The southeast is notoriously known for mold. The hot humid summers and cool damp winters allow mold to thrive in this region. Summer 2023 in Nashville saw a lot of rain over a short period of time, which created excessive moisture for a number of days following the rains.
E3 INNOVATE loves mini-split systems, and for good reasons. Their heat pump technology is very efficient! The outdoor and indoor components run are almost silently, which means no clunky loud units turning off and on all day. Their small sizes allow E3 to match the needs of the house more closely with the size of the equipment, which translates to improved efficiency and cost savings.
In August 2022, The Hansen family, Ben and Lisa, came to E3 INNOVATE as a referral from their functional medicine doctor. The family had gotten sick from mold found in a rental home they had been living in a year prior. This motivated the family to build a custom home so they could start fresh with new construction materials. Unfortunately, mold has no sympathy, and in just a few months after moving into their new place, it showed up again.
It's Radon Action Month. This is significant because much of Tennessee resides in a Class 1 radon zone, meaning the potential for elevated indoor radon levels is high.
In 2008, The McDonnell’s were in the beginning stages of planning their forever home in historic Franklin, just south of Nashville TN. They were looking to incorporate green high-performance elements into the construction to make an energy efficient, healthy, and sustainable structure. The couple and their builder reached out to E3 INNOVATE to learn about the benefits of spray-foam insulation, sealed crawlspace systems, geothermal heating and cooling, whole-house ventilation using energy recovery ventilators (ERVs), and active radon mitigation systems.
Indoor air quality can be as much as 5x more polluted than outdoor air, even in the largest cities. Ironically, one major contributor to indoor air pollution is synthetic air "fresheners."
If you are here, you must have browsed our website long enough to find information on our Diagnostic Assessment Services. If you haven't found that link on our home page yet, CLICK HERE to learn more. Or, perhaps you inquired via phone and spoke to one of our building scientists. Great!
In last month's blog, we discussed ventilation and the three methods for bringing fresh air into the home. You can read that blog HERE. At the end of the article, a comment was made about the recent ventilation code updates in Nashville-Davidson County, which stated: new homes are now required for the first time to be equipped with either a supply-only or a balanced mechanical ventilation system.
That statement needs to be corrected and clarified.
January is Radon Awareness Month. Although radon is probably the most popular indoor air contaminant, there are others we should be aware of. Particulates from mold, dust, dander, and pollen as well as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and combustion gasses are often found inside our homes. Exposure to indoor air contaminants is inevitable, but proper ventilation can help reduce our exposure and help homeowners in Nashville, TN create healthier homes.
