Tips When Remodeling That Green Home

If you are looking to revamp or change the dcor of your green home, one of the more common ways to do so is with a new coat of paint. Few things can drastically alter the atmosphere of a room than a color change, and there are even color choices that could make you a more eco-efficient home too. For instance if you were to opt for a paler shade, white would be the best but let's face it is a bit boring, you could take full advantage of daylighting when you open up those blinds. The available sunlight would then be best distributed across the room and you could in turn cut back on your light usage and conserve energy there. Other home remodeling tasks such as sealing up your home of any air leaks would also aide in the efforts for you would be doing much to conserve energy from heat or cold air loss.

Yet in getting back to the point, painting and doing any other remodeling in a green home can be a bit tricky in that many of the typical paints, sealants, stains, and caulks are laden with toxic chemicals known as VOCs, volatile organic compounds. The organic word there sure sends a mixed signal! These are what leave behind that fresh paint smell that you notice, and even long after you don't actually whiff the scent these VOCs are still releasing their poisonous fumes. What then happens is the porous nature of carpets, drapes, and other upholstery soak up these fumes and continue to hold onto them and in turn further release them into your house. You can see that this is a bit of a vicious circle, and what's more is that these VOCs aren't only damaging to the environment but to your health as well.

The standard practice for any kind of painting, staining, or sealing is to of course allow the room to air out and people usually open the windows and doors. This is great for your own health benefit but it's still releasing those pungent VOCs into the atmosphere and creating a lovely smog. Thus when you are remodeling your green home you should do some label reading, and in fact a bit of detective work, to seek out paints and the like that are as low in VOCs as possible. Again, just like many other eco-friendly home cleaners and organic food labels, manufacturers are pretty sneaky in tricking you into thinking their products are much greener than they actually are.

A few guidelines to help you out are first that if you go with a water base in general they will have less VOCs than their alkyd or oil based counterparts. Then you want to read all that fun fine print on product labels and check out the listed level of VOCs; these are also found on the company website as MSDS information. There are certain organizations that have a rating scale, and for the Green Seal to be granted to a paint their VOCs have to be at or below 150 grams per liter on non-flat paints and then at or below 50 grams per liter for flat paints. The Green Seal will then act as a sort of Energy Star comparison for paints and similar VOC containing products and this is something you can take for face value in that it is more eco-friendly.

In contrast when you read 'VOC compliant' that is a sort of ambiguous claim that is coined for different state or federal regulations that are pretty lax. Again if you read 'low odor' that does not mean that the product is in fact low in VOCs but that there are probably other added scents to cover up the smell. Even if you see 'natural' and the paints are in fact from a natural source there could be added VOCs, so you can see you do need to be a bit of a sleuth.

Redoing your green home and using sealants, paints, and the like in moderation is by no means a bad thing, and such practices as sealing leaks and other tactics could actually improve your stats. You just need to be on the look out for what really is inside each of those items. If you don't find a Green Seal, you can figure out if it meets the criteria yourself, and then be on the prowl for the lowest VOC counts you can.

Photo Credit: Tall Chris