Breathe easy: What you need to know about the air quality in your home

Kya deLongchamps asks an expert what we need to know about indoor air quality in the home

Fire and physical safety aside, can you think of single thing more fundamentally important to your health within your home than the purity of the air? Build tight, ventilate right — it’s a long-held tenet of reputable builders and tradesmen. NZEB guided new builds and deep-renovations have seen the arrival of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) as a standard inclusion, managing the quality of the air we breathe in our sealed-up homes.

Domestic Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is an urgent matter in progressive building, environmental and scientific circles around the world. In past decades, what are termed air-exchanges, took place passively — streaming in and out through gaps in the building, via the passive stack ventilation of an open chimney, through trickle vents in the windows and so on.