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Reducing indoor air pollutants in a newbuild

  • 04-03-2010 11:28pm
    #1
    BigGeorge
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 473 ✭✭


    Am going to soon be starting a new build & am looking at how to reduce indoor pollutants such as VOCs etc.. From what I understand these can come from OSB, timber, flooring, carpets, paints & varnishes.

    Advice from this forum is to use OSB3 for the OSB but am unclear as to what is good practice on the rest of the sources & who are agents for the reaslistic & economical alternatives in Ireland.

    Any advice would be much appreciated


Comments

  • #2
    gears
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 758 ✭✭✭gears


    BigGeorge wrote: »
    Am going to soon be starting a new build & am looking at how to reduce indoor pollutants such as VOCs etc.. From what I understand these can come from OSB, timber, flooring, carpets, paints & varnishes.

    Advice from this forum is to use OSB3 for the OSB but am unclear as to what is good practice on the rest of the sources & who are agents for the reaslistic & economical alternatives in Ireland.

    Any advice would be much appreciated

    It can be a difficult road to take as there is a lot of "green washing" of products out there. But a good place to check for suppliers of these type of products would be EASCA the environmental and sustainable construction association.


  • #3
    sinnerboy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,433 ✭✭✭sinnerboy


    http://www.bre.co.uk/page.jsp?id=29


  • #4
    justflow1983
    Closed Accounts Posts: 122 ✭✭justflow1983


    A good starting point is to try to stick to naturally sourced, inert, materials. Timber, stone, metal. Avoid laminated materials (obviously you can't for racking sheathing) and when you use them make sure they are low on VOC content. Natural timber floors can be left unfinished, stone flags and ceramic tiles are generally inert materials too. Ceramic tiles are fired clay (mud) and glaze (glass) both of which don't offgas.

    Plastics often offgas for a certain amount of time. Carpets almost always do. Paints always do, since when they dry they release vapours, but you can use low-VOC paints that are pretty safe.

    The above links are great, so is the materials section here:
    http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=76

    and greenspec is good but you have to read carefully:
    http://greenspec.co.uk/

    Do you have a specific health concern or are you just trying to keep nasty stuff out of your home?


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