Author Archives: joachim-w

Smelly tar glue under the wooden floor

Smelly tar glue under the wooden floor

Renovation of an old apartment turns into a lottery game

Marlene Sandner (Germany) wanted to replace the worn wooden floor in her old apartment in the city center with a new parquet floor. To her surprise, demolition work revealed a smelly old linoleum floor underneath the floorboards, which was obviously glued to the screed. The adhesive was already crumbling and showing signs of dissolution. After the linoleum was removed, remnants of the adhesive remained stuck to the screed. The flooring installer suggested sealing the surface twice with epoxy resin and smoothing out any remaining unevenness with a leveling compound. The new parquet was then to be laid on top. Marlene Sandner is still hesitant and is therefore seeking advice from the environmental consultancy.
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Avoid an electric lamp directly by the bed

Avoiding alternating electric fields at the sleeping place

Avoiding alternating electric fields at the sleeping place

The sleep disturbances began with the new furniture

Sabine Loderer from Ansbach in Bavaria/Germany moved into a new bedroom within the house. Fittingly, the couple had purchased a new double bed in June. The selected model has a reading lamp integrated on the left and right side of the headboard. Sabine Loderer has been sensitive to electrosmog for several years and therefore had a mains decoupler installed in the circuit of the old bedroom. This device interrupts the power supply when the last “consumer” has been disconnected from the mains. In the new bedroom, this protective device was still missing. In recent weeks, Mrs. Loderer noticed that she was sleeping increasingly poorly. She wanted to get to the bottom of the cause and commissioned the building biologist Oliver Zenkel to conduct a sleeping place investigation.
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The window has evolved into a high-tech product

Installing windows professionally

A high standard of insulation as an important component of the energy turnaround

Hardly any component in a building has made such rapid progress in the field of thermal insulation as the window. Within twenty years, the U-value has improved from 2.6 to less than 1.0. The industry has made many adjustments, optimizing each window element individually. Triple glazing is now standard for a highly insulated house. This is complemented by integrated insulating inserts made of extruded polystyrene (XPS) or cork in the window frame, inert gas fillings in the spaces between the panes and thermally optimized edge seals.
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Building biologist first looks at the floor structure

Floor identified as source of pollutants

Floor identified as source of pollutants

How to find pollutants in the house

When looking for the source of pollutants in the indoor air, Oliver Zenkel always focuses on the floor first. The building biologist draws on several years of experience and also provides a simple reason. Although walls have the larger surface portion at a dwelling, but floors are usually multi-layered developed and thus substantially more susceptible for pollutant entries into the ambient air. Zenkel views flooring as a system in which not only the individual material plays a role, but also the interaction of the components.
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Away with the wallpaper in case of mold on the wall

mold in bedroom cornerMold grew nearly overnight – Sylvia Bittner couldn’t believe her eyes when she moved the bed in the children’s room to one side. Within two weeks, a dark turf of mold had grown on the wallpaper from the base to a height of forty centimeters. Sylvia had only moved into the rented apartment on the second floor with her family in the summer. The realtor had told her nothing about a mold problem and the apartment had been freshly painted. In late November, mold growth came upon the residents out of the blue. Sylvia picked up the phone and reported the matter to the property manager. When after eight days there was still no remedy in sight, the worried mother of two asked the consumer advice center. The friendly lady on the phone advised her to record the damage with a camera and to put the property management in default in writing. The advicer recommended that the rent payment be made with reservations so that she could later assert claims for repayment. But Sylvia Bittner was not thinking about money at first – she was much more concerned about the health of her children.
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Severe cell phone radiation along boardwalk

Poorly designed antenna structure at Stockholm

Seven low-level mobile phone antennas are located along the shore road in the Skeppsbron district of Stockholm (Sweden). An international team of researchers led by Mikko Ahonen from Finland and Michael Carlberg from Sweden concluded in a study that the determination of the locations along the shore road serves as an example of a poorly designed antenna structure. A portable exposimeter was used to record electromagnetic radiation at various measurement points. The highest average field strength in one of the defined segments was 12.1 volts per meter (V/m), corresponding to a radiation density of 388 milliwatts per square meter (mW/m²). The peak value in the area studied was 31.5 V/m (2,648 mW/m²), reaching over 50 percent of the internationally accepted limit of 61 V/m at a frequency of 2,600 megahertz.
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Straw and clay get along well

Architect Florian Hoppe presents the straw bale building

Architect Florian Hoppe presents the straw bale building

Architect Florian Hoppe knows his way around both building materials– He developed a relationship with clay at a very early age in his father’s company. He learned masonry and plastering by working on several construction sites in Thuringia/Germany. Through a cooperation of different companies it was even possible to use local clay. In the course of his architectural studies, Hoppe became enthusiastic about straw bale construction. One idea in particular from the settler days in America did not let him go: he wanted to realize the load-bearing straw bale without wooden stud construction in Germany as well. After careful preparation and with the support of his family, he was able to move into his spacious straw house ten years ago.
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Residential toxins in old prefabricated house

prefabricated house real estate check

prefabricated house real estate check

Building biologists are regularly asked for advice

Prefabricated houses from the seventies are part of the fixed portfolio of real estate agents. Mostly, the offers are tempting for young families. The most important plus points are considered to be a prime location, a relatively large plot of land, a good room layout and, ultimately, a favorable price. Too often, homebuyers suppress the problem of pollutants in older prefabricated houses. Even fifty years after completion, certain groups of pollutants have not yet been aired out.
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Pay attention to the dew point

Mold experts use a dew point calculator

The focus is on room air temperature and relative humidity

Visible mold growth in the apartment always causes discomfort for those affected. After all, no one wants to have the unloved co-inhabitant in their neighborhood. To analyze the causes, it is essential to take a look at the physical relationships in the building. The focus is on room air temperature and relative humidity as well as on the surface temperatures of the surrounding surfaces. Mold always grows when it finds enough food and sufficient moisture in its environment. The fungus is not choosy about its “food”. A little house dust is enough, as it can be found in every apartment. In the most frequent cases of damage, condensed water vapor from the air in the room is responsible for the influx of moisture. Mold experts use the dew point calculator to determine cause and effect.
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Using the ACI value to assess the radioactivity of building materials

gamma rays in building materials

Gamma rays in building materials endanger health

The European Union (EU) has developed the Activity Concentration Index to assess radiation exposure

The large-scale installation of radioactive building materials indoors can endanger the health of the occupants. Granite, tuff or pumice are building materials with radioactive potential. However, sand, gravel, limestone and natural gypsum can also be radioactively contaminated under certain circumstances. The builder does not always know which rock is in a product. For example, a masonry block is offered under the brand name “Liapor”, without the buyer knowing that pumice rock is hidden behind it. The European Union has therefore developed the Activity Concentration Index (ACI) to assess radiation exposure from building materials indoors. The Institute for Building Biology in Rosenheim (Germany) recommends an ACI value of less than 0.75 for health protection.
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