A healthy facelift for your home

New is beau­ti­ful – no mat­ter wheth­er it’s a new car, com­puter, clothes or even a flat or house. But after a few years, even the most beau­ti­ful home is begin­ning to show signs of wear and tear. The only rem­edy is to give your home a facelift by repaint­ing the walls or repla­cing the old floor cov­er­ing. Accord­ing to a sur­vey con­duc­ted by IfD Allens­bach in 2019, 8.95 mil­lion Ger­mans – that’s more than one in ten – were plan­ning to ren­ov­ate their homes in the next two years. But if home own­ers want to be sure to live in a healthy envir­on­ment, they must choose build­ing and renov­a­tion products with the low­est pos­sible emis­sions – eas­ily recog­niz­able by qual­ity seals such as EMICODE^®.

The rav­ages of time are tak­ing their toll on everything, includ­ing apart­ments and houses. Often, the rent­al con­tract stip­u­lates that ten­ants must carry out minor cos­met­ic repairs after a few years. How­ever, wheth­er or not the renov­a­tion work is neces­sary does not so much depend on spe­cified inter­vals but rather on the actu­al level of wear and tear. Nev­er­the­less, ten­ants and developers are equally inter­ested in renov­a­tions that improve the com­fort and qual­ity of liv­ing. Every year, more than eight mil­lion Ger­mans there­fore plan to “reju­ven­ate” their homes in the fore­see­able future as the above-men­­tioned study by IfD Allens­bach has shown.

When under­tak­ing a renov­a­tion pro­ject, you are well-advised to use build­ing products with the low­est pos­sible emis­sions. Floor cov­er­ings, fillers, adhes­ives and seal­ants as well as oth­er build­ing and install­a­tion products can release so-called volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs) that impair the qual­ity of indoor air. Health com­plaints like head­ache and fatigue, but also aller­gies and breath­ing prob­lems can be the res­ult in rare cases. It is there­fore best to use pol­lut­ant-free build­ing products right from the start and to rely on qual­ity labels. Products car­ry­ing, for instance, the EMICODE^® EC1 seal have been proven to be very low in emis­sions. One look at the pack­aging is enough for con­sumers to know wheth­er the product is safe to use and there­fore suit­able for home renov­a­tion.

If you don’t ren­ov­ate the floor but build a com­pletely new house, you need to con­sider a cru­cial factor before lay­ing the floor cov­er­ing. It’s the resid­ual screed mois­ture in newly built houses that is some­times under­rated. If it is too high, it can reduce the adhe­sion of the floor­ing adhes­ive and, in the worst case, pro­mote the later form­a­tion of mold and odor. New screeds are not always ready to receive floor­ing after four weeks – this is just the lower time lim­it. How quickly the screed dries strongly depends on factors such as air humid­ity, tem­per­at­ure and thick­ness of the screed slab. It is there­fore best to have the sub­strate pre­par­a­tion done by a pro­fes­sion­al floorer. If you prefer to lay the floor your­self, you should at least ask an expert to check the resid­ual screed mois­ture. Before bond­ing the new floor cov­er­ing on top of the expertly pre­pared sub­floor, it should be care­fully cleaned. Make sure to sweep or vacu­um off any remain­ing dust or dirt particles that may impair adhe­sion.