California - Healthy House

California has stricter VOC standards than most  (maybe all?) states, and the result seems to be that the healthy product market is somewhat marginalized. The upside is that there are no obvious terrible products--although VOCs clearly aren't the whole picture.  Our strategy (and the builders) is to avoid bad stuff when its relatively easy, and not sweat everything else.  Its a practical strategy, but my idealist nature wishes we did better.

Paints & finishes: we used Benjamin Moore's "Ben" paint, a low (but not zero) VOC paint.  It was nicer to work with than any "green" paint I've ever used, but probably not as clean. Alas, its hard to tell these days, what's pretty clean and what's not.  In this case, there was no eco-friendly paint available close by, so we went with a close store, where we also got good customer service.  Clear finishes are probably even worse than paint, and luckily we've used most of them outside.  The exterior doors have polyurethane on them, while all the interior finish wood has a oil based clear finish.  Again, given that we're in California, they're under 100g//l VOCs, but that doesn't mean they're not at least mildly toxic.  We'll just continue to apply the clear finish outside as much as possible, and hope for better products in the future.

We ended up using oil based wood stain on our concrete countertop due to a color choice snafu.  It was pretty nasty so we kept the windows open for a few days.  Luckily it will be cured for months by the time we move in.  Ultimately it will have a clear finish on it (update when that happens).  The concrete floor have acid stain, which is a mineral stain dissolved in acid, in our case it was Ferric oxide--there is no long term environmental problem there, but it does get a clear coat on top of it, and we ended up using a janitorial service to put a commercial quality finish on.  Our though was that they're all a little toxic, so go for the most durable one.

Caulks & adhesives: there is a limited number of caulks and adhesives that went in the house: the subfloor on the second floor is glued down, the entire exterior is sealed with spray polyurethane, and a limited amount of acrylic latex and/or silicone caulk is also used.   The majority of it was cured before the house was sealed in.

Most of the tile work is done with thinset (which is largely portland cement), so its presumably not toxic, but there is some kind of acrylic glue in there also, so who knows?  We did a little with mastic, which is all glue, but as with everything else its required to be low VOC.

Formaldehyde: we avoided all particle board & MDF  There is some engineered wood in the house, but its all standard exterior grade: TGIs, LVLs & OSB.  We avoided all carpet as well.

 PVC: we put in a lot of PVC pipe, which means we used a lot of PVC glue, which is mega nasty stuff.  Most of it is buried outside, where the main problem is that our water will be contaminated with it for..who knows..I'll guess a couple of years.  There is also some in the house: the majority of it is in two places: the code mandated fire sprinkler system (that as far as I can tell has no benefit for us at all) and in the sewer & vent lines. There is also PVC in the wood-stove cold air intake, and in the hot-water tank pan drain line and a small amount of PVC electrical conduit.

As is standard, all the electrical wire is sheathed in PVC, and most of the electrical boxes are PVC as well.  In retrospect it might have been worth it to go all metal boxes (or at least mostly all metal)..it would have cost a few hundred dollars more in parts. This is one area where green building has made little progress.  At least we're going to put punched tin switch-plate covers on most boxes, so we won't add even more PVC.

Pressure treated wood: Supposedly the new stuff isn't as bad, but I'm not in love with the stuff.  We only used it for the bottom plate, and although I don't like pressure treated wood, I think this is a good decision.  On a foundation where the bottom plate sits well off the ground and is isolated from the concrete by a good sill gasket, I think pressure treated wood is not needed.  But for slab-on-grade, I think its a good think.  Better products appear to be in the works as well.