Building a Healthy Home

On average, people spend 90% of their time indoors. Today, we will thoroughly explain the implications of spending so much time in indoor spaces and how to build a healthy home so that these spaces do not diminish our health and well-being.

Although indoor environments, whether our home, school, workplace, or a café, are increasingly regulated,

we must be aware that some of these environments can be contaminated for various reasons, harming or endangering our health.

In this regard, it is important to consider that it is not just a single factor that can reduce our well-being or even affect our physical condition. Instead, it is the combination of multiple causes and a prolonged stay in unhealthy spaces that can negatively impact our body.

Public environments may be beyond our control, but our home is something we can fully decide upon. Therefore, today we focus on the basic strategies to follow for building a healthy home.

Building a healthy home is not easy, but if achieved, we can ensure that at least at home, we will have a healthy environment that does not harm our health.

We don’t have to look far; even in our diet, we always seek natural and toxic-free products. Our home can also be built with materials that meet these requirements and, accompanied by good spatial design, achieve an adequate indoor environment for the health of all its occupants.

Next, we will delve deeper into defining what a healthy home is, the reasons that should convince us to build such a dwelling, and finally, what we should do to build a healthy home.

What is a healthy home?

To build a healthy home, we must clearly understand what exactly we are building.

A healthy home is essentially one that offers a healthy indoor environment, does not harm the health of its inhabitants, and respects the environment as much as possible. It must be healthy for all living beings and the planet.

The indoor environment is determined by both the existing materials and the construction methods used. It also determines the quality of life inside the building or dwelling and its biological effects.

When building a healthy home, we must pay close attention to the indoor environment to ensure it is healthy and humane.

Ensuring an ideal climate will be positive for performance and the health of its occupants. Numerous studies have shown that the degree of satisfaction, well-being, and a good work or study environment are directly linked to a healthy climate or indoor environment.

There is the concept of sick building syndrome, defined by the World Health Organization as “the set of illnesses caused or stimulated by air pollution in enclosed spaces.”

Precisely this is what is to be avoided when building a healthy home, which is also supported by improvements that construction and human health protection regulations include daily.

Why build a healthy home?

Building a healthy home may seem somewhat idealistic, but it is truly very important for preserving or contributing to the preservation of the health of everyone who lives in its environments.

It is known that buildings that do not meet the requirements of a healthy home have led to negative effects such as colds, asthma, respiratory difficulties, eye inflammation, headaches, and a long etcetera of consequences for people who live, work, or simply spend time in them.

However, by being rigorous with the climate, environment, and materials used when building a healthy home, we can avoid these negative effects and even turn them into positive ones.

A healthy environment itself can help us improve both physical and mental health, regulate metabolism, strengthen the immune system, offer comfort, a good atmosphere, concentration capacity, and willingness to work, among other benefits.

How to build a healthy home?

To build a healthy home, we must consider different agents that will condition its indoor environment.

It is vital that we know the climate of the place where we are going to build a healthy home, as this determines the meteorological conditions under which we will live.

Insolation, thermal reflection from the ground, humidity, winds, atmospheric pressure, dust and CO₂ concentration, etc., are determining factors that will condition the characteristics of our home and therefore; are basic elements that we must know to correctly build a healthy home.

We understand, then, that to build a healthy home, we must first ensure that the indoor atmosphere of the dwelling is adequate. The factors that will determine whether this is the case are: air, temperature, humidity, and electroclimate.

Furthermore, materials and construction methods, installations, furniture, and the residential environment are other factors that will contribute to – or harm – our health if we do not consider them when building a healthy home.

1. Air Quality

Air quality is the first of the four factors we will discuss.

The ideal indoor air environment, if we want to build a healthy home, must be fresh air, whose composition maintains a good balance between oxygen (21%) and carbon dioxide (CO₂).

In reality, an excess of CO₂ in the air is a sign of poor ventilation and daily air renewal.

Dust particles, fungi, bacteria, and allergens also accumulate in the air, which we must avoid at all costs as they pose a health risk to people regarding the respiratory tract, lungs, and the respiratory system in general.

From this, we can deduce that, to build a healthy home, it is vital to ensure proper ventilation and renewal of stale air through air currents.

Finally, good ventilation can also help us avoid bad odors and regulate indoor atmospheric humidity, the main cause of fungi and mold.

2. Temperature

For people, thermal comfort in indoor environments is very important. For example, excessive cold can put our system at risk and cause typical colds, sore throats, headaches, etc.

Furthermore, the comfort and pleasantness offered by a temperate environment will make us feel more at ease and allow us to rest, concentrate, and live in a more pleasant way.

People’s sensation of thermal comfort is determined by atmospheric temperature, surface temperature, the heat source, air movement, drafts, and atmospheric humidity.

Each person has a different sensation of warmth, as it varies from individual to individual.

Thus, the optimal temperature for creating an ideal indoor environment is very relative, as it depends on the surface temperatures of nearby parameters, each person’s sensation, clothing, the type of activity performed, and any existing air currents.

Despite this, an ideal range can be established between 20 and 24ºC (expandable to 17 – 27ºC), understanding that in summer we will be in a cooler environment than outside, while in winter we would feel more warmth.

In conclusion, to build a healthy home, we must consider the design and location of openings that allow ventilation, as well as ensure good insulation so that the performance of passive and sustainable heating systems is adequate.

Knowing that people have different thermal needs, the ability to quickly regulate the temperature is important.

It is also important to consider different environments (i.e., different temperatures) depending on the activity carried out in each space of the house.

A temperature that is too low or too high reduces comfort and eventually leads to health problems.

3. Humidity

Although it may seem less relevant than factors such as air quality or temperature, humidity is a third very important factor with a high impact on indoor comfort.

Relative atmospheric humidity is mainly influenced by indoor air temperature, the type of heating we use, the intensity of ventilation, building materials, the number of people occupying the house, as well as those present in the rooms, and finally, controlling sources of humidity such as plants, cooking, showering, etc.

Finally, we do not recommend the use of humidifiers because, although it may seem contradictory, these devices can promote the development of germs and increase electricity consumption, generate noise, and can create invisible electromagnetic fields that are very harmful to health.

4. Electroclimate

The last factor to discuss is electroclimate.

This concept is understood in bio-habitability as an environment free of alternating and continuous electric or magnetic fields, without electromagnetic waves or high ionization elements, i.e., high electrostatic charge.

Technological advancements have led us to increasingly install wave-based systems at home, whether through emissions from cordless phones, mobile phones, Wi-Fi, or in appliances such as microwaves, baby monitors, etc.

Prolonged exposure to these waves can be very detrimental to human health because, even if we don’t realize it, they are constantly radiating upon us. They can cause headaches, migraines, nausea, and even other more serious illnesses.

Skeptics will say that a little bit doesn’t matter, but how much is a little? We have different regulatory references at national, European, or global institutional levels like the WHO; each establishes its reference limits, but the truth is that these are merely assumptions without scientific verification, as irradiation tests are not performed on people or even animals.

When in doubt, we advocate applying the precautionary principle and relying on the references provided by nature. If we measure electromagnetic fields, high and low-frequency radiation, or ionizing radiation in the middle of a Pyrenean forest, we will see that the values—if there is no nearby station or emission—tend to zero.

For us, this is the coherent limit, one that tends to zero and does not disturb the natural environment, and this is how we want the homes we design to be. In fact, we help most of our clients assess nearby radiation and fields even before purchasing a plot of land.