Health: Designed for the People Who Live There

When we talk about building a healthy home, it can be easy to think only about the things we want to keep out: mold, radon, chemicals, pollutants, and excessive humidity.Those things certainly matter. But we believe a healthy home should be defined by more than the absence of something harmful.It should be an environment that is comfortable to breathe in, filled with appropriate natural light, protected from excessive moisture, and designed around the health and well-being of the people who will spend their lives there.After all, we spend an enormous portion of our lives inside our homes. The quality of that environment matters.A healthy home is designed for the people who live there—it is not created by fixing problems afterthey appear.

A House Doesn't Need to Breathe. People Do.

One of the most common misconceptions we hear is that “a house needs to breathe.”It doesn't. Breathing is for living things.What a house does need is proper ventilation, and there is an important difference between ventilationand leakage.Ventilation is intentional. Air leakage is not.There is certainly nothing wrong with opening the windows on a beautiful spring or fall day. We hope homeowners do. When you open a window, you have made a decision about when and where you want outside air coming into your home.But when you close that window, the fresh air shouldn't continue coming in around it.The same is true throughout the house. We don't want outside air entering through gaps around doors, electrical penetrations, framing connections, attics, floors, or hundreds of other little openings hidden within the structure.Instead, we want to build the home as tightly as practical and then provide the fresh air its occupants need through a properly designed ventilation plan.That gives us something enormously valuable: control.

A Healthy Home Has to Stay Dry

One of the most important things we can do for the long-term health of a home is also one of the simplest to understand:

Keep water where it belongs.That begins all the way back in the design of the building envelope.The roof, walls, windows, doors, foundations, flashing, drainage systems, and other components have to work together to prevent rain and groundwater from entering the structure. At the same time, the walland roof assemblies need to manage humidity and moisture so that it does not become trapped inside them.This is important because persistent moisture can create conditions where mold and other biological growth can occur, sometimes in places the homeowner cannot see.Humidity inside the living space matters as well. Particularly in our warm, humid climate, the heating, cooling, and ventilation systems should work together to help maintain appropriate indoor humidity.Once again, several characteristics of a high-performance home begin to overlap. Moisture control improves durability because it helps protect the structure. It improves efficiency because the HVAC system is not constantly fighting unwanted humid air. It improves comfort because properly controlled air simply feels better.And it contributes to a healthier indoor environment.A healthy home isn't simply one that looks clean and dry on the surfaces we can see. It is designedto stay dry in the places we can't see as well.

What We Put Into the House Matters

Not every indoor pollutant comes from outside.Many common building materials and household products can release chemicals into the air, particularly when they are new. These include substances known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which can be associated with paints, adhesives, sealants, flooring, cabinetry, composite wood products, finishes, furnishings, and other materials.This does not mean that a healthy home has to be built entirely from unusual or expensive specialty products.It means we should be thoughtful about what we put into it.Where practical, lower-emitting materials and low- or no-VOC products can reduce unnecessary chemical exposure. Just as importantly, proper ventilation helps remove pollutants that inevitably find their way into an occupied home.There is an important connection here to the tighter building envelope we discussed in our Efficiency article. If we are going to do a better job keeping uncontrolled outside air from leaking into a home, we also need to do a better job managing the air that remains inside it.Building tighter and building healthier should go hand in hand.

Plan for Radon Before You Need To

Some potential indoor air-quality concerns cannot be seen or smelled.Radon is one of them.Radon is a naturally occurring gas that can enter a home from the soil beneath it. Whether a particular home has elevated radon levels can ultimately be determined through testing.We don't believe that means every new home necessarily needs to begin its life with a complete active radon mitigation system running.We do believe it makes sense to plan ahead.During construction, the basic infrastructure for future radon mitigation can be incorporated into the home. Piping can be installed while the structure is accessible, and provisions can be made for the electrical needs of a future mitigation fan.Those things are relatively simple to accommodate while the home is being built. Adding them later can be considerably more disruptive.The home can then be tested. If testing indicates that active mitigation is necessary, the system can be completed without tearing apart a finished house to install infrastructure that could have been planned from the beginning.We don't necessarily have to install every possible solution. But we should anticipate reasonably foreseeable problems and make future solutions easier.

The Garage Is Not Part of the Living Space

The attached garage deserves more attention than it sometimes receives.Vehicles, gasoline, lawn equipment, paints, solvents, fertilizers, and numerous other products are routinely stored there. A garage can contain pollutants and odors that we do not want entering the living areas of the home.That makes the separation between the garage and the house important for more than fire protection.Thoughtful air sealing helps prevent garage air from migrating into the living space. Doors, walls, ceilings, and penetrations between the two areas should be treated as an intentional boundary.The same philosophy applies elsewhere in the home: control the source rather than depending entirely on equipment to clean up the problem afterward.

Filtration Matters—But So Does Where the Air Comes From

Good filtration can help reduce dust, pollen, and other airborne particles inside a home. But even excellent filtration has limitations if outside air is continually entering through uncontrolled openings and bypassing the systems intended to filter it.This brings us back again to intentional ventilation.

When we control where outside air enters, we have an opportunity to filter it. When air simply finds its way through random gaps in the building envelope, we don't.A healthy home therefore isn't simply about buying a better filter. It is about designing the building so the filter is actually part of a larger strategy for managing indoor air.

Let the Outside In—In the Right Ways

Health isn't only about keeping things out of a home.Sometimes it is about what we intentionally bring in.Natural light and a connection to the outdoors can have a meaningful effect on the experience of living in a home. A room filled with appropriate daylight simply feels different from one that is dark and disconnected from its surroundings.Windows provide daylight, views, and opportunities to enjoy direct sunshine when and where we want it.But once again, good design requires balance.More glass is not automatically better.Large expanses of poorly considered glass can make a house difficult to heat and cool. Depending on orientation, they can introduce excessive solar heat, glare, and uncomfortable temperature differences near windows.The answer isn't to eliminate windows in the name of energy efficiency. Nor is it to turn every exterior wall into glass in the name of natural light.The answer is to design for both.The amount of glass, its orientation, its performance, shading, and its relationship to the rooms inside can allow a home to enjoy abundant natural light and a connection to the outdoors without unnecessarily sacrificing comfort or efficiency.A high-performance home should perform well, but it should also be a place where people enjoy living.

Health Is Part of the Whole House

One of the themes that continues to emerge throughout this series is that the characteristics of a high-performance home cannot really be separated from one another.A well-designed building envelope helps keep moisture out, which improves durability and reduces the potential for mold.Air sealing improves efficiency and comfort, but it also allows us to better control and filter the air entering the home.Properly sized HVAC equipment improves energy efficiency, but it also helps control humidity.

Good window design can provide natural light and a connection to the outdoors while still supporting comfort and energy performance.These aren't separate upgrades.They are different results of making good decisions about the same house.That is why we believe health needs to be considered from the earliest stages of design—not after the house is built and certainly not only after a problem develops.A healthy home isn't created by adding an air purifier in the corner. It begins with the site, the foundation, the walls, the roof, the mechanical systems, the materials we select, the air we bring inside,and the water we keep out.Most importantly, it begins by remembering who all of those systems are ultimately there to serve.A healthy home is designed for the people who live there—it is not created by fixing problems afterthey appear.

At Cutler Structures, we believe a home should be more than attractive finishes and impressive curb appeal.

A truly exceptional home is one that is comfortable, durable, efficient, healthy, and resilient. These principles guide the decisions we make throughout the design and construction process because we believe homeowners deserve a house that performs as beautifully as it looks.

That is what we mean when we talk about a high-performance home.