Beachton

OK, I have to add another comment in response to the one about the American Dream of passing down an estate from generation to generation. Familial attachments should be to the land, not buildings. My grandmother did the research and paperwork to get her John Wind designed ancestral home listed on the National Register in the 1970's. Then her brother sold it because he couldn't afford the maintenance expense. But he only sold it with 40 acres of land. What my family still treasures and protects is the thousands of acres of undisturbed forest that my great-great grandfather bought in 1891.

If that big house guy wants to be really carbon neutral he needs to own enough forest for the annual growth of his trees to equal the weight of his house and all of his cars.

You kinda got flamed in these comments. In the effort of reminding people that you can poke fun at large and small houses alike I can't resist telling this anecdote about property taxes and my Very Small House.

When got a permit to build my 12'x18' house in the country the property appraiser came out to do an assessment. When they got back to the county office they LOWERED the property taxes by $600 a year.

It turns out my mom never told the county that her house burned down in 1984. She'd been paying property taxes like this was improved property for 20 years. I saved her a lot of money when I decided to build my house near those ruins so I could use the same well and driveway and power lines.

"Oh Barbara, you've GOT to get granite countertops for your kitchen, they are the best...." How did you just HAPPEN to pick MY name for this line, Justin?! I've been anti-granite this whole time. I had a friend replace the counters in his 3 yr old house with granite against my VEHEMENT objections. His kitchen has laminate FLOORS! That's just trashy. It's like women going in Walmart wearing $4 flip flops carrying a giant handbag with designer logos printed all over it.

I have solid surface counter in my kitchen that I bought from a surplus and salvage place that was covered up with the stuff when everybody started switching to granite. What will the granite be used for when everybody decides it's passé? Thermally massive floors next to a south facing window to soak up winter sun?

Just formaldehyde? What about all the other chemicals I'm sensitive to!

If the manufacturers remove formaldehyde in the glue, what kind of plasticizers might they start adding to the glue that are even worse for my chemical sensitivities? Phthalates? Latex?

When working in a brand new office trailer at a job site makes somebody sick it's probably not from just the cabinets and 1/8" plywood paneling outgassing formaldehyde. It's the combination of new vinyl flooring outgassing phthalates, the carpet pad or worse, glue, outgassing latex and solvents. And then somebody comes along and adds a phthalate based air freshener because they think the trailer stinks and that just puts the garnish on a bowl of toxic soup.

Some people are more sensitive to airborne chemicals -- according to my allergist, people with blue eyes just have thinner membranes that react more quickly to irritants just like their eyes are more sensitive to light than people with dark irises. I realize some of you work with these products every day with no bad reaction but that doesn't mean the problems the rest of us have with them aren't real.

If somebody tried they could construct a building of materials with the worst possible legal outgassing and achieve an illegal level of emissions that would bother even the toughest guy. But if they turned on the accompanying high dollar filtered ventilation and energy recovery system they could make make the air healthy again.

Building science is all about the big picture. This regulation can't really be about indoor air quality. JGlav sounds right to me. Still, I think it's good to make the cheapest products as harmless as possible. Like leaving lead out of children's toys -- it's a responsibility. But if they replace the lead with titanium heavily contaminated with uranium did we really get anywhere?

I could use some tips on how to keep mice out of my stuff. I did a good job making my house mouse-proof, but they are all over the stuff in my shed, in my car, and they totally busted my aunt's water heater. And that reminds me how do I put a new water heater on a screen porch? It used to be a bathroom but my aunt changed it to a screen porch without considering that electric appliances don't do well in the rain. It was the table top kind so it lasted a pretty long time. I've heard about water heaters that can be mounted on the wall with brackets. Maybe getting it up off the floor and farther up towards the ceiling would keep the rain off of it. It won't do anything for the mice though. They go up a wall like squirrels. Should I try cramming steel wool in all the crevices and openings? If anybody is an expert in this they should definitely do an article.