A carefully planned floor can yield multiple benefits—heath, low maintenance, energy savings, and environmental sustainability. Perhaps the most important decision point is the relative coverage of hard surfaced floors and rugs.
Hard surfaces are easier to maintain. This is especially important in households with kids, or seniors needing a low maintenance home. On the other hand, rugs can cushion falls.
Rugs are less healthy than hard floors. They provide happy homes for mold and dust mites. Modern rugs are often a source of VOCs emissions, such as formaldehyde. VOCs (volatile organic compounds) refers to airborne organic chemicals which can adversely affect the environment and human health. Formaldehyde, benzene, and phenol are particularly dangerous and are listed as Hazardous Air Pollutants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Many rugs are not recycled and end up non-biodegradable trash in landfills.
You can purchase rugs without toxic emissions: The carpet industry and the Carpet and Rug Institute developed a Green Label Plus certification for low VOC carpets, cushions, and adhesives. However, even with green certification, rugs still harbor mold and dust mites.
Masonry floors are a durable alternative to rugs. They include tile, brick, slate and the homely concrete slab. With modern techniques a concrete slabs can be grooved, stained, and finished to be very decorative.
A masonry hard floor could reduce your heating/cooling bills by functioning as a multi-ton thermal mass. For example, in cold winters bare masonry floors or walls can soak up solar heat during the day, and release is at night. This will reduce the required heating in the space.
In hot climates, a bare masonry floor stores excess heat during the day. By night, it sheds heat the heat via ventilation to the outside, and/ or through thermal transfer into the soil. This will reduce the need for air conditioning.
If your desire a wood floor, it is advisable to use old-fashioned solid wood boards, e.g., solid oak wood or cork sourced from a sustainable forest. Floor finishes and stains should be low in VOCs. Floors should be cleaned with green cleaning products.
If composite wood materials are used, they should come from a sustainable source, e.g., a quick-growing bamboo grove and formulated with low VOC materials. Also, VOCs can be sealed inside with a water based/low toxicity sealant. Green criteria for wood products are set by the Forest Stewardship Council and certified by Scientific Certification Systems and Smartwood.
Linoleum, another sustainable floor covering, is an oldie but a goodie. Invented in 1855, it consists of linseed oil mixed with particles such recycled wood flour, cork dust, natural pine rosin, and limestone with a natural fiber backing. It does not fade and it is anti-static. It naturally repels dirt and other small particles making it safe for people with respiratory issues like asthma and other allergies. It is also fire-resistant.
Conclusion: For heath, low maintenance, energy savings, and environmental sustainability hard floors win out over rugs. If rugs are to be used, their coverage should be limited. Under many conditions, masonry floors can conserve energy by reducing your heating and cooling requirements.
There are many ways to eat local food. You could grow your own in an edible landscape, including a dooryard garden, a vertical garden, or home orchard. You could patronize a farm stand, a local farmer’s market or organic food store.
Or you could join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) club. Members of a CSA pay a seasonal subscription to a local farmer. The farmer delivers food grown on his farm on a weekly basis to you. For example, your weekly delivery might contain 25 pounds of fresh local produce.
The local food movement, which supports organic farming, brings many fundamental benefits to a community: healthy fresh tasty food; support of a local farm economy; preservation and enhancement of soil fertility; restoration of local ecosystems; and, energy conservation.
Why has local food come into vogue now? Simply, that the “chickens” of the 20th Century food revolution “have come home to roost.” The goal of this revolution was to prosper by delivering food efficiently. It met these goals through large farms, a high level of mechanization, transport of food an average distance of 1,500 miles, and by industrially processing food.
These goals were met but at huge, largely unforeseen costs. Large farming was “efficient” but it destroyed the top soil, polluted the water and destroyed natural ecosystems. It produced meat, milk, and eggs under inhumane conditions. It destroyed local economies by driving out small farmers. The food produced was cheap, but resulted in an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Once people finally understood the link between industrial farming, diet and disease, they took action to protect their health. For example, high-fructose corn syrup in soda has become identified as a dominant factor in the rise of childhood obesity and diabetes. The success of the campaign against high-fructose corn syrup was evidenced by the industry’ attempt to rename it “corn sugar.”
The idea of local food growing has been embraced as an essential part of the green household and green community. Today’s challenge is bring back and update the healthier food growing and preparation practices of the 19th century for a much more heavily populated 21st Century.
High performance pools deliver multiple benefits: conservation of energy and water; minimum use of toxic chemicals, and ensuring your comfort, health and safety.
Energy and Water Conservation: Energy and water conservation features can save pool owners a thousand dollars or more per year in pool maintenance costs. Often pools are oversized for the daily use they receive. Use the minimum size needed for exercise and recreation. For example, a lap pool can be long and narrow and only four feet deep.
A solar pool cover is very effective in reducing heating costs and evaporation from the pool surface. A solar hot water pool heater is also a very cost effective way to reduce heating costs.
Keep your pools “blood pressure” low to reduce pumping electrical costs by more than half. Install wide water pipes and curves going around corners. Install a large, high surface pool filter. Use a variable- or multi-speed pump which works at low water volume and pressure, except when running the vacuum or pumping hot water from solar collectors.
Minimum Use of Toxic Chemicals: Pool sanitation requires filtration and zapping bacteria, algae and other organic materials with chemicals or UV light. There are many kinds of water purification systems each with a different toxicity, cost, and convenience. The manual addition of chlorine chemicals is now updated. For example, salt chlorination uses dissolved sodium-chloride (table salt) and electricity to produce a carefully controlled minimum level of chlorine. This system also makes the water less irritating to skin and eyes.
There is a trend to use non-toxic water purification chemicals, such as peroxides. The “waste”products of peroxide systems are oxygen and water. You can’t get less toxic than that. Other pools kill bacteria with UV light or ozone. The “waste” product of ozone is oxygen. Dissolved silver in combination with copper may also be used for sanitation.
The need for chemicals can be decreased by keeping the pool free from leaves, bird droppings etc. A screened pool minimizes pool debris and keep mosquitos out. If the screen is slanted the leaves can blow right off it.
Comfort Health and Safety: Childproof pool fencing and other essential safety features are prescribed by local codes. A pool safety alarm will sound when a person enters the water.
The suction force acting on a pool drain (or hot tub drain) makes it a source of mortal danger. The drain should be covered. In addition, the pool (or hot tub) pump should be equipped with a Safety Vacuum Release System— or SVRS for short . This is an automatic suction force release system connected to your pool pump. When a drain becomes blocked, the SVRS automatically provides a rapid vacuum release of pump suction pressure. This quickly frees anyone whose body or limb is trapped on the drain. An SVRS works whether or not there is a cover on the drain, and does not interfere with the pump function.
Natural Pool: You can swim in a lake or ocean, which are not treated with chemicals. Why not in a pool?
The idea behind a natural pool is to use natural processes for purification. The water is filtered through plantings located on the perimeter of the pool. The plants are rooted in a permeable planting medium which allows water filtration. Bacteria and small debris are removed by filtration through the planting medium and through microbial decomposition in the soil. Sometimes the natural purification is supplemented by an artificial means such as UV light. An added benefit to the natural pool is the naturalistic landscaping which many people prefer.
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