healthy-home-furnishing / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

  Protecting your indoor air quality: Any renovation or building project is exciting, but it can also be exhausting and emotionally taxing. Right at the end when it's time to furnish your new space can be one of the hardest times to stick to your environmental convictions. When you are finally ready to move in, the tem...

Adhesives and sealants: Modern homes have a lot more caulking and adhesives than older homes. Adhesives are liberally applied to many surfaces for ease and speed of job completion, as well as to prevent squeaking between flooring and joists, for example. Functionally speaking, caulking is used to prevent moisture and a...

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have daydreamed on more than one occasion of having the luxury of being able to work from home. Oh, the thought of not having to deal with the daily commute, of being able to put your laundry on before the weekend rolls around and being able to spend your lunch break in the luxury of ...

Remember linoleum? Meet marmoleum! Remember linoleum, that durable but boring material found on most kitchen and bathroom floors of older homes? These days, its called marmoleum and it comes in bright colors and faux finishes. Whatever name you call it, it’s generally considered both the greenest and healthiest floor c...

Wood ceilings - what's the the skinny? Ahhh, the charm of a wood ceiling, seriously, what's not to like? The intent of this page is less about talking you out of installing gypsum board (drywall), and more about giving you a little encouragement if you are hesitantly considering a wood ceiling. It’s a natural product t...

How to Install a Radon Barrier - Slab Floors If in the kind of area where it's a good idea to install a vapor barrier against radon ingress, (check out the Radon maps by state and province page to find out here) we can't stress enough how important it is to test for radon, or better still to continually monitor for hig...

With the intention of reducing the speed at which flames can spread, fire-retardant compounds are added to almost all the materials we furnish our homes with: children's toys, curtains, carpets, mattresses, sofas, electronics, plastic, etc. How flame retardants work: The chemicals generally used as flame retardants are...

Formaldehyde-free MDF made from rice - available at distributors in USA & Canada There is a natural and Formaldehyde-Free alternative to MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) made of rice straw hitting the green building market soon! That’s a reason to breath a sigh of relief (literally and figuratively) since a lot of p...

How to price a sustainable kitchen countertop? As a professional cabinetmaker, I have often been asked how much a kitchen costs. There is no accurate answer of course, though when pressed, I would have to say somewhere between $18-30,000. The size of your kitchen, material choices and your taste in finishing makes it i...

This heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system is very different than what people are probably used to seeing, where air is directed to a centralized core for a heat exchange before being exhausted from the house. Lunos is a decentralized system with a series of self-contained units, each with their own ceramic heat exch...

Prefab Home kits are ideal for Passive House or LEED certified homes Écohabitation the French language Quebec affiliates of EcoHome, in conjunction with experienced Architects & Kit home manufacturers, have launched a series of stylish & affordable prefabricated sustainable green kit homes that are able to meet...