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Exclusive Coverage of the "Excellence in Building
Conference,"
by Steve Rizer
Ventilation
and air circulation are not the same thing, says indoor air
quality executive David Hill. Hill, president of
Vancouver-based Eneready Products Ltd., attempted to set the
record straight at the recent "Excellence in
Building" Conference, sponsored by the Energy Efficient
Building Association, held in Baltimore, Maryland last month.
In
discussing Canada's IAQ standards, Hill discussed the
importance of differentiating between ventilation and air
circulation. "This is where the public is really
confused, and at the seminar I tried to clarify it," Hill
told Indoor Environment Business in an exclusive interview
after the conference. "We have to separate air
circulation from ventilation. "There are two issues-air
circulation and air exchange. Air circulation is normally done
on the basis of volume, and you usually have 2-4 air changes
per hour, and those numbers are chosen because that's the air
that you require to circulate to accomplish three jobs-to
heat, to cool, and to filter. Ventilation, on the other hand,
has got nothing to do with volume or the space, but it has to
do with the occupancy of the space."
Ventilation
issues arise from the presence of people in a room or a
building, and the need to remove the carbon monoxide, odors,
and other contaminants that humans generate and are affected
by. "Ventilation is health-related, yet we have to
recognize that ventilation is limited in what it can do,"
said Hill. "If you're going to fill a house up with toxic
materials, that you're not going to be successful."
Hill
successfully lobbied the British Columbia provincial
government to adopt a ventilation code for newly constructed
buildings. He added that he is pleased that the standard
recognizes the need for continuous, low-level ventilation for
most of the house, as well as large-capacity exhaust from
kitchens and bathrooms that are used only 15 minutes per day.
Despite
the progress on developing standards in Canada, Hill noted
that politics precludes a more complete solution at the
moment. "I don't think going to politicians at this time
with a housing problem is going to work until such times as
the social costs for health care and our social costs for
housing are paid from the same budget," Hill said.
"It's happening in France. It's starting to happen in
British Columbia, but right now we have socialized health care
and socialized housing. The health care people don't realize
that a lot of their problems are coming from inadequate
ventilation in houses, and until these two, big publicly
funded behemoths talk to one another, we'll never go
forward."
Meanwhile,
in the United States, the private sector is pushing a strong
ventilation standard, noted conference speaker Max Sherman,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory staff senior scientist.
The draft residential ventilation standard, American Society
of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers' (ASHRAE)
Standard 62.2P, recommends whole-house mechanical ventilation
systems for all residential buildings of up to three stories.
The standard will be available for public review until
mid-February.
"The
standard, after it gets approved, is only the first
step," Sherman, chairman of the 62.2P Committee, told IEB.
"It would have to be adopted as code or into model codes
by states. That may take a few years, depending on the code
cycles. If it were adopted as code, all new houses would meet
the standard." The cost of installing ventilation systems
in new homes could range from about $100 to several hundred
dollars, he noted.
Sherman
predicted that some states "certainly" would adopt
the standard. "Minnesota has adopted a code that has
residential ventilation in it, and in some ways it is even
more stringent than what we're proposing," he said.
"Other states, such as California, are considering such a
standard. It will be a state-by-state, and sometimes a
city-by-city decision."
As
comments are received in the next few weeks, the ASHRAE
standards committee may still modify its draft standard that
declares whether ventilation should be determined on basis of
the bedroom count (as an indicator of occupancy level), or
square footage (as an indicator of carpet and furniture dust
levels), or both. Regardless, Sherman termed the draft
standard an important step towards improving indoor air
quality and helping builders resolve some of the litigation
issues that arise over occupant illness and damage from mold
and mildew.
Good
Building Management Can Help Solve Ventilation and Moisture
Problems
Resolving
the ventilation standard, and coupling that with sound
building practices, is one of the best ways to solve moisture
problems on a widespread basis, said conference panelist
MacGregor Pearce, a St. Paul-based environmental health
consultant.
"What
I would want to see is standards for ventilation and then
standards for dealing with water losses," said Pearce, an
expert on mold spores. "When we have floods or roof leaks
or plumbing breaks or storm damage, there should be certain
strict rules for dealing with those moisture problems very
quickly and effectively. Most of the bad problems I see are
improperly handled water disasters. The second most common
thing is incompetent building practices."
The
Association of Specialists in Cleaning and Restoration has
"some" adequate guidelines on mold remediation, said
Pearce. "But they don't have the force of law, just
standards," he complained. "It's a really imprecise
science, and it's become a big concern. Now, experts are
popping up all over the place that occasionally make
ridiculous recommendations. Some err on the side of panic,
warning that mold is a dreadful poison. There are certainly
molds that make toxins and animals that eat moldy food get
sick, but I don't think anyone is out there eating moldy
drywall .(The level) of exposure (needed) to get poisoned -
not allergically irritated, but poisoned - by moldy
environments is not well understood."
Lawsuits
over some of these issues are proliferating in the United
States, especially in California, said Pearce. Usually,
insurance companies wind up settling the cases, but Pearce
warned that builders could be found liable, too.
Building
Quality Homes That Exceed Standards
Some
builders, particularly those operating at the upper end of the
market, are not waiting for ventilation standards to make
their own commitment to moisture avoidance. "I think
having mechanical ventilation as a standard on all houses is a
good thing," said Vernon McKown, owner of Norman,
OK-based Ideal-Homes. "We're doing it on all of our homes
now."
Mechanical
ventilation is one of the features of a demonstration
"Health House" that McKown's firm built in Norman.
The house also features low-volatile organic compound
products, reduced air infiltration, moisture control (inside
and outside), and upgraded materials for livability and
durability. The firm also has developed education tools for
customers and builders who visit the structure.
"The
most significant changes we had to address involved the vapor
barrier, low-e glass [which is very rarely found in the Norman
market], meeting air-tightness goals for the ceiling, and
switching to a rigid duct system to meet performance
specifications,"McKown said. "We had to fly someone
down from Minnesota to install the mechanical ventilation
system."
While
the company is not building homes that include all of the
features of its Health House, it has incorporated mechanical
ventilation and low-e glass into its new products. The early
returns from this effort to improve IAQ have been extremely
positive, McKown told the audience of builders and developers.
For an additional cost of about $1,000, Ideal-Homes is
building homes that are worth about $8,000 more than they
would be otherwise. "Our profitability has continued to
go up. Our sales volume has risen," he said, crediting
the education of his salespeople as being as critical to
success as the quality of his homes.
Dianne
Walsh-Astry, director of the American Lung Association's
National Health House Project, believes that other builders
will also realize increased sales and profits if they invest
in building healthier homes. With an aging population, Walsh-Astry
reminded builders that demographics are on their side.
"Our
evidence is showing that as an individual gets older, he or
she is more inclined to take a closer look at the detailing on
their home and will be willing to make different selections
and products for the home," said Walsh-Astry. "A
survey we commissioned indicated that it is the 50-and-over
crowd that is making those additional purchases for things
that will improve their indoor environments. The other thing
we see is that people are not going into nursing homes as
frequently and would rather stay in their own homes. A
multi-generational home environment is certainly a market of
the future."
However,
builders must not consider healthy homes to be a mere
marketing claim, warned Eric Burnett, director of Pennsylvania
State University's Housing Research Center. In a separate
presentation at the conference, he presented evidence house
wraps are not being properly installed. The Center surveyed 43
houses and discovered faulty installation of the product at
all 43.
When
asked by IEB about the best way to remedy the situation,
Burnett replied, "It's quite easy. Installers must follow
the manufacturer's instructions and avoid using staples, and
that basically is what it boils down to. First of all,
builders have got to understand why they're installing it.
People have really been installing things properly when they
realize what it's supposed to do and what the virtues of
installing it properly are. Many of these people really don't
have enough training to really understand what they should
do."
To
Burnett's knowledge, no program exists to train house wrap
installers. "Nobody's making a crusade like that,"
he lamented. "It costs too much money, and it takes too
much time. Who gains monetarily? Who's going to invest the
money?"
iaqpubs.com/Jan00-2
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