Funny how the left knows “everything” yet nothing.Are energy efficient homes making us ILL? Toxic mold caused by poor air circulation could trigger ‘sick building syndrome’
Hey!
My drafty, holey, 300 year old log house is “healthy”!
Reagan;
“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
A lot of the problem could be solved by simply setting aside a time to recirculate the air in the home. The newer mobile homes have a fan system that will do this at the flick of a switch while keeping the windows closed.
Importantly, back in the “good old days” when communicable epidemics were common, families who could afford them had special “sick rooms”, walk in closet size, where a sick family member could stay to reduce chances of infecting the others in the family.
An important element of a sick room was a window that could be opened. And only in the last few years were experiments done to find out if this was a good idea. It was.
They determined that in a building, even with a sanitized air conditioning system, “bad” (pathogen contaminated) air tends to remain much longer than if you simply open a window, which results in much larger volumes of fresh air, and faster.
But if you open a window, don’t you lose a lot of heat? Oddly enough, not necessarily. It depends *how* you get your heat.
Americans long had an abundance of firewood, so developed and got used to the idea of air convection iron stoves, that heated a room quickly, and just as quickly cooled off, so needed to be refueled frequently. They also created a lot of smoke and soot.
However, in northern Asia and Europe, where fuel was harder to gather, they used a different approach, called a tile, oven or ceramic stove. (Lots of pretty pictures)
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/12/tile-stoves.html
http://www.inspirationgreen.com/masonry-heaters.html
http://www.rvharvey.com/kachelofen.htm
These worked by having a much hotter, but smaller fire, that burned up most of the smoke and soot, storing that heat in bricks, stones, or ceramic, that then over a length of time gave off invisible infrared radiation.
So less fuel, less pollution, and long lasting radiant heat that warms everything it shines on. And even if the air is cool for a while, you feel warm when illuminated by the invisible light.
This means that with such a stove, even in winter you can open your windows and still feel warm. And waft out the pathogens, while preventing mold and mildew.