Renovation – the healthy way

Mod­ern­iz­a­tion is an oppor­tun­ity to get rid of harm­ful con­tam­in­ants and to newly design one’s home with healthy build­ing mater­i­als. A new check­list helps homeown­ers with the plan­ning and selec­tion of suit­able products.

Asbes­tos, PCBs, wood pre­ser­vat­ives – this list appears like a cham­ber of hor­rors in the his­tory of build­ing mater­i­als. When embark­ing on a renov­a­tion pro­ject today, many prop­erty own­ers still come across these and oth­er prob­lem­at­ic mater­i­als that have been proven to be harm­ful to health. Great care and pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ures, such as wear­ing fine dust masks, must there­fore be taken when remov­ing these mater­i­als. This also applies in the event that the homeown­er hires a spe­cial­ist com­pany to carry out the remedi­ation work.

Homeown­ers who have taken the trouble to rid them­selves of this leg­acy of pol­lu­tion will also pro­ceed with great care when installing new com­pon­ents. For the sake of healthy liv­ing, only build­ing mater­i­als should be used that do not have a neg­at­ive effect on human health. The pur­pose of mod­ern­iz­a­tions, such as facade insu­la­tion or win­dow replace­ment, is to make the build­ing envel­ope tight­er and more energy-effi­­cient in order to reduce not only energy con­sump­tion but also the asso­ci­ated costs. How­ever, the tight­er the build­ing envel­ope, the less air is exchanged. Even when the air exchange can be partly con­trolled by manu­al or auto­mated vent­il­a­tion, it is much more prefer­able to pre­vent emis­sions from hap­pen­ing in the first place. After all, the few­er pol­lut­ants in the air we breathe, the bet­ter for our health!

Cur­rently, more and more build­ing mater­i­als are being offered free from harm­ful ingredi­ents such as solvents, phthal­ates (they are mainly used as plas­ti­cizers for plastic mater­i­als) and free rad­ic­als. How­ever, to be on the safe side and ensure that the selec­ted products can be used without any health con­cerns, con­sumers should look out for trust­worthy cer­ti­fic­ates such as the EMICODE^® seal. This is exclus­ively awar­ded to products that assure the low­est pos­sible indoor emis­sions, which makes them ideal for use in air­tight build­ings. Products car­ry­ing the EMICODE^® label were tested for harm­ful VOC emis­sions by inde­pend­ent labor­at­or­ies in spe­cial test cham­bers. To ensure long-term com­pli­ance with the VOC lim­it val­ues, the ini­tial test is fol­lowed by reg­u­lar spot checks car­ried out without pri­or noti­fic­a­tion by inde­pend­ent experts and test­ing insti­tutes.