27: Green Construction & Renovations with Lindsey Tourand

The Missing Pillar of Health Podcast

One of the top Google searches that land people on my website is “new home smell.” I’ve been aware of the issues with construction for nearly 20 years - my career started as a green building consultant where my job was to call manufacturers of various building materials to ask about the ingredients and VOC content. So I’m somewhat disheartened that this problem persists. But also not surprised.
Because of the trend of people coming to my blog post on getting rid of the new home smell (I’ll link that in the show notes if that’s you), I wanted to help those who are building or renovating avoid this problem in the first place.
So for this episode, I’m sharing a conversation I had with Lindsey Tourand, the Head of Innovation at Kiwi Innovation - a green building firm based in British Columbia, Canada. I know Lindsey from my days working in consulting engineering and know he’s the real deal. This is a recording of a conversation we had in early 2020 for clients in The Healthy Home Collective.
We covered:

• What you should consider before hiring a design & construction team
• How to define what green & healthy means for you
• What’s the most important factor when designing a new home
• How to optimize indoor air quality
• What to think about when insulating
• The worst-offending products
• Budget-friendly tips
• Resources for homeowners

Links Mentioned:
Kiwi Innovation’s Website: https://vivakiwi.com/
Green Building Advisor: https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/
The Endeavour Centre: https://endeavourcentre.org/
A Pretty Good House: https://www.prettygoodhouse.org/
How to Get Rid of That New Home Smell Blog Post: https://greenathome.ca/6-ways-to-get-rid-of-toxic-new-home-smell/
Guide to Healthy Construction & Renovations: https://greenathome.ca/construction

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Green Product Forum: https://facebook.com/groups/greenproductforum
Instagram: https://instagram.com/emma_greenathome
Website: https://greenathome.ca

Green at Home is no longer an operating business, as its founder, Emma Rohmann, has gone back to her engineering roots in large-scale green building consulting. She is keeping her free resources, including the podcast and blog, live but you will find other links to resources are likely broken in these show notes.
Thanks for being here!