Your Future Home 2016 by NZME.

YOUR FUTURE HOME A Guide to Sustainable Homes

JULY 2016

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t’s an exciting time to be building or renovating a home.

Brand new technologies such as energy efficient appliances, heat sources and lighting means our energy consumption is dropping. It’s a good thing, too, as energy prices continue to spiral upwards. New generation solar panels and battery technology means that, for rural customers, offgrid living now makes more financial sense than paying to be connected to the grid. That equation is going to work its way towards urban centres as the prices drop.

At the same time, people have begun to realise that newer is not always necessarily better – there has been a marked swing back to natural materials for building (check out the the clay blocks on page 18), insulation, lining materials and ensuring the ‘breathability of a house’, rather than making it an airtight enclosure (read about health-based building on page 14). All of this ensures a cleaner waste stream and lower embodied carbon emissions from the process of building. Trouble is, it’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. There’s a whole lot of information out

James Russell Editor

Your Future Home james.russell@nzme.co.nz there, some of it reliable, and some of it dubious, but it’s hard to tell which is which. Here’s where Your Future Home comes in. We aim to educate you on your choices, and take some of the hard work out of the research. Enjoy issue two!

Contents

Northland paradise New Zealand’s most beautiful green home

For advertising enquiries contact: Chris Murgatroyd

NZME Account Manager chris.murgatroyd@nzme.co.nz Phone 07 577 7774

Michelle Betts

NZME Account Manager michelle.betts@nzme.co.nz Phone 07 577 7772

Bricking it Why clay blocks are making a comeback

6 10

Future proof Building for the next generation

Winter heating The most ecofriendly options

Battery storage Has its time come?

Health-based building Have we been doing it all wrong?

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Natural in Northland This dream home in Moureeses Bay, Northland, has all the bells and whistles of a truly sustainable eco home.

erched atop a cliff overlooking the idyllic Moureeses Bay in Northland, and nestled among 500-year-old pohutukawa trees, is the Fraser home, designed by architect Darren O’Neill and constructed by Bella Homes. This is a truly sustainable home in that it was built using local and non-toxic materials, generates more power than it uses, and isn’t connected to a water supply or sewerage system.

This truly sustainable home is sensitive to the ground on which it sits, the local ﬂora and fauna and even the atmosphere. All photos: Full Moon Photography

Electricity is supplied to the home by way of 5kW solar system utilising some 22 panels running the full length of the north-facing rooﬂine.

The dramatic setting of this home is the true star.

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Single Front View - Radiante 844 The Radiante 844 has a large panoramic view to the fire. The Dual Opening Door System gives you the warmth of a real open fire, or slide the door back down, and the fire reverts immediately to an efficient and safe slow combustion wood fire. Designed and tested to be installed into a masonry fireplace surround, existing fireplace or left freestanding.

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The design of the home is such that the footprint could be made small – so as not to impinge on the aforementioned historic pohutukawa trees. Not even a branch needed to be trimmed for the build. It has made for a dramatic statement, with cantilevered wings ‘ﬂoating’ over the land and framing the views of the sea and the bush. It is also on the edge of a historical archeological site, so great care had to be taken not to interfere with the surrounding ground. A light touch was required of the builder. The home is predominantly clad with New Zealand-grown cedar in the form of shiplap weatherboards, which nicely blend into the surrounding wooded countryside. Inside, the home features poplar ceilings throughout. Electricity is supplied to the home by way of a 5kW solar system utilising some 22 panels

running the full length of the north-facing roofline. Excess power created when the sun is high is sent back to the grid, for which the owners get a rebate. Other eco-technology includes argon-filled low-E double glazed joinery, and high insulation values of 2.6 in the walls and 5.0 in the ceiling. The place has been coated in Paint Plus – an Environmental Choice-certified paint. It also features a bio-cycle sewerage system which naturally processes the sewerage before being fed out to the garden by way of dripper lines. There’s an on-site water bore, and three separate water tanks – one for drinking, and two for the attenuation of rain water in heavy storms. The owners have future-proofed this home too, with a lift shaft being built in case it’s needed a few years down the track.

One of the more stunning bathroom views in the country.

Fine dining in Northland.

Driftwood light shades set the tone in the kitchen.

SHAPING THE FUTURE

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Succession planning Gray Pearson is determined to build the most sustainable home he can – both for himself and his wife but, more importantly, for his children and grandchildren.

s Gray Pearson neared retirement age, he and his wife considered their options.

For the past 16 years they had been leaving their Mairangi Bay, Auckland home to drive south for holidays with their family at Ohope Beach in the Bay of Plenty. They had come to love it’s beautiful golden sand beach on one side, and calm boat harbour on the other. It was an easy decision to make. Sell up, move to Ohope and build a home. Retire in East Coast splendour. It was while he was in the process of considering the new build that Pearson decided that their home should meet high standards of eco-friendliness and sustainability. “It struck me that building so close to the beach I wanted to provide a legacy home for my children, and their children to come, he explains. So, a section was purchased, smack bang between the two bodies of water. “One day this will be their bach, and I wanted it to be as eco friendly – and cheap to run and maintain – as possible,” says Pearson. “I didn’t want it to be an expensive burden for them.” He then set about interviewing builders and was on his fifth interview with Landmark Homes when he got more than he bargained for. “I had myself a builder, but I also got myself a job. They said to me ‘We’ll build you a house, and you come and work for us’.”

The Control 4 smart home system.

The couple are living in a rented home in Whakatane and juggling work and their new

home build – along with getting to grips with the new technologies going into the home. Here’s a few of them.

Underfloor heating

The slab of the floor will be heated by water pipes. While this isn’t a new technology, the means by which the water is heated is pretty new to New Zealand. The hot water will be supplied by a heat pump water heater (a 9.3kW Climaventa hydraulic heat pump from DeLonghi), which acts in the same way as an indoor heat pump, drawing warmth from the outside air and transferring into the water.

which transfers the water from the underfloor heating when it’s needed.

Rainwater harvesting

The Ohope home is designed to capture the rain which lands on its roof, through the installation of a 4000-litre underground rain harvesting tank. This will feed all exterior taps and cover all gardening and landscape requirements. Says Pearson: “There’s no real benefit for us from using rainwater, but as it falls down on us from the sky I believe we should be using it for the garden or to wash the car.”

The heat is transferred by means of a simple gas cycle. As gas expands, it cools, which happens outside the home or, in this case, the slab. That part of the cycle is now colder than the outside air, so the natural thermal transfer means the air heats the gas up again. When that gas, which has now been warmed to air temperature, is forced into a much smaller part of the pipework of the system, it is compressed, which heats it up. That heat is then transferred into the water travelling through the slab.

Solar PV

The upshot is that only enough power is required to push the gas around in this cycle; none is used to actually heat the gas. The efficiency of these units is remarkable; they can save up to 60% on hot water heating costs.

Pearson is hedging his bets by planning to install micro inverters. When power comes from a solar panel it must be inverted before it can be used by home appliances. That can either be one big inverter, or a micro inverter which sits under each individual panel. That way the array is infinitely scalable.

This system will also serve to boost the family’s hot water for showers and taps.

Solar sink floor

Where the sun strikes the concrete floor in this home, that concrete will act as a battery for the sun’s energy, absorbing the warmth during the day and releasing it at night when the temperature drops. This will serve to limit the need for the underfloor heating to be turned on.

Solar hot water

The famous Ohope sun will go to good use heating the water for this home through the use of a 32-tube Apricus solar water heating system. When the sun refuses to shine, the water heating system will be boosted by the heat pump supplying water for underfloor heating by means of a special zone valve

Pearson has asked Ian Charity from Rotoruabased Renewable Energy Ltd to configure the optimum size for a photovoltaic solar array on the roof of his new home. “At this point we’re looking at less than 1.5kW array. “Power companies don’t appear to want your power back, so for now we’re aiming only to offset the home’s daytime power use. The sun is free, and I can’t see power prices coming down any time soon. It should cut our power bill in half.”

Don’t miss the next issue of Your Future Home, where we’ll go into the more detail around the build of this sustainable home.

of having a bunch of different remotes for everything, we just have one system,” says Simon Morrison from The Cable Guy, who is designing the system. Morrison says the system can be controlled from any computer, tablet or smartphone, with a simple downloadable app.

“It’s a very simple, easy to understand and intuitive operating system,” says Morrison. “There are large energy saving benefits from it. There’s an astronomic clock in it – you can turn towel rails, underfloor heating on and off. If you’re away you can remotely shut the house down.

There is also a touchscreen as you enter the home, and a large, touch-screen remote control from which everything can be operated.

“You can also just have the floor just ticking over by setting the temperature just high enough to keep the chill off,” says Morrison.

Pearson is also watching the development of home battery storage technology carefully. “It doesn’t make sense for us just yet, but I’m sure it will get there and we’ll install them when that happens.” Ian Charity believes that, when complete, the home will use between 10 and 15kWh to run, compared to the national average of about 24kWh per day.

Smart home integration

Despite eyeing retirement, Pearson is very much in the 21st century, asking that his home be smart in the technological sense. His home will be run by ‘Control 4’, a smart home operating system which allows the user to control lighting, heating, blinds, audio visual system and security. “Instead

The home will be heated by warm water carried through these pipes, and heated by a super efficient hot water heat pump.

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Clay on the comeback

Porotherm blocks are a breathable, long-lasting, thermally efficient option.

A traditional building material used for thousands of years is making a return.

rom the time man first gazed up in wonder at the arrow-straight trunk of a kauri tree and gauged the number of timber boards held within, wooden homes have been king in New Zealand. Sure, we have our brick and tiles, but the overwhelming majority have been made from the trees we grow here. These days, it tends to be treated pine, or laminated sheets. Of course, in Europe, where the trees were hacked down long ago, it’s the opposite, with stone and brick buildings being the standard building materials.

A Kiwi company is attempting to turn the tide by bringing in the Porotherm clay block system from Europe. Used for thousands of years in construction worldwide, clay’s natural properties means that it provides a long-term sustainability, not only offering low-carbon product manufacture, but giving a building life of over 150 years with little or no maintenance.

A home built with Porotherm blocks.

Porotherm bricks have a series of internal chambers, which come either filled with natural insulation material, or without, depending on the R-value requirements. Cambridge-based McPherson Architecture has used the system on four homes. “It ticks a lot of boxes. It covers thermal, acoustic, moisture management and seismic requirements. It’s also a sustainable, natural, durable system,” says architect Robyn McPherson. They are very quick to install, requiring only a thin bed mortar joint, and a brick layer will achieve 30-40 square metres per day. While matching masonry structures for fire-resistance, longevity and sustainability, Porotherm can even be faster than timber frame in construction – with the added benefit of allowing contractors for internal and external trades earlier in the build timeline. In terms of waste, there is no treated timber to be buried in the ground, but rather a material which came from it in the first place. The clay building system is also breathable, which assists in regulating humidity (see the health-based building article on page 14 for more). Find out more at www.stellaria.co.nz

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Getting warmer

Log burners produce radiant heat.

When it comes to heating your home, the main decision is to opt for either radiant or convective type heat sources.

ot all heat is created equal. For the purposes of heating your home, it essentially comes in two forms – radiant heat and convective heat. Many heating sources will produce a mixture of both, but usually it is heavily weighted to one type or other. Radiant heat is the reason you can stand outside in the sun on a cold, calm winter’s day and feel warm, despite a low air temperature. The sun’s warmth does not heat the air around you – its infra-red radiation crosses that space at the speed of light to heat you. The same heat comes from a campfire. In your home, radiant heat will come from a wood or pellet burner, wood stove, infrared panel heater, flued gas heater or old-school bar heater. Convective heat, on the other hand, warms the air around you. In your home it will usually come from a heat pump, oil-filled heaters or even the old fan heaters. The latter has given convection heaters a bad name as they are relatively poor heaters, expensive to run and tended to set things on fire. But heat pumps have changed the equation. With a radiant heat source, it’s likely that the overall temperature in your home will be lower than with convective heat, but you’ll feel comfortable nonetheless – particularly if you are in line of sight of the heat source. It

also heats the things in the room – furniture, drapes, bench tops etc, which then radiate that heat back too, and means that a radiant heat source will need to be employed for a shorter time. A convection heat source circulates the heat around the room and warms it more quickly, but it may need to run for longer, and requires a more airtight envelope so as not to lose the heat. Here’s Your Future Home’s guide to the best heating sources this winter:

Log burners Newer models are far more efficient and less polluting than traditional burners. Generally a radiant heat source, but some models are convective. Burners work best when they are fired with well-seasoned, or dry, wood, which improves efficiency and minimises pollution. They can even be fitted with a wetback to heat water, allowing for yet more energy efficiency and power savings, although the cost of retrospectively fitting this is likely to be prohibitive. Cost: Log burners range from about $1500 to many thousands. Wood should cost between $300 and $600 per winter, depending on size and use Efficiency: 6 – 11c/kwh Eco-friendliness: wood burners are carbon neutral, provided wood is sourced from

managed resources which are replanted after harvesting

Pellet fires

Pellet burners, a convective heat source, are fired using pellets made from recycled sawmill waste. Because the pellets are loaded into the back of the burner and automatically fed into the fire, you can have precise control over the rate of burning and the strength of the fire. Some pellet fire installations can even be

controlled with a thermostat, or switched on and off with a timer. For this reason, pellet burners are the most efficient environmental option when it comes to indoor fires. Cost: A single-storey flued pellet burner starts at around $4,000 to buy and install. Pellets can be expensive, averaging $1$2 per kilogram, which gives around one hour’s burning Efficiency: 14 – 23c/kwh

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Heat pumps Heat pumps are a convective heat source, and are efficient because the outside unit simply draws heat from the external air and transfers it via a gas circuit to inside the home. This is much more energy efficient than if the unit was generating heat itself. Heat pumps take the chill off a room quickly, but as air isn’t a good holder of heat your heat pump may have to be on longer than a radiant heat source to maintain room temperature. Over time these units have become much quieter, but there will still be some fan noise. Cost: Installing an inexpensive single-unit heat pump can cost as little as $1700. A multi-unit, whole house system can cost up to $12,000. You can expect your heat pump to last for between 10 and 15 years. Efficiency: 13-18c/kwh

mounted on the wall (disguised as mirrors or even pictures), or even on the ceiling (where they are more effective), and radiate heat through the room in much the same way as a log burner. However the surface of these heaters doesn’t reach anything like the same temperature.

Heat pumps are a convective heat source, warming the air in the room.

Cost: infrared heaters are reasonably inexpensive to buy, and cheap to install – in fact you can do it yourself. Because they have no moving parts they generally have a long life span – around 20 years. Efficiency: 15 – 20c/kwh. Makers claim that an infrared heater will only need to run for about half the time of a convection heater as they warm the objects in the room, which radiate heat back out and maintain temperature for longer. Eco-friendliness: Infrared heaters run on electricity, so will have the same carbon cost per kW of electricity used as a heat pump, which varies on where you live. Infrared heaters, mostly used for commercial heating, are becoming popular in the home market.

Eco friendliness: On average, 80% of New Zealand’s electricity comes from a renewable resource. The figure for Auckland, however, is in the region of 36%, so some of the electricity used in your heat pump will have been generated by the burning of coal or gas, giving it a carbon cost

Infrared heaters You might see these radiant heat source heaters outside at pubs or restaurants – usually as long black strip heaters, but lately they are starting to appear inside homes too – in different and more attractive forms – and are already common in Europe. They can be

Insulate first Before considering the size and type of heating needed for your home, first make sure you have insulated inside your walls, in the ceilings and under the floor. You’ll find the power of the heat source required can be much reduced, saving both installation and running costs.

Herschel® Infrared is a new radiant heating system. Discreet and easily installed, it gently heats the room itself rather than the air, using a fraction of the energy of other heaters, affordably maintaining a warm and dry environment in your home or commercial space. Silent running, maintenance free, and no air movement makes for greater comfort.

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Infrared heat is radiant heat, the feeling of warmth you feel on your face from the sun or a coal fire. It doesn’t heat the air, but instead gently warms up objects in the environment, building up thermal mass which continues to radiate even once the heater switches off. This is the basis of its energy efficiency. Far Infrared is the gentler ‘long-wave’ form of infrared, which does not emit any light, and is the form most easily absorbed by our skin and objects in our environment. It is heat humans were designed for, used elsewhere in baby incubators and in the wellness industry because of its vital warming properties. Herschel® Infrared panels Our stylish, ultra-slimline panel heaters are specially designed for heating rooms. Most of our panels can be discreetly wall-mounted, or ceiling-mounted for that extra space saving opportunity. We offer a variety of designs from white to glass to mirrors to fit with, and enhance, your decor.

see the range and where to buy at herschel-infrared.co.nz

Year of the home battery? Ten years from now, there’s a odds-on chance that we’ll look back at 2016 and recognise it as the year that electricity storage battery came of age.

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bunch of factors are coinciding around the globe for 2016 to be the year we started looking with interest at the real possibility of installing batteries in our homes: the precipitous drop in price; the exponential increase in production capacity; the jaw-dropping levels of investment in the race to produce the holy grail of battery technology. There’s a roll call of big names behind it: tech giants Panasonic, IBM and Samsung, design mavericks Tesla and Dyson, and even Bill Gates are all throwing money at the opportunity. The home battery storage market is one that may have particularly widespread application in New Zealand, given our comparatively low and geographically dispersed population. Anyone who has built a new home in a rural location will know the high costs of having power

delivered to their door and may have considered battery storage. That equation has already swung in favour of batteries, says Powersmart marketing manager Richard Cullwick. “It’s already a no-brainer. We’ve done at least 15 rural, off-grid homes this year. There are people building homes in the country and being quoted between $20,000 and $50,000 to connect to the grid. An off-grid system starts from about $30,000, depending on your power usage. “Their batteries will last ten years, by which time it will be half or quarter the price to replace them.” However Cullwick believes that time has not yet come for urban dwellers. “The technology is there already, but the price isn’t,” he says. He points out that Lithium Ion batteries are designed to be grid-connected rather than off-grid, and says that the price of having them doesn’t pay off – yet. “It’s all down the track, but just a little bit further,” he says.

Apples for apples Information on every battery available for home use can be found at www. solarquotes.com.au/battery-storage/ comparison-table/

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All ﬁred up There’s no substitute for a fire, and modern log burners and stoves are highly efficient, low-emissions and toasty warm.

or thousands of years, mankind has been rubbing sticks together to make fire from wood. Flickering flames, comforting warmth and the unmistakeable smell of a woody fire – it’s hard to imagine a more relaxing scene than sitting in front of a wood burner on a cold winter’s day.

It’s therefore no surprise that the popularity of stoves has grown considerably over the last few years, especially with manufacturers offering such a wealth of options. Cast-iron stoves, fireplaces and cookers offer maximum flexibility, performance and economy. When you’re burning wood it’s vital that it’s dry, so always try to use either kiln-dried or seasoned wood logs. Either buy it dry, or buy green logs and dry them yourself. Wellseasoned wood has bark that comes off easily and cracks appearing from the centre of the log. Freshly harvested wood has a high water content, between 65-90% depending on the species. Burning these logs can create corrosive tars and smoke which may damage the flue lining and increase the danger of a chimney fire. Burning wood is carbon neutral, because it releases the same amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it would if it were decomposing on the forest floor, so you can be assured that you are not harming the environment. Trees re-absorb carbon dioxide

from the atmosphere as they grow, thus completing the cycle. Stoves are usually constructed from either cast iron or steel. Cast iron stoves are extremely robust and built to last. This durability comes from the manufacturing process, which involves pouring molten metal into moulds to create the desired shape. For homeowners who live in smokecontrolled areas, such as urban centres, many stoves and inbuilt fireplaces are now designed from the outset (or have specially engineered versions available) for use in such areas. This ensures that emissions are as low as possible. Homeowners with an open fire will know that most of the heat goes up the chimney; they are only 10-20% efficient, whereas a wood-burning stove can be as much as 85% efficient, and are designed to emit as much heat throughout a room as possible. Wood burners also continue to emit heat even after the fire has died down, ensuring a home stays warmer for longer. Most stoves are installed to provide space heating for an individual room. However, certain models, such as the Bilberry Boiler Stove, are fitted with a back boiler which can supplement a central heating system, as well as provide hot water for showers and baths. The Rayburn cooker is the ultimate in efficiency, providing domestic hot water,

central heating and cooking. These setups can further reduce utility costs, provided the stove is correctly sized for the demands of the property.

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Health-based building: what is it? A new school of thought says that rather than creating a sealed envelope of our homes we should be encouraging breathability and natural materials.

Plywood is horrible stuff. It’s not breathable, it holds moisture. The glue devalues the beneficial properties of timber. It’s doing nothing to create a healthy home.

n the New Zealand eco building book ‘A Deeper Shade of Green’ it states: “Humans are bombarded daily with health stressors, like material off-gassing, particle and microbial pollution.”

And research conducted on the effects of poor air quality in the US by the American Medical Association found that 94% of all respiratory ailments are caused by polluted air – indoors. Given that children – both here and in the US – spend over 90% of their time inside, that’s a major concern. Here in New Zealand, our damp homes mean we have one of the highest rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases in the west. But it’s rare in the course of planning a new home build or a renovation that you’d consider the glue used in the plywood, or the fire-retardant impregnated in the insulation material. You might not even give a thought to the properties of the wall linings. Perhaps you’d consider fitting a ventilation system to decrease moisture levels in your home, without considering whether or not a high-performing home should actually require one, and whether we’re missing other ways to remove moisture from our homes. Yet a growing number of building industry professionals are discovering that improving indoor air quality and moisture issues solves a bunch of others, too. Coined ‘health-based building’ after a philosophy developed in the US, the idea is to create affordable, high-quality, chemicalfree home which are highly breathable, keeping the house mould-free, warm and

Natural materials breathe, remove moisture and retain heat in their cellular structure.

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Install it for

life

dry, without the need for mechanical air transfer systems. The other element to health-based building is that materials have been manufactured with minimal environmental effect to create affordable, high-quality, chemical-free homes. Proponents say that due to the breathability of the buildings, people with respiratory illnesses such as asthma are unlikely to suffer in a home of this type. In New Zealand, that’s one in seven children, and one in nine adults.

the heat is retained in the drapes, wool carpets, wooden furniture etc. Anything that is natural and has a cellular structure will both be able to breathe, move moisture out of the home and retain heat. Your synthetics, polyesters and gypsums won’t be able to do it. We’ve been losing our natural materials over time and replacing them with petrochemical alternatives which don’t have any of these properties.” Curtis says once you have the right materials in your home, a radiant heat source, such as a wood burner, will imbue all those materials with warmth, and keep the heat throughout the night.

Health-based building expert Robin Curtis believes we are getting it wrong for a lot of new builds in New Zealand.

Once you paint those walls with a non breathable coating, you’ve lost its properties too. Glues inside the wall linings do the same thing. “Plywood is horrible stuff,” says Curtis. “It’s not breathable, it holds moisture. The glue devalues the beneficial properties of timber. It’s doing nothing to create a healthy home. The chemical encapsulation in it is some of the worst we’ve got.” Curtis says that it’s important to seal natural materials with breathable coatings. “Standard paint stops air going through it. Lacquers and non-breathable coatings close all those benefits down. But there are alternatives such as breathable oil coatings or paints.”

His advice is a completely natural materials approach, using either natural wood for the floors, walls and ceilings, or breathable materials such as magnesium oxide boards to line the walls of a home. These are an alternative to traditional gypsum board and are made from the mineral magnesia, plentiful in a number of countries. The use of magnesium oxide boards is rapidly increasing – particularly in the US and Asia. The insulation is important too, says Curtis, who believes wool products are the best. “They naturally absorb and desorb water. Wool draws moisture out of the home in the evening, for example, when the windows are closed, and releases it again when moisture levels inside drop.” Curtis says wool will actually draw toxins from the air around it, such as formaldehyde. Curtis says once you have a breathable home, the moisture is removed and it becomes easier and cheaper to heat. The use of natural products makes heating more effective, too. “If you look at the inside of a home under a thermal imaging camera, you’ll see all

The cellular structure of wood means it absorbs and releases heat and moisture

Moisture Moisture moves from high to low concentration just like heat or gases do. Due to cooking, showering, breathing etc the moisture inside a home is at a higher level than outside. Moisture inside can cause condensation, mould and make the home harder to heat. Opening windows removes moisture but also warmth. A breathable home should be able to remove moisture without increasing heat loss.

Chemicals & the case for natural products There are a myriad of chemicals used in building which are known to be harmful to human health. The Living Building Challenge has produced a materials ‘Red List’, which is a compilation of the most harmful chemicals. Those building a ‘Living Building’ – such as Tuhoe’s recently completed headquarters in Ta¯neatua – are unable to build with materials containing any of these chemicals. Many of them are to be expected – compounds such as asbestos and metals such as cadmium, but many of them are commonplace – chemicals such as PVC plastics (found in wire sheaths and piping), phthalates (vinyl flooring, cords and hoses, shower curtains, artificial leather, pool liners, some paints), formaldehyde (in many products, from laminates and glues to wood products such as some plywoods), halogenated flame retardants (upholstery, cloth window shades, some insulation) and chloroprene (a synthetic rubber found in water seals, gaskets, and geomembranes).

Where does all the steam go? The simple answer is... there isn't any! Steam is only created when you mix warm moist air, with cold air. Showerdome is the barrier between those two air masses, which means no steam in your shower, or your bathroom.

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