Sanctuary: Modern green homes

Greener timber and concrete finishes

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 18.

Whether you have concrete or timber underfoot in your home, choosing the right finish for your floor, building materials and furniture is important to ensure that you protect the surface, your family’s health, and the environment.

Words Sarah Robertson

When it comes to timber and  concrete finishes, a growing range of environmental and health conscious products are now available. Some are greener than others, but a basic understanding of how different finishes work and the type of finish they deliver can help you tread carefully through the greenwash and choose the right finish to meet your needs in your home.

Types of finishes
There are two main types of finishes for timber and concrete surfaces. Film-forming finishes lay a water-repellent varnish over a surface. These finishes can be solvent/oil-based or waterbased and are available in different gloss and sheen levels. Meanwhile, penetrating finishes, including oils and stains, penetrate into the concrete or timber surface. While some finishes are designed specifically for application on particular surface types, many finishes can be applied on a variety of surfaces.

Timber coatings and concrete finishes used around the world in the last 50 years have largely been petroleum-based solvent/oil polyurethane coatings that contain toxic solvents with high volatile organic compound (VOC) content. VOCs have been linked to air pollution and their deleterious effects on health in indoor environments – from headaches to respiratory problems in more extreme cases – have been recognised by government bodies such as CSIRO. The Green Building Council of Australia limits the total VOC content of timber finishes to 140 grams per litre for credits in the Green Star rating for buildings. [Ed note: See our article on greener paint in Sanctuary 16 for more information on VOCs.]

In the last ten years, lower VOC water-based polyurethanes have entered the Australian market as a less toxic, yet still durable alternative. More environmentally friendly and health conscious still are natural products made from naturally occurring and often non-toxic ingredients.

If you’d like to read the rest of this article you can buy this issue here.

Greener Paint

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 16.

The days of lead paint are long gone, but conventional paint can still contain nasties. Sarah Robertson explores the options for making your next painting project more environmentally friendly.

Words Sarah Robertson

You walk into a new home and the smell of freshly paint assaults you before you’ve even had time to admire the newly-coated walls. The deep red feature wall and off-white facing walls of the kitchen might look fantastic, but that lingering paint smell often may signify coatings that are harmful to your health and to the environment.

Paint is made of four key components: pigments, binders, solvents, and fillers or additives. Pigments, which give paint its colour, and binders, which form its protective film, are the solid components of paint. Solvents are the liquid component that allows for easy application, while additives are included in small quantities to bring other required properties to the paint.

Conventional paints contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that have been linked to health problems and air pollution, and whose deleterious effects are recognised by government bodies like CSIRO.

If you’d like to read the rest of this article you can buy this issue here.

Reuse, Recycle, Reupholster

From Sanctuary issue 12. More articles like this

Words Fiona Rutkay

Instead of buying new, give your sofa a green lease on life by reupholstering with the latest environmentally friendly fabrics.

Sanctuary magazine issue 12 – Reuse, Recycle, Reupholster – green home feature article

Green interiors

From Sanctuary issue 10. More articles like this

By Jenny Brown

Excerpt: Most of the attention paid to sustainable houses these days is on the external envelope: “bricks and mortar”, cladding, roofs, footings, and how it all comes together. Most green home builders and renovators roughly understand the principles of passive solar, cross-ventilation, insulation, rainwater and greywater harvesting. They are aware of the pay-offs to the environment and their hip pocket. As the pundits say, “it’s not rocket science”. But when it comes to fitting out interiors, the knowledge base is murkier.

This is despite interiors being fraught with environmental hazards. So many surfaces, appliances, furnishings, fittings and fixtures coalesce to make up a house interior that it’s not uncommon for a house with great passive design being let down with a poorly thought-through fitout. This is not as it should be. Interior design is where ecologically responsible building gets really personal. It’s been common knowledge for over a decade that sick buildings can have a detrimental impact on human health and psychology. Escalating levels of childhood asthma are being linked with high levels of toxic vapours that “off-gas” from walls, carpets, cabinetry and the hundreds of other household items – most especially when they are new or wet – but in some cases long after their installation.

“Have you ever really smelled a plastic shower curtain?” asks Robyn Galloway. The Melbourne-based designer and founder of ESO, the Environmentally Sustainable Objects Group says there are so many VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in modern consumer goods that in enclosed spaces their potentially toxic gases can recombine in ways that haven’t yet been calculated. Some VOCs are natural. Others, end products of petrochemical chains, are manifestly unnatural. “Some buildings,” says Ms Galloway, “take 10 years to stop off-gassing because VOCs are contained in formaldehyde, glues, standard particle boards, solvents, paints, timber sealants, vinyls, plastics, in household cleaners…in almost anything you can name. Without question we’ve been living in toxic environments.”

“VOCs,” says head of interior architecture at the University of New South Wales, Dr Kirsty Mate, “are not as dangerous as asbestos but they are listed by the World Health Organisation as human carcinogens”. VOCs, most notoriously present in some compressed timber fibre boards (aka particle boards), are just one of the known hazards pushing responsible sectors of the furniture and interiors industries to rapidly redress their manufacturing processes. “There has also been quite a drive from the general public. The industry is trying to improve its product because it is, after all, connected to its bottom line. Newer particle boards, for instance, have a lower level of VOCs and some have a zero formaldehyde content.”

Though informed designers and manufacturers have been onto greener options since the early 1990s, Kirsty Mate says the revolution currently sweeping through her industry is becoming so entrenched and exciting “that it is one of the most innovative, creative and progressive things happening anywhere”. We’re a long way from when Dr Mate was told by colleagues that “it’s just a fad”. Environmentally-conscious interior design and architecture is also “starting to lose that dowdy image”. There are countless brilliant innovations and ideas being adopted and adapted right across the world. One of her favourites is cardboard kitchen shelving: “It could replace particle board, could last for a few years and it can be recycled”.

Insulating Victorian-period walls

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 7.

When it comes to insulating old brick walls, look to the outside.

The Victorian clay brick has good thermal mass, which means it stores heat and cool for long periods. What that means is that when you have long days of summer sun or winter cold, your walls will store the heat or cold and move it from the outside to the inside of your home.

If your exterior walls are painted, says Stuart McQuire of Green Makeover, and they’re heating up in the summer, “paint them with an insulating paint”.

Using insulating paint, or a non-toxic and readily available additive such as Thermilate, will help prevent heat moving through your brickwork. This goes for interior walls, too. And on sun-exposed exterior walls, remember to use light colours. Plain old white paint has excellent reflective qualities.

If exterior walls are unpainted, don’t paint them! You will take your home’s period authenticity a giant step backward, and there is no way to remove the paint without huge expense and the likelihood of further damaging your walls.

Says Paul Downton of Ecopolis: “One option is to place a vertical trellis against that wall and grow plants that are happy to climb across it. The plants don’t need to be deciduous, as they offer some insulation value (about R1.0) against heat loss in winter as well as protection from summer sun. The trellis can have shade cloth on it initially until the vegetation takes over. The trellis should be about 75 to 100 mm from the wall surface to allow an air gap.”

If you plan to grow a creeper directly onto the wall, the best option by far, advises Simon Collings of Fitzroy Nursery, is Boston ivy: “it’s the least destructive of walls, can take sun or shade, and colours up beautifully in autumn. It sits out from the wall and gives you a good thermal air barrier, and is easy to maintain, as long as you keep it out of your gutters.”

At all costs, he says, avoid English ivy, “which really is just a noxious, invasive weed”.

Finishing touch

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 5.

It is an exciting moment when you finally open the door to your recently completed home or renovation. After months, or even years, of planning and building you finally get to move into your new living space with that unmistakable smell of ‘new’. But you may be immersing yourself into a toxic mix of chemicals that could be dangerous to your health. According to a study by the CSIRO, the indoor air quality of new Australian homes may be up to 20 times the maximum allowable limits of toxicity and some harmful emissions can last for years. One of the main sources of toxic air quality is paint.

The health impact of substances found in paint is nothing new. Up to the 1950s, lead was the main white pigment base used in paints. As awareness of the dangers of lead blood poisoning grew the recommended amount of lead in domestic paint declined from 50% in the fifties, to 1% in 1965. By 1992 it reduced to 0.25%, and in 1997 it was further reduced to 0.1%.

While paints nowadays do not contain high levels of lead, some do contain various harmful substances and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are added to paints to improve their performance and to add colour. VOCs are chemicals containing carbon that evaporate into the atmosphere at room temperature. VOCs slowly make their way to the surface and ‘offgas’ into the surrounding air.

The CSIRO identified 27 airborne toxins in homes more than a year after they were constructed. These included the carcinogens benzene, formaldehyde and styrene, and a cocktail of methanol, ethanol, acetone, toluene, dichlorobenzene plus a number of less well-known toxics, most of which are found in paints. Exposure to VOCs can worsen asthma symptoms and cause nose, skin, and eye irritation; headaches, nausea, convulsions, and dizziness; respiratory problems; nerve damage and, in some cases, cancer, liver and kidney disease.

Non toxic options

In recent years many manufacturers have reduced the amount of VOCs in paints and launched ‘low VOC’ ranges that comply with limits set by the Australian Paint Approval Scheme (APAS). However, according to Daniel Wurm from GreenPainters, the maximum limits set by the APAS are not as low as the Green Building Council of Australia’s standards and may apply only to part of the product. “Consumers need to be careful as the ‘low VOC’ claim on some paint cans applies only to the base product and not the tints that are used to colour the paint which may contain high levels of VOCs,” says Daniel.

“The best way people can be reassured that a synthetic paint product is environmentally-preferable and has low-toxicity is to check to see if it has been independently certified by an eco-label.”

“Here in Australia manufacturers can receive accreditation from Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA), a not for profit national environmental research and certification organisation based in Canberra. A number of products available in Australia carry the EU Flower, Blue Angel or Green Seal label, which are internationally recognised eco-labelling programs,” says Daniel.

Daniel recommends that rather than using petrochemical-based paints, consumers should consider products that are plant or mineral-based. Commonly called ‘natural paints’, they are manufactured using mostly renewable or highly abundant resources, such as clay, linseed oil, citrus oil and lime. While they cost a little bit more and are not common in Australia, plant and mineral based paints make up a large proportion of the European market. “As demand for ‘natural paints’ rises in the next few years from people building sustainable homes, we expect natural paints to become increasingly competitive with synthetic-based coatings,” says Daniel. While not all natural paints are VOC free—a common ingredient such as citrus oil is a VOC—they are considered less hazardous than those that are petrochemical-based.

Lifecycle

While checking the VOC levels of the base and tint products in paints to ensure they are at an acceptable level is the first step, there are many other environmental and health lifecycle issues that need to be considered. Ecospecifier, an independent database of environmentally preferable products, verifies the environmental and health claims of products and also looks in detail, at issues such as toxicity levels, greenhouse gas emissions throughout the lifecycle, resource use and any negative impact on biodiversity. For example, says David Baggs, Ecospecifier Technical Director, titanium dioxide is a major constituent in paint but is sourced from sand mining, an extremely ecologically damaging process affecting sensitive coastal dune systems.

“While there has not been any direct lifecycle comparisons of natural and synthetic paints, at a fundamental level it would be better to use a product that comes from an infinite agricultural source than finite petrochemicals.” says David.

Many manufacturers now look at ways they can minimise the impact on the environment by participating in energy-efficiency programs, reducing waste during processing, recyclable packaging and participating in end of use recycling programs. Householders can also play their part by ensuring the proper disposal of unwanted paint. Most local councils provide safe paint recycling facilities so that old cans of paint are kept out of landfill.