How to judge if your house is 'sick' ?

The phrase 'sick building' would seem to be used to describe any number of issues with a building.

Also, I read of people preferring timber flooring rather then carpets because they are 'healthier'

I'm wondering if there is a way of measuring how 'healthy' a building ( i.e. house ) is ?

You could ring your GP and ask does he do house calls...

The classic sick building syndrome, in my understanding, described a building ( usually an office block) with poor ventilation and maybe cheap air conditioning, which meant that there was not enough fresh air in the building for the number of people.

For a domestic home, I think that good ventilation is vital. Dont know how you measure this, but I am interested in knowing, as I need to improve the ventilation in my home.

Also, the only healthy thing about wooden floors, is that dust does not get trapped in them. People with asthma and related condtions, find wooden floors easier to keep dust free.

Poorly maintained/Installed Heat recovery ventilation systems, eg: poor filter maintenance, will lead to sick building syndrome in domestic housing. After all they are a smaller version of a forced ventilation system as used in commercial/office block construction.

Many of the office blocks/building don't have much/any natural ventilation & the air conditioning system (bad ones anyway) often just recycle the air.

Open you windows at home on any dry day & you'll do a better job than any air conditioning system.

They say spiders only live in healthy houses

bertie1 said:

They say spiders only live in healthy houses

Click to expand...

Who's they and have they spoken to the spiders?

My Mother and a group of her friends discussed some time ago about the fact that spiders always try to run back into the house if you take them out to dispose of them in the garden. The general opinion was that they consider it to be their home and want to return inside.

Spiders live in all houses....every home should have one