Cascade Built Blog
July 27, 2009
Carpets can harbor toxicants and other gross stuff
Posted by admin, 4:32 AM
I was reminded about carpets while hosting an open house today in Seattle at a LEED Platinum home that not coincidently has no carpets (you get LEED points for reducing or eliminating carpets, as they decrease Indoor Air Quality). Someone who came by today was quite pleased about the lack of carpet in the house, as he grew up in Mexico where carpet is uncommon.
In my experience most people indicate a preference for having carpets for keeping their toes warm in the bedroom and many like it in the living room as well. It does have acoustical benefits too, reducing footfall noise to those one floor below. And yes, it is soft. But before you tell me how much you love to let your kids play on carpet because it’s so soft and safe for them, allow me to toss out a few carpet facts for you to chew on. *a note on warm toe carpet syndrome – if your house was well insulated and/or had radiant floors, you wouldn’t miss carpet.
Builders use carpet because it’s cheap. Starting at around one dollar a square foot, it’s very hard to resist installing, especially toward the end of the project when cash gets tight. Compare to tile at $10 a SF, hardwoods about the same, linoleum somwhere around $5, it’s hard to beat. Plus imagine the dificulty (and expense) of installing stair nose for every stair, versus just rolling out the carpet and tacking it down. Nice and cheap, cheap and easy, in and out in one day, and it’s foot traffic ready that same day.
There is one fact about carpet that the industry might wish you didn’t know, and it kind of sums up whats wrong with it in one quick tidbit: Carpet weighs twice as much when being removed from your house as it did the day it was installed. That should conjur up some pretty good images.
Everything you and your guests ever tracked in your home remains in the carpet, and can embed itself permanently deep in those lush fibers to the backing and in the pad too. Well, it’s just dust, no biggie. Did you ever wonder what dust actually is though? I recently attended a lecture by toxicologist Steven Gilbert, and what I learned is that dust contains:
