Ooh, that smell
That smell that's about you . . .
It has been my peculiar experience to be asked to find other people’s problems. Having been schooled in Electronics and Nuclear Physics, I felt I had enough savvy to give a fair shot at most problems presented. A troubleshooter, to be sure. The other half of it, was for me to offer solutions. Sometimes the solution was joyfully embraced, sometimes questioned, sometimes rejected, simply because of the initiators’ lack of a knowledge base. So a major part of my assessments have been primarily educational, then investigative.
The general direction with aromatics problems is absorption and evacuation.
Generally, absorption is more expensive (perhaps a lot) than evacuation.
The general direction with particulate problems is absorption and evacuation.
Generally, absorption is a necessity, to prevent system failure, and / or health problems.
The general direction with fresh air problems is evacuation and replacement.
A couple asked me to investigate their bedroom due to their recently acquired airway illness. They suspected the walls of their bedroom because they had recently decorated them with pressure-treated lumber, because of the interesting wood pattern. Peculiarly, however, when I arrived with ready sorbent tubes to sample the air for major ingredients in some pressure-treated lumber, there was nothing to be found, as it had been weeks since they’d removed the wall decor. Unfortunately, unlike the Star Trek crew, I was not equipped with a calibrated tricorder, so could not locate any possible vanishing ion trail. Immediate Takeaway: your sleeping area should have no unnatural or excessive concentration of chemicals of any type. Even the smell of roses may be annoying, if present continuously. Secondarily, do not pay someone to find a problem, after the problem has been removed.
On two occasions, one a paying client whose call for help specificity presently eludes me, while the other just acquaintances, I was presented with books, and books, and then more books. In the case of the acquaintances they had equipped their bedroom with several shelves, then stocked them with literature, some old, some newer. The acquaintances being a couple where both were environmentally sensitive, they’d gotten sick(er), causing them to stop their operation which provided assistance to the environmentally sensitive community at large. The problem was the outgassing of the literature, the paper treatments, the glues, the inks, etc., had so increased their sleep area’s airborne chemistry with the “old book smell.” The paying client had a similar environment in some respect, where the entire home had that “old book smell,” and every shelf and horizontal space were heaped with old books and other documents. Takeaway: shelters are to protect us from the “storm,” not to cause one indoors. Fresh air provisions can usually, and inexpensively, save the day. But if it’s raining out, or freezing, you’d loathe opening windows, so as a minimum there should be no concentration of aromatics of any type in the bedroom, or any space used for lengthy stay time. An exhaust fan (that can exhaust outdoors, not one that recirculates (really, you might be surprised if you check)) can possibly assist, by causing a weak whole-house vacuum with inbound fresh air leakage at every building envelope imperfection. A suggestion to the acquaintances for a fresh air machine (exhausting stale air, and bringing in fresh through a heat exchanger) was not welcome due to their technical skepticism.
On another occasion, an acquaintance was operating a small Pizza restaurant in a strip mall. The strips mall had common convenience drains somewhere near the center of each small operation. The problem in the case was a sewer smell that percolated into the restaurant, nauseating the cooks and waitstaff, not to mention enticing possible customer to stay away, or quickly leave after entering. I made a quick suggestion to pour a few glasses of water down the drain, whereupon the smell stopped, and I was treated to a few pizzas pro-bono. Takeaway: any and all drains have a “water seal,” where a section of pipe is shaped like a U, filled with water to prevent the passage of gases. If this small amount of water is not regularly replenished, it can evaporate below the point where it will allow sewer gases to come indoors. Whether in a restaurant or a home, this needs to be a normal and minimal required maintenance. If you have a large home where many such drains exist, they all need to be addressed in this manner, regularly.
These few samples have involved aromatics, or gaseous irritants. While not like feeling hot (where the use of a fan for air motion will make you feel cooler), simple air motion is not a solution. Evacuation of the irritating gas is the necessity. In an old(er) (and leaky) home, where the weather is mild this may not be as obvious. Improve the home’s air-tightness, and problems will surface where there were none. This has been a recurring motif since home building and improvement were directed toward better air-tightness in the 1970s, due to energy source mismanagement. With homes being more airtight, problems with aromatics, particulates (dust), and fresh air ensued in short order.
Stinky smell? Use an activated charcoal filter where “problem” air is forced through it. Activated charcoal has a convoluted surface geometry that can favor aromatic “attachment” (chemical bonding). Placement is not crucial, in that most spaces exhibit some air motion that facilitates irritant scavenging, gradually reducing concentration. It nonetheless has a limit of usefulness after which it needs to be replaced. No need to be concerned about accidentally “shaking” the spent media, as it will not break the chemical bonding. Prices vary greatly as to the quantity and quality of the media used. It’s way cheaper to remove the cause of aromatics than spend limited resources on fancy devices trying to achieve a neutral indoor setting. I recall distantly visiting a couple which claimed they were both chemically hypersensitive, and accordingly employed all types of measures to ensure their living spaces were “green.” As I sat down, I noted a lamp on a coffee table next to me. It looked faintly familiar, so I took a closer look, upon which I perceived the smell of creosote / tar. Looking closer still, I noted the base of the lamp was a section of a utility pole, which had been chemically treated to prevent rot. Preventing rot may be OK, when done outside, but those products should Not be brought indoors, ever, especially in any of the occupants claim chemical sensitivity . . .
While on aromatics, every piece of furniture, every fabric, every wood surface treatment, every piece of plastic will have an aromatic content that is strongest when initially produced, but which lingers as long as that material exists, is recycled into something else, or is incinerated. Due to energy concerns and tight finances, we tend to gravitate to energy efficiency. This inherently implies closed-house conditions. Never mind opening the windows to bring fresh air in, dirt could come in too. You’d find out quick enough, in farm country, when to open the windows, or not. Closed-house conditions implies that every indoor fixture / treatment’s chemical aromatics will be incorporated into our lungs. Some acquaintances had a hardwood floor coated with polyurethane, giving it a luxurious shiny coat. They lived in that home for several years after coating the floor without problems. They went away on vacation for a few weeks, and failed to keep the climate conditioning online. Well, the outdoor temperature became warm for a few days, and as the indoor temperature followed its pattern, it became warm indoors. When they came back, they realized the polyurethane finally had its chance to volatilize its aromatic content, and they could no longer tolerate the home.
Closed-house condition are especially poor when doing anything aromatic, like cooking fish, chopping onions, etc. But even so, even “closed-house conditions” are leaky, as the greatest majority of built structures are Not airtight, nor can be, as our need for a fresh supply of Oxygen overrides any intent to fully seal a structure. So we need a leakage path for fresh air to enter our structure. Use a bathroom or kitchen exhaust fan, and cause a low level whole-house vacuum, which causes inbound fresh air leakage at any building envelope imperfection. Maybe a bad idea, if you live in farm country, where residents are prone to burn garbage, or blow their shop vac HEPA filters clean in open spaces . . . When we lived in town we had a gas furnace. Being a common design, it was open combustion, that is using indoor air for its Oxygen needs, which would then be blown out the exhaust stack, causing a low level whole-house vacuum. If our neighbor, perhaps 100’ (~30m) away had their oil furnace on at the same time, we would then smell oil from the neighbor’s oil exhaust. I previously noted, in another post, using our fireplace out in farm country, and my wife complaining at the other end of the home that her eyes were watering, from the fumes of one of our neighbors burning garbage, being sucked in by our fireplace’s operation causing a low pressure system indoors (relative to outdoors). So before turning on any exhaust fan, or lighting up your fireplace, go outdoors, and walk around the home, to verify no one is burning garbage, or blowing clean their HEPA filter(s) . . .
One of the additives to filtration devices may be an Ozone generator. These claim to eliminate the odors “in flight.” Pardon me, but if the smell is caused by something I introduced in ignorance, I would not want something that causes chemical desynthesis with various indoor surfaces, such as carpeting, making the problem worse. Incidentally, Ozone is an airway, lung, and mucous membrane irritant. If I come to visit and smell Ozone, I will walk back out and ask you to vent the place before I come back in.
Dusty place? Use an air cleaner, consisting of a filter whose media is fine enough to capture the particulate of interest, and where “problem” air is forced through it. Placement may be crucial, depending on the application, concentration, and prevailing air current direction. Sucking dust exhaust from a circular saw and sucking dust stirred up by a meandering cat require different approaches. Air currents are loosely defined as 1) laminar, or consisting of sheets (or layers) of air whose velocity changes with each adjacent sheet; or 2) turbulent, consisting of air that is so agitated and with such velocity that there is no inherent pattern, and whose presence may be considered “violent,” depending on the level of turbulence. I once visited a home, which had a central air conditioning system that was causing irritation. The system was a retrofit, and to reduce the amount of demolition for install, the contractor had installed narrow piping rather than full size air ducts. This made it a high-velocity system. During my visit, the owner turned the system on to have me evaluate it. I walked out onto a balcony, and asked for it to be shut down. The emitted air velocity of the system was such that it was the equivalent of several leaf blowers placed in service. While I do not object to leaf blowers in principle, I do object to one being pointed at a source of dust, which causes me to inhale said dust. Laminar (standalone) air cleaners, and central air handling systems (which are also laminar, mostly) cause airflow to follow stable patterns where any change in direction cause entrained particulates to reduce velocity and deposit, or plate out. With time this deposition can be quite considerable. While this concept is used productively to capture airborne particulates for analysis, it also allows dust to build up under furniture, between furniture and walls, etc. If you were creative, you could sample the dust under your bed near its edge, then closer to the center of the bed, then directly under the bed, and you’d find that the particle sizes would progressively get smaller as you approached the center of the bed. This is due to Settling Time, where heavier particles plate out faster on change of direction, and lighter ones take more time to settle. In this regard, simply walking on carpeting, you create a dust cloud whose lighter particulates can remain suspended in the air for hours. Introducing an active leaf blower will aerosolize the dust collected in those “far-away” spaces than no one ever looks into. So while a common air cleaner may cost upwards of $100, a better quality air cleaner may cost upwards of $800, yet it still can only function at the $100 level due to laminar flow characteristics. A simple solution to this dilemma, short of moving all furniture regularly to access hidden dust deposits, is to use a $100 air cleaner, and simultaneously use a $40 oscillating fan set to highest speed, just before you walk away. Come back 30 minutes or so later to a much cleaner setting and realize you just saved $660. Turn the oscillating fan to the opposite direction and walk away again, to consume some pleasant dessert while your space “cleans itself.”
While on the topic of particulates, a short brief on filters is worthwhile. We inhale millions of particles daily. Our noses are reasonable filters for dust, of the 5 to 10 micron size, just barely visible. Because of the extreme variability between a dust storm, the beach by the ocean, a frozen landscape, and whether you’re running a marathon or relaxing in the shade, it’s impossible to quote exact numbers, or sizes. But there is a regular intake of this stuff, some of it caught by our sinuses, and encapsulated in internal nose crust, while much of it is taken down deep into our lungs where it’s encapsulated with phlegm and expectorated, regularly, one way or another. Of these millions, few are large, which precipitate quickly into what we see as dust. Forget to clean, or get lazy about it, and they grow into tumbleweeds seeking you out for vengeance. These deposits are most (and usually only) visible to visitors, thus the urge of those conscious of upcoming visits of the need to clean. Need to get those spiderwebs . . .
It might seem reasonable that if you spend any money to buy a filtered air cleaner, that you would want the best filter you could buy, to reduce the amount of dust you inhale. Along come HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Arrestance) class filters. These were an unintended consequence of the growth of the nuclear industry, where leakage in purification mechanisms caused personal injury concerns. Filters were applied, and progressively refined until the leakages were greatly reduced / eliminated. A HEPA filter can capture particulates as small as 0.3 microns, quite invisible, but which with sufficient deposition would fail a “white glove test.” To complement HEPA filters, a pre-filter is usually provided to capture the coarser dust in the just visible ranges. This all within a $100 or so package for an air cleaner, or vacuum cleaner.
A professor once adamantly told my wonderful wife that there is an absolute distinction between dust / dirt and soil. Soil is what is outdoors, where animate life prospers. Dirt is inanimate, and indoors (but where unfortunately different life forms soon proliferate). The two however, can mingle. I have no qualms about emptying my shop vac, removing its HEPA filter, hooking up the hose to the exhaust, and blowing the accumulated filter dirt out into the open air (after I check which way the wind is blowing). Living in farm country, most of the larger particulates quickly settle and mingle with, and become, soil. The smaller stuff floats about for minutes to hours, while the smallest will float about for days migrating hither and yon, so that by the time it reaches the town limits, where most people live, my dust / dirt has been so diluted and commingled with others’ dust / dirt that you couldn’t make much of a case to prevent me blowing my reusable HEPA filter clean.
Dirt is mostly organic, composed of human skin cells, animal dander, and the ever-present small concentration of common mold spores, not to mention some bacteria. However, being organic, it can serve as a food base for certain life forms. Dust mites, small bugs, feed on dirt and leave copious amounts of droppings, which get ground up by normal human activity, and become airborne, ready for inhalation! Even with RH (Relative Humidity) within human comfort levels, dust mites thrive, given enough dust. Increase RH beyond human comfort levels, say greater than 60%, and the small concentration of common mold spores “wakes up,” and starts feeding on anything organic and multiplying, faster and better than rabbits. The RH need not increase whole-house to provide a mold haven. A cold surface that is able to condense whatever amount of humidity is present will do. A basement slab is ideal. However, concrete has no nutritional value for mold. But if anything digestible by mold is sitting on that cold concrete slab, like vintage carpeting with vintage dirt, then even a slight amount of condensation will introduce mold growth. Mold metabolic growth is akin to regurgitating stomach fluid to digest food, which is broken down to provide necessary nutrients. If any of you have ever thrown up, you know the sensation is not pleasant, nor “tasty.” Neither are the aromatics produced by mold growth. Some, are even health hazards. Depending on the mold genera, species, concentration, food base, and competing mold genera, the aromatics can acquire a Chardonnay, Moscato, winery, or dirty-bar-room smell. Not tasty. Control the RH to stay below 60%, and mold is held at bay. Mold thus treated hibernates. Raise RH once more, and mold spores being very diverse, but unequal, some mold will feed on preceding mold colonies, before those come “fully awake,” also changing the wine ambiance to other vintages. Repeat this cycle a few times, and you begin to have a presence of water-intrusion-indicator mold. If you ever find yourself in this predicament, you need to clean it up to safeguard your health. Or to preserve your health, at the loss of your wallet, have someone else clean it up. Yet, common sense measures can still be employed by anyone to properly address excessive growth. Just try to realize the limit of your capabilities. Leave the window(s) open while you try to reduce RH, and you’ll be wondering why the national weather humidity front is skewed in your direction.
Between the open spaces of farm country and the cluttered urban spaces, lie a few woods. These woods cause the air trying to pass through them to slow down. As the air slows down, its airborne dirt settles. Shrink this woody environs down by a factor of a thousand or more, and we have _ carpeting. Carpeting is a fantastic dust catcher, the tighter the weave or nap, the better the catching mechanism. I recently had the unique privilege of removing a carpet that had been glued down to a concrete floor for more than 20 years ago. While destroying several tools to make this happen, and using a few choice words I seldom mention, I noted the (other people’s) dirt entrained within the tight nap coming loose off of each section of carpet as I progressively removed it. My reaction was to do this slowly, and after every few inches of carpet were loosened from the concrete, to vacuum the dirt with a HEPA vac. The room the carpet was in always had a somewhat peculiar smell, possibly due to pets previously in the premises, possibly due to previous water leakage onto the carpet, possibly due to the previously collected molds spores and dust mites, or maybe because of all of these factors. Even though the carpet had a short nap (nap or pile are terms describing the type and density of the carpet fibers creating the texture on carpets), once down to bare concrete, the aromatics were gone.
For those having a crawlspace in place of a full basement, the ground surface may be concrete, or bare soil. The latter, being connected to our planet, which is rich in interred water, will provide a continuous source of humidity that cannot be controlled, unless that ground surface is sealed. One such crawlspace I visited had loose fiberglass insulation on its ceiling, between floor beams, that was glistening. It was so saturated with water droplets that touching the insulation easily liberated water droplets to fall.
While the aforementioned dust has a distinctly unique chemical composition that can bring about sniffles, breathing impairment, and or asthma symptoms, in most cases walking away from the problem area we normalize quickly. Be a child without the cognitive ability and freedom to walk away, and now there is a problem. Impair that small human long enough, and lingering problems into adulthood result.
And while speaking of filters, you’d have to consider those applied to a central air handling system. Being they operate often, you’d need to consider that the leading edge of the inherent blower (which has many such edges) become loaded with deposited dust. Allow that to load significantly, and globs of dust will begin flaking off and become aerosolized, further compromising the remaining of the system, where some components are physically fine heat exchange surfaces whose efficiency drops as a result, and possible accumulation where condensate collection can foster biological growth (mold, bacteria, etc.). It might seem reasonable that if you regularly spend any money to buy a filter, that you would want the best filter you could buy, to reduce the amount of dust you inhale, as long as the machine can still function. This is a balance between what filter quality will significantly slow down the unit’s air flow, and what level of dust accumulation within the unit (and possible dust reintrainment in the airstream) you are willing to allow. As I was picking up some better quality filters at a hardware store recently, a passerby (being an HVAC contractor, and feeling himself my better) cautioned me about their quality as being too fine. I replied that I replace them often, before they foul so much as to produce system malfunction. In that regards, how do you know when a filter needs replacement? If visible, its color has changed substantially compared to a new filter. If not visible, by schedule, allowing for variable times of usage. During winter and summer months, when the unit is used often, every few months, while during spring and fall because the unit is used less often, every several months, as an example. More sophisticated monitoring may involve a run-time indicator, a vacuum gage, a “whistle” inserted in the filter, etc.
Moving on to fresh air, we all need it, whether you like it, or not. Trust me on this.
And I’m going out to get some . . .
Make a social gathering, bring in enough people, and even with the windows open, if there is no breeze or forced ventilation, you’ll soon appreciate your acquaintances’ aromatics resulting from them previously (yesterday or two days ago) eating garlic, stinky cheese, or other aromatic concoctions. Yes, for those unaware, when we eat, we also digest (/ ferment with help of microbes) what we ingest. This process makes quite an impact on what we breathe out, from either end. (When visiting clients, I ensure no strong aromatic food for a few days prior, as a necessity.)
Whoa. Phew. Did that come out of you?
Alternately you can have your own supply of canned air, from where celebrities gather . . . and hope they hadn’t been feasting on Garlic, when the air was canned.
Fresh air is air with the standard concentration of Oxygen, Nitrogen, and other trace gases such that it not irritating, is of tolerable temperature, velocity, humidity, and is available constantly. In Spring and Fall, the outdoors are great, in Summer and Winter, perhaps not so much so, due to extremes of temperature, and / or humidity. Therein lie the beauty of indoors, or “protection from the storm.” The aforementioned drive to make housing more airtight immediately conflicts with the need for fresh air. Granted, we do not want to sit by a window and feel frigid air coming in at the “seams,” nor do we want a structure so airtight that we asphyxiate. Short of asphyxiation, however, there is a marked increase of aromatic concentration from indoor materials, paints or other coatings, fabrics and their treatments, wood terpenes from various furniture, plastics, etc. Complement a home with an attached garage, and now you have to consider which way the wind blows, to preclude the possibility of engine exhaust or fuel aromatics wafting indoors. With the drive for higher efficiency heating and cooling, sealed systems have become more common. A solution is to have a controlled exhaust to outdoor, of indoor air. Even a limited amount will suffice, to reduce aromatics, and bring in more fresh air via leakage. On a more localized aspect, during Fall and Spring when such air movers are used seldom, air quality may suffer due to minimal air motion. This can be aided by a localized fan, or a timer integrated within the central air mover to circulate the air for say, 20 minutes out of every hour, regardless of whether it is required for heating or cooling.
I could have provided many cute graphics, making this document significantly longer. But they are freely available on the Internet by simply using a few appropriate key words. I trust you’ll forgive me, for keeping this “short.”
Cheers
Sal
PS New Document @ www.emfrelief.com on Dirty Electricity, as if it could be . . .