Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

Healthy Indoors | 43 Carl Grimes Carl Grimes, HHS CIEC, has direct experience consulting with those who experience complaints indoors and as a leader in the industry intended to fix those causes. Because he also originally ex- perienced the harm in his personal life, he has a unique perspective and approach for understanding and communicating the complica- tions and confusions between them. He is past president of IAQA, vice president of practice of ISIAQ, and chaired the IAQA Healthy Home committee that wrote the Healthy Home Assessment Prin- ciples course. He has served on committees writing the original S520 mold remediation standard, medical practice parameters for allergists, official policy position statements for ASHRAE, plus sev- eral peer reviewed and published papers. He's currently director of healthy homes for the Hayward Healthy Home Institute and Hay- ward Score in Denver, Colorado; and vice chair of ASHRAE TC1.12 on building dampness, and chair of ASHRAE's SGPC10 commit- tee Interactions Affecting the Achievement of Acceptable Indoor Air Quality. You can reach him by email at grimes@haywardscore.com. to have agreements, contracts, and change orders in writing signed by both themselves and the company. But even with that, there is still a huge gap between the knowledge and experience of industry and consumers. The advantage lies with industry. They have guardrails and rarely need a parachute in case of a disaster. Consumers, on the other hand, have few if any guardrails and zero parachutes. The only potential parachutes exclusively to the house and its systems. Are they structurally sound and functioning as designed? If not, which specifics are out of compliance and need intervention, and what actions are needed to return them to original conditions? That process works IF the conditions of the building and its systems are compatible with the functioning needs of your body. Everyone assumes they are, but there is no way to determine that in any objective way. The only determination is subjective, based on your description of your experience while inside the house. Again, because it's subjective and therefore neither measur- able nor verifiable by others, it is set aside in favor of what can be objectively adjusted. The end of the process is where the interaction between industry and con- sumer is almost guaranteed to jump off the rails and over the guardrails. The per- ceived problem star ts subjectively with objective help to reach a subjective end- ing. Except, once the objective por tion star ts that is all that's considered. The sub- jectivity, which IS the issue, is set aside as irrelevant. Because there is no objective way to fit the observable functioning with the personal experience industry has de- veloped the written documents with legal guardrails to protect them for failure to address your original "problem." Industry doesn't want to play doctor, and they certainly don't want to get en- tangled in the psychological or relational drama of individuals. Yet it is precisely the individual's experience of the conditions of the house that determines whether the "problem" has been solved. A fundamental mistake by consumers is to rely on external authority to declare whether a problem for that person exists or not. If a structural or functional defi- ciency cannot be found, the authoritative declaration is that there is no problem. The definition of "problem" has switched from the personal to the physical, ignoring that the two are not the same. As a consumer, you don't have guard- rails. You don't even have a parachute. The best a consumer can do, without industry training and years of experience, is available are typically homemade from imagination without the advantage of ex- perience, training, or predictability. There are several caveats and clarifica- tions needed for both sides of this issue, which will be addressed in future articles. But in the meantime, I'll leave consumers with an alternate title for this article: "What Hope is There for Your Parachute?" (The color of your parachute doesn't matter here).

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