Take a deep breath and keep a cool head

Sum­mer, sun­shine and warm tem­per­at­ures – people are irres­ist­ibly drawn out­side in the warm sum­mer months. But as soon as tem­per­at­ures rise above a threshold, people seek refuge in the cool­er rooms of their homes. At least those people who do not live in an attic under the roof or in a poorly insu­lated house. These people will soon be drenched in sweat when the sun pen­et­rates the build­ing shell and heats up the rooms. Due to the high tem­per­at­ures, walls and floor cov­er­ings also tend to emit high­er amounts of pol­lut­ants. When con­struct­ing a new build­ing or renov­at­ing an old one, it is there­fore advis­able to use low-emis­­sion products with the EMICODE^® eco-label right from the start.

Accord­ing to a scen­ario developed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Envir­on­ment Agency, our plan­et might become warm­er by up to 4 degrees by the year 2100. At the same time, heat­waves will become more fre­quent, more intense and longer – also in Ger­many. Cli­mate research­ers estim­ate that, in 30 years, tem­per­at­ures in Ber­lin could be just as high as in present-day Freiburg where­as Bre­is­gau tem­per­at­ures could rise to Tuscany level. The high tem­per­at­ures of hot days also affect the interi­or of build­ings, espe­cially those without good thermal insu­la­tion.

Espe­cially in attic flats, tem­per­at­ures can rap­idly rise above 30 degrees in sum­mer. Liv­ing in such over­heated rooms can quickly become an ordeal. The heat also affects the air we breathe: it releases high­er amounts of volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs) from the build­ing mater­i­als installed. For this reas­on, only products with the low­est pos­sible VOC emis­sions should be used in new build­ings or when refur­bish­ing old ones. Qual­ity seals like EMICODE^® provide use­ful guid­ance. The GEV EMICODE^® tests and cer­ti­fies many dif­fer­ent build­ing and install­a­tion products with regard to their VOC emis­sions. Products that meet the strin­gent lim­it val­ues are awar­ded the EC1 label.

The hot­ter it is, the more waves will floor cov­er­ings like car­pet devel­op. In order to avoid such dam­age, it is recom­men­ded to bond the floor­ing over the entire sur­face. You should, how­ever, make sure to use floor­ing adhes­ives that are harm­less to human health. These can be eas­ily recog­nized by the EMICODE^® label clearly vis­ible on the pack­aging. In order to keep a cool head dur­ing the hot sum­mer months even in the attic, effect­ive insu­la­tion with min­er­al wool or wood fiber­boards is worth­while.