"Horrible", the wife complained. These stairs act like a dust magnet, it seems they attract all the dust from the whole house. The waxed and oiled floors in the other rooms do not, just the staircase was forever covered in a layer of dust.
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The surface of this floor was then treated with natural resin and beeswax. The staircase in the foyer connected the rest of the house with the entry area and was built by another carpenter who lacquered the stairs with a commercial water based product.
Here is a short story by a young couple in our neighborhood. A couple of years ago, they experienced an interesting phenomenon in an unexpected way. When their home was built, the contractor installed a floor made of Ash in the entry area of their house.
Floors, walls and ceilings made of untreated wood will not affect the natural occurring electromagnetic fields in your home negatively. This characteristic is one of the reasons an old alpine cabin feels so much more comfortable than an apartment with painted surfaces.
In Europe, this is called the 'sick building syndrome'.
Another disadvantage of statically charged surfaces is the tendency to attract dust and dirt, like the surfaces of TV screens or stereos. This problem is easy to solve. Just make sure you have as much natural and untreated wood in your home as possible. If you want to treat wooden surfaces, use only natural beeswax or resins. The human body in itself naturally has a weak electric shield surrounding it. This weak electric field repels dust, dirt particles and bacteria, etc. Rooms with a strong electromagnetic charge disturb this natural protective field and sensitive people can experience allergies, inflamed mucus membranes, colds, headaches, etc.
Practitioners believe the environment of residential, commercial and public buildings can affect the health of the occupants, producing a restful or stressful environment. Important areas of building biology building materials and processes, electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and radiation (EMR) and indoor air quality (IAQ).
Building Biologists* ensure that there are as few electrostatic chargeable surfaces as possible in living areas. (*Wikipedia definition: Building Biology (or Baubiologie as it was coined in Germany) is a field of building science investigating the indoor living environment for a variety of irritants.
Electrostatic charge is caused by dry and heated air (central heating) moving past non-conductive synthetic surfaces. The resulting load is larger if the surfaces are less conductive. You rarely experience this with natural materials like pure wool or linen.
You need to be aware though, plywood and chipboard, wood component panels sealed and laminated surfaces totally negate the buffer effect of wood. You only get these advantages when you use solid, untreated, adhesive-free wood which is able to breathe freely.
This works the opposite way too. If the air in a room is suddenly very dry, wood slowly releases moisture back into the air.
We found, and you too can try the following experiment, that after installing natural wood ceilings, wall claddings and/or floors, the mirror rarely fogs over and hardly any condensation water appears when you have a shower. Since this event, we have delivered and installed many natural wooden floors for bathrooms and found here too, natural and untreated wood balances the air humidity.
For example: if the humidity in a room rises from 35% to 65%, 1m2 of spruce cladding absorbs up to 10 grams of moisture in 12 hours and dries up the air. The Eternally Dusty Stairway
Think about the crackle when you pull a synthetic jumper over your head. Synthetic carpets are getting charged by walking on them. The famous zap when holding the door knob is the corresponding discharge. But he always knew, that one could use untreated wood even in bathrooms, as long as it has been harvested at the right time.
The result of the bathroom floor inspection were three happy faces: his wife's, looking proudly at her beautiful natural cherry floor, the joyful carpenter's and my own face which must have looked rather surprised, judging by his chuckling. A few months later, I went to visit him and was greatly surprised to find out he was the client. He led me into his bathroom and showed me his cherry tree floor, very neat and tight. No sign of gaps and movement between the boards. The carpenter told me with a grin on his face that he knew about my cautiousness and he wanted to spare me sleepless nights.
However the following experience led me to a vital realization:
One day a colleague carpenter ordered a cherry tree floor for one of his clients and didn't tell me what room the floor was meant to go in. As promised, we delivered his cherry tree floorboards and a little while later, he rang to let me know that the floor turned out very nicely. I asked him if his clients were happy with it and he said: "very much so!" Whoever still has concerns about untreated wood being suitable for bathrooms will be surprised by the following. It is true, bathrooms have the most extreme climatic changes in any home and in the early years of manufacturing, I too declined to build bathroom floors. I was afraid the spaces between the floorboards would end up being too big and the movement of the wood too much.
While the humidity rises, wood absorbs moisture and dries up the air. When humidity levels drop and the air dries up, wood releases some of the retained moisture back into the atmosphere and keeps a nice balance. Timber in a building is the ideal moisture buffer. The more natural wood therefore is in a house, the better the buffer effect.
A superior building material buffers and balances moisture independent of whether it is extremely humid or dry. Untreated wood has a large inner surface area where the many pores, capillaries and micro-tubules react to changes in moisture levels of the surrounding.
The master carpenter, bathrooms and wooden floors
Who isn't familiar with a hoarse throat in winter, when the central heating is running on full steam? The dry air stirred dust strain our breathing and can be as unpleasant as very high humidity. ...large hotels in Italy, Austria and Norway, health clinics, hospitals, schools and childcare centers, the University for Forestry and Timber in Oslo, and sacred buildings like a church in Japan. Working in tune with nature results in building the best houses where people feel comforted, safe and stay healthy for many years to come.
Today, there are Holz100 Manufacturers in Austria, Germany, Norway and preparations for manufacturers in the United States and other countries.
By now, many then-unimaginable buildings have been built with untreated and natural wood including more than 1,000 homes... Holz100 is a method which brings together old traditional knowledge and modern technology. It proves protection and safety for people living in Holz100 houses. When the book was first published 12 years ago, the idea to build the best ecological house using untreated wood was looked down on as a sort of eco joke.
Holz100 is using the same principle and it is not surprising that Holz100 homes easily fulfill the Japanese earthquake building standards, the tightest and strictest in the world. As a matter of fact, this book's first translation was for the technology enthusiastic Japanese market. By now, there are many Holz100 buildings in Japan which have survived several earthquakes intact; one of them rating 8 on the Richter scale.
6. Earthquake Safety
Because this book is not meant to be scientifically dry, I will outline some examples which make common sense instead of presenting trial reports and numbers. You find the oldest wooden buildings on earth in Japan, a region which is well-known for its earthquakes and its instability. Temples and pagodas up to six stories high were built without glues or metals and have survived the worst earthquakes for the past 1600 years! |
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