct result of Global Warming, we must do all we can to get the Kyoto protocol ratified in this country and get people motivated to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

• Help reduce your own energy requirement by using energy smart devices.
• Insulate your house well - Air-Cell (formally Astrofoil) in the roof, in the walls and under the floor, and/or polyester batts or rolls, or wool insulation are the safest and are recyclable when finished with.
• Double glaze you home so that you don't loose the heat out the windows, reducing your heating bills. For added security and safety use laminated glass.

Renewable Energy - use energy from renewable sources.

• Use Solar Hot water heating with Gas Boosters - it is the most efficient.
• Generate your own electricity from PV Solar arrays, wind generators, Micro-hydro generators, etc. There are healthy rebates from Government for home installed systems.

Air Toxics

Air Toxics are gaseous, aerosol or particulate pollutants which are present in the air in low concentrations with characteristics such as toxicity or persistence so as to be a hazard to human, plant or animal life. The terms 'air toxics' and 'hazardous air pollutants' (HAPs) are used interchangeably.

Air toxics include the following general categories of compounds: volatile and semi volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and aldehydes.

Air toxics are emitted into ambient air from a wide range of sources. The exposure of the Australian population to these substances is dependent on individual lifestyle and places of work and residence.

There is a growing international recognition of the potential health risks associated with exposure to air toxics and of the need for action to minimise these risks. There is evidence that cancer, birth defects, genetic damage, immunodeficiency, respiratory and nervous system disorders can be linked to exposure to occupational levels of air toxics.

Thus it is desirable to reduce the exposure of the Australian population to these substances where possible.

Healthy Indoor Air Quality

According to Asthma Victoria you need to change the air in a room 1.5 times every hour, so that people with asthma don't have problems. Also the choices you make for furniture, heating, flooring, building materials and paints may make a difference to the Asthma suffer.

Reduce or don't use formaldehyde resin based products - chipboards, MDF, plywoods, composite wood products, fibreglass batts, etc. If you have it, paint or laminate all exposed surfaces to seal them up so that off gasing does not occur inside your house, vent roof spaces so that it doesn't build up in the roof cavity. There are other products that can be substituted like plantation timbers and "Formaldehyde Free" MDFs and composite wood products.

Use Zero Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) products - paints - Berger Breath Easy and there are a number of natural replacement products, Livos - Plant based Paints and Organoil for all your oil needs.

Don't use PVC based products especially those with plastercisers (they make the PVC plyable) see Greenpeace Toxics site for details. Replacement products (known as Halogen Free products) are available in the form of High Density Polyethelene (HDPE) piping and Halogen free electrical cables and fittings.

Our house is on the side of a hill on a corner block of 850sqm with 2/3 road frontage.  We decided to build off the ground (we don't want to live in a hole), with the garage and workshop under.  If we had a flat block then the choices would have more bio mass with concrete floors.  We are using brick veneer, colorbond roof, floor and roof trusses, 19mm tongue and groove radiata pine flooring (no real bio mass), polyester and air-cell insulation (clean and non toxic), double glasing, gas boostered solar hot water, and gas ducted heating.

Energy Efficient Products we used (the house achieved a 5 star rating using the FirstRate program):

• Insulation - Polyester insulation (it's non toxic, no safety gear required, you could sleep in it) on the ceiling (R4), in the walls (R1.5), and under the floor (R2).  We also use the polyester in internal bedroom walls where we wanted to stop the noise being transmitted between rooms, it is much more efficient and economical than some of the plasterboard type solutions using fibreglass batts.
• Air-cell insulation (bubblewrap with aluminium foil both sides) - under the colorbond roof (R2.7), and as a house wrap (R2)
• Solar Hot Water (Government rebates apply) - we chose a Solarhart 302BCXII Blackchrome XII Gas boostered (less greenhouse gas) hot water system - 300Lt, 2 panels - the most energy efficient hot water service of its size we could buy (more energex renewable energy certificates than any other for the size).  It surprised us that most Solar hot water heaters are electric boostered, yet they are not the ones that produce least greenhouse gas, gas boostered should be the norm not the exception.
• Double Glasing all glass doors and windows - Pilkington glass locally specified by their people for the Canberra climate - 6.38mm laminated (extra security and 99% UV ray removal) clear external pane, 12mm air gap, 4mm toughened safety glass with a low emmission coating to hold the heat in winter.  Our summers are not as severe as some places in Australia and we needed the sunlight and heat in winter to come through the glass so we didn't have any coating on the external pane.

Non Toxic choices we made:

• We chose to use gangnailed floor trusses instead of Hyspan beams.  Gangnailed floor trusses sometimes referred to as Posi-Struts or Longreach trusses, they are more rigid over distance than Hyspan beams.
  
  Manufactured wood products (MDF, Chipboards, Particleboards, structaflor, engineered beams, plywoods and floating wooden floors all contain formaldehyde resins, generally phenol-formaldehyde for external and wet area applications or urea-formaldehyde for internal applications).  These products outgas formaldehyde, a carcinogenic substance, for the life of the product, if it's hot it outgases more and if it is humid as well even more.  If you have to use it, make sure it is sealed by paint or melamine or laminate so that it cannot outgas into your environment.  Industry have over the years tried to reduce the concentrations of formaldehyde in their resins, but it would be far better for us and the environment if they stopped using it all together, the excuse that its only .02mg per cubic meter is still more than none, and we all know that every little bit contributes to the whole, the more we don't use the better our air quality both indoor and outdoor.  Formaldehyde is a naturally occuring product, but lets not make more of it than exists naturally.
  
  
• Paints - Use zero Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) paints.  Most petro-chemical based paints have significant amounts of VOC's.  There are natural alternatives.  We used Berger Breath Easy paint which is a zero VOC paint, use it in preference to the other petro-chemical solvent based paints.  Livos paints are all natural, but if you have an allergy to any of the natural substances used, this may be a problem so choose carefully.
  
  
• Polyester Insulation - We chose to use a non toxic, recyclable product that requires no special safety measures.  Fibreglass batts are bonded with formaldehyde resins and even though you can get human soluable fibreglass batts, we looked at the MSDS and decided that we didn't want to have it in our house.  Breathable fibres, like asbestos, are a health hasard.
  
  
• more to come later
  
  

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