07/14/2020
Healthy Hagood Homes: Indoor Air Quality
Healthy Hagood Homes: Indoor Air Quality

On average, we spend 90% of our time indoors. Most people don’t realize that the way in which buildings are built, and what’s inside them affect our health and well-being. From the materials used to build the home, to how the home is equipped to guard against things we can’t always see (like carbon monoxide, radon, chemicals, common allergens, moisture, and mold), our homes can have a big impact on our comfort and wellness.

Healthy Homes on the Rise

We understand you want control over your health, and peace of mind that you feel safe in their homes.

How we build a healthy home:

1. Start with High-Performance

There’s a huge amount of overlap between high-performance & healthy homes. In fact, the majority of home performance and green building programs incorporate indoor air quality requirements. Every Hagood Home built is Eco-Select Certified with a HERS Rating.

High-performance isn’t just about energy efficiency, it’s about treating the house as a system, and taking a holistic look at how all the components of the home are designed to interact with each other. Controlling air movement, moisture, ventilation, filtration, temperature, humidity, and heating & cooling systems plays a vital role in creating a balanced indoor environment. Getting these things right results in a more comfortable, durable, and energy efficient home.

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2. Add Indoor Air Quality Improvements

How Hagood Homes incorporates certain building practices, technologies and materials to have improved indoor air quality.

Materials

Use low emission products. Eg.- composite wood products (trim, OSB, cabinets), low VOC paints & finishes, low VOC carpet and carpet adhesive, and formaldehyde free insulation.

Here is some information about our foam Foamsulate, as it has received the GREENGUARD certification for application in hospitals and schools.

View the GREENGUARD Brochure 

GREENGUARD certified products are designed to define low-emitting materials suitable for environments where people, particularly children and sensitive adults, spend extended periods of time. These environments may include schools, daycares, healthcare facilities, homes and commercial spaces. GREENGUARD Certification is based on criteria used by The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, World Health Organization, and the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA).

View the Foamsulate Brochure 

Foamsulate is in numerous federal buildings, commercial projects, and many residential homes across North America. In fact, the American Lung Association featured spray foam insulation in their Health House® project as one of the best building materials to utilize to create a healthy structure for families.

Fresh Air Ventilation

This allows an airtight home to “breathe” and removes particulate matter & chemicals from the home. One of our favorite sayings is “Build it tight, ventilate right”. Supply only ventilation results in 97% cleaner air & exhaust only ventilation results in 70% cleaner air.

There are no vented soffits, ridge vent, and gable vents. This means: no pollen, dust, nor insects.

Learn why Hagood uses superior Trane products:

Hagood goes above and beyond in the rough in stage to ensure homes are efficient as possible:


Filtration

Use anything from MERV 8 to 13 to HEPA filters to remove particulate matter and allergens from the home

Click below to learn about our filtration options:

Control Temperature & Humidity

Proper sizing & design of the HVAC system is critical to maintain comfortable levels of temperature & humidity. This also increases the lifespan of the HVAC system by avoiding short cycling. Room pressure relief systems help maintain consistent temperatures in bedrooms (think dedicated room returns, jumper ducts, & transfer grills). And remember that saying, “build it tight, ventilate right”? We want an air tight envelope and properly installed insulation to keep the air conditioning IN THE house (and outside air OUTSIDE the house).

Learn how Hagood Homes’ thermostat helps to ensure humidity control:

Moisture Management

Practices like sealed crawl spaces, proper grading and drainage, weatherization (aka housewraps, flashing, etc.) help keep water where it is supposed to be– outside of the home.

Hagood Homes builds homes on an insulated raised slab with a 6 mil poly as a vapor barrier on the whole house including porches and garages.

Technology

Some of today’s top manufacturers are leading the change in the healthy home space with innovative technologies to control, and actively manage the indoor air quality of homes

How to use our included thermostat:

HVAC Warranty & Zoning:

3. Finish with 3rd Party Verification

Southern Energy Management provides us guidance on how to build a “healthy home”, followed by 3rd party inspections, testing & verification during the build process. This enables us to tell our homebuyers that we’ve delivered a healthy home with confidence because it’s been inspected, verified, and certified to perform well.
They conduct the following performance testing on each house:

  • Duct Blaster test – Quantifies the amount of air leaking from the HVAC unit with strict performance benchmarks set by the ecoSelect program.
  • Blower Door test – Quantifies the amount of air leaking from the home itself (it’s how we measure “build it tight, ventilate it right”) with strict performance benchmarks set by the ecoSelect program.
  • Ventilation testing – Ensures kitchen and bath exhausts and also the fresh air ventilation system are all operating as intended to promote a healthy indoor environment.

Reach out to your Hagood Home Advisor Clean Effect and UV lighting.

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