INDOOR AIRPLUS PODCAST:  CONSTRUCTING IMPROVED HOMES WITH INDOOR AIRPLUS

INTRODUCTION: Music

ANNE RANCOURT: Welcome to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Indoor airPLUS Podcast Series. I’m Anne Rancourt. Today EPA’s Eric Werling and Dave Price are going to tell me about what the Indoor airPLUS label includes, how the program works and why it makes sense for homebuilders to participate.

ANNE RANCOURT: Eric, can you tell us a little bit about Indoor airPLUS and why EPA created it?

ERIC WERLING: If you dig deep enough into the whole green building world, you realize that it’s not just about energy savings or some nice environmental benefits. It’s also about how clean and pollution-free is the house inside. How healthy is the environment inside? And if you think about it, most of the environmental actions that we take are partly driven by, what’s the impact of environmental pollution on humans and human health? So, if we don’t do that at home – we’re missing the mark. So we came up with this label, the Indoor airPLUS label, as an add-on to ENERGY STAR to help home buyers to see that a builder’s offering a home that not only meets their needs about location, and the number of rooms, and layout and aesthetics, and all that, but also is designed to reduce likelihood of illnesses that people can have as a result of exposure to pollutants inside. 

ANNE RANCOURT: So let’s talk a little about what an Indoor airPLUS home includes. Dave, can you walk us through some of the main features?

DAVE PRICE: We took a comprehensive look at the issues that possibly impact air quality in houses. First, we address moisture. Every single year, moisture – either bulk moisture, when I say that I mean liquid moisture – are the chief problem area for builders of new homes. When they have callbacks and warranty issues, the vast, vast majority of them are moisture related. So, any builder knows what the impacts of moisture are in houses. So what we did is we, again, comprehensively looked at that issue and we put features in the house that address bulk moisture. And that is, just simply the water that is falling on the roof and beating against the walls and the windows; we make sure that those things are designed so that it keeps that water out. And also more importantly, the foundation, which is where we find most of the moisture problems in homes, is we detailed the requirements to optimize the possibility that we can keep the water out of the foundation. It’s a multifaceted issue: if you have moisture in houses, whether it comes from water vapor or humidity that’s not controlled in the house or again bulk water, you’re going to have mold problems and you’re also going to have insect problems. 

The other issue that goes along with it is durability. When building materials get wet and stay wet, they degrade, they delaminate, they lose their strength, and can have structural problems, and again, these are issues that builders are very, very familiar with and so that was the first thing we addressed, was moisture. Then we went on and address radon. Radon is a huge health issue when it comes to air quality. It’s responsible for more than 20,000 lung cancer deaths in the United States annually. We provide a specification depending on where your home is located, whether it’s in Zone 1 or Zone 2, and these are radon potential zones that you can find on our Web site. But builders are required to build-in certain features, passive features, in the home if the home is being built in one of these radon areas. 

We address combustion systems. One of the issues that we deal with in homes for air quality is combustion equipment. It could be a hot water heater or it could be a naturally drafted gas harness. So to avoid the potential of combustion pollutants that can get into the house when the equipment doesn’t possibly operate properly is that we have specified these types of equipment must be sealed combustion equipment. So they get their combustion air from outside, and they don’t use indoor air and again, they exhaust their pollutants to the outside. There’s no opportunity for them to add pollutants to the indoor air. So that’s again another way of avoiding pollutants. 

We also address materials. One of the best ways to reduce the pollutant load in homes is to avoid bringing the pollutant in in the first place. So we’ve specified a series of materials – and I’m thinking right now of panel products such as plywood and OSB and particleboard and MDF – that have low formaldehyde levels, one of the principle pollutants we deal with. But there are other volatile organic compounds that we’re dealing with besides formaldehyde, and so we’ve made specifications for cabinetry that have lower pollutant levels, carpeting and also paints and other finishes that could add pollutant levels to the house. So the ones we specified are expected to have lower emissions levels, thereby lowering the pollutant levels in houses. We’ve also made sure that the builder establishes barriers to pests entering the house, so that’s accomplished through caulking and through physical barriers. The whole concept here is, if you can keep insects from being able to enter the house and you can control the moisture which attracts insects, it means lower use of pesticides because you have avoided that problem.

ANNE RANCOURT: Eric, what’s your perspective?

ERIC WERLING: We believe most of the problems have to do with just overlooking some of the basics like an improper design for the HVAC system. If a system is significantly oversized it can cause problems like short cycling on the air conditioning system. If it’s undersized it can cause an inability to meet the loads and discomfort and things like that. If the system hasn’t been commissioned properly things can happen like disconnected duct systems or registers. Improperly sized duct systems in houses can result in certain rooms not getting sufficient air. And, then not only will they be uncomfortable, but it might also lead to indoor air quality problems. So there is a variety of things that, you know, professional HVAC contractors know how to do. Many of those things though, unfortunately, the market doesn’t encourage because there aren’t very many, you know, labels or certification programs that help customers to better understand the benefits of doing it right the first time. So often times what we get, especially with many of these systems that are invisible to the homebuyers, what we get is people cutting corners because of cost pressures. So what we’ve done with Indoor airPLUS is we’ve focused on those issues that HVAC professionals know how to do but may have a real hard time getting it done in a competitive market.  So we focus on getting those things done, it includes just right sizing, properly documenting the systems size, properly sizing the duct systems, installation and commissioning of those systems. 

And then of course, we do include requirements for HVAC, heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, but it’s ironic that most residential houses in the country, the ventilation system isn’t really included. What we typically see of residential houses is the only part of the ventilation systems that are included in a typical house is the exhaust ventilation, and that’s only part of the ventilation equation. So whole house ventilation, just to make sure you have fresh air coming into your house, is an important part of ventilation and it’s not, it’s still not common to this day. 

And finally we do have some requirements for a couple of other issues that are affected by the HVAC system and that’s dehumidification in hot and humid climates and filtration. Which is a typical part of a central HVAC system, but the filters that are typically installed in residential HVAC systems are only protective of the equipment, they are not protective of occupants and respiratory health. So we have a modest efficiency improvement requirement for the filter. 

DAVE PRICE: Along with that, in a related issue, is we’ve also put a new requirement that the garage be isolated from the house. And, by doing so, I mean we found out in recent years that pollutants in the garage can migrate into the house. So to address that, I mean that could be carbon monoxide from a car that’s starting up or it could be pollutants such as pesticides or other chemicals that are stored in the garage. So what we did is we designed that interface between the garage and the house, and this is when you have an attached garage, that prevents those pollutants from entering the house. We also, through this program, we don’t allow heating and air-conditioning equipment to be located in the garage. It’s just too easy for that equipment to pick up those pollutants and then distribute them within the house. 

ERIC WERLING: The extra benefit of garage isolation, that’s what we call it, is that there are also a lot of VOCs that people tend to store in garages, like cans of gasoline and diesel fuel, and cans of paint stripper, etc., etc. All these things have toxic chemicals in them and they could be there for years and eventually they leak out of those containers and if the right provisions aren’t made, then those things can end up in a house.  

ANNE RANCOURT: And is this program new to the marketplace? Is there anything else like it?

DAVE PRICE: This is a specialty label that addresses this one issue of indoor air quality, so builders can sign on to this program and earn EPA’s Indoor airPLUS label. The other way they can earn this label is, for example if they’re in the LEED Program, you know, earning a green label program for the home. One of the options within LEED is to meet the indoor environmental quality requirements for LEED by completing the Indoor airPLUS requirements.

ANNE RANCOURT: And why do you think homebuyers would be interested in this program?

ERIC WERLING: There’s data that indicates that Americans spend roughly a billion dollars, that’s a billion with a “b,” every year on indoor air quality products or services in homes. That’s a lot of money and it indicates that the American public cares a great deal about indoor air quality and they make the connection between health and indoor air quality. Another indicator is that there are over 20 million people with asthma in the country, and we estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 19-20 percent of American households have at least one person with asthma in their family. So, we know that people care about indoor air quality; they just don’t how to get it. They ask any builder if their homes are energy efficient and have good indoor air quality, guess what, every builder’s going to say, “Of course we do.” But to this date, until Indoor airPLUS was launched, people really had no way of knowing for sure. Consumers just need to have a way to determine that a builder is going to be able to deliver indoor air quality in their home. We have a government-backed label that helps them indicate that. 

DAVE PRICE: What that homeowner comes away with is the assurance that the builder has followed a program developed by EPA that comprehensively addresses these air quality issues. But then there’s an independent third-party person that’s gone back twice to their job site during the construction process and verified the fact that all these features have been built into the house and in some cases has tested to make sure that they’re performing the way they should. So the consumer has a means of being fairly confident that they’re getting the house that we hope they’re going to get.  

ANNE RANCOURT: How can this program help homebuilders?

ERIC WERLING: If we can help them to compete by helping them build better quality homes and that deliver the true benefits that people want (in other words, lower utility bills; more comfort in their house; a healthy, safe environment for their family), then we’ve helped them to deliver a product that helps their business and at the same time it helps the general public. So, that’s what we’re about!

ANNE RANCOURT: Thanks for listening. To learn more about EPA’s Indoor airPLUS program visit epa.gov/indoorairplus and check back for more from the Indoor airPLUS Podcast Series. I’m Anne Rancourt from The Cadmus Group. 

CLOSING: Music