Tips for a healthy home

Adults spend around 80 to 90 per­cent of their time indoors. This makes it all the more import­ant that the liv­ing envir­on­ment is designed in such a way that it does not impair the health of the res­id­ents. Our expert explains what you need to look out for when plan­ning, choos­ing products and car­ry­ing out build­ing work.

Tip 1: Take all factors into account to ensure the long-term health of your home

These days, you often hear the catch­phrase “healthy liv­ing envir­on­ment”. How­ever, it is not always clearly defined what it means. In gen­er­al, one could say that all the com­pon­ents that have a pos­it­ive effect on a per­son’s well-being and health can be called “healthy for liv­ing”. These com­pon­ents include suf­fi­cient day­light and fresh air, good qual­ity drink­ing water and a com­fort­able room tem­per­at­ure. On the oth­er hand, an excess­ively high noise level, mold growth, harm­ful emis­sions from fur­niture, tex­tiles and build­ing mater­i­als as well as res­id­en­tial expos­ure to radon gas should be avoided.

Tip 2: Create a checklist for your construction or renovation project

To ensure plenty of nat­ur­al day­light in your own four walls, install large glass pan­els that prefer­ably face south. When refur­bish­ing your home, enlarge the exist­ing win­dows if pos­sible or neces­sary.

Due to the high insu­la­tion stand­ard today, houses are tight­er than ever so that there is hardly any exchange of air through joints and cracks. The con­sequences are a high­er CO2 con­tent in the air and excess­ive humid­ity. To avoid fatigue, head­aches and ulti­mately mold growth, adequate vent­il­a­tion is abso­lutely essen­tial. This can be done manu­ally by cross-vent­il­at­ing the rooms sev­er­al times a day. Or by installing a con­trolled vent­il­a­tion sys­tem com­plete with heat recov­ery.

It is a well-known fact that noise can make you ill. But solidly built houses help you reduce noise from out­side, if neces­sary sup­por­ted by the install­a­tion of sound­proof win­dows. Avoid an all too open floor plan inside the apart­ment or house, because it causes a high­er noise level. Glue floor cov­er­ings such as par­quet firmly to the sub­floor (only use EMICODE^®-labelled adhes­ives) to avoid unne­ces­sary foot­fall sound.

Ensure a com­fort­able room tem­per­at­ure in sum­mer and in winter. Thermal insu­la­tion of the build­ing envel­ope and shad­ing devices for the win­dows pro­tect against the cold in winter and over­heat­ing in sum­mer. If you reduce the heat­ing / room tem­per­at­ure in winter too much, the mois­ture in the air will con­dense on cold sur­faces and thus cause the risk of mold growth.

The do-it-your­­self install­a­tion of a drink­ing water sys­tem can release dan­ger­ous amounts of harm­ful particles into the water. Bet­ter leave the install­a­tion work to a pro­fes­sion­al plumb­er.

It is advis­able to have the prop­erty or exist­ing house checked for expos­ure to radon. The noble gas is sus­pec­ted of caus­ing can­cer. It may be neces­sary to seal the floor slab or the base­ment more tightly. If the soil is con­tam­in­ated, it must be removed and dis­posed of prop­erly.