Category: Health

  • Earth Day 2017

    Earth Day 2017

      April 22nd is Earth Day and Earth Day 2017 seems like a very appropriate day to start writing on Home Style Green again. I’ve been away from writing and podcasting for a little while. I’ve been working full time in the construction and building industry, and the experience of the commercial realities of traditional business has…

  • 5 Hidden Invaders in Your Home – Monitor and Keep Them Out!

    5 Hidden Invaders in Your Home – Monitor and Keep Them Out!

    A few episodes, I was privileged to have  Caroline Blazovsky, the Healthy Home Expert, on the show. Caroline has kindly followed up with this list of top 5 hidden home invaders and some handy hints about what to do about them using a Canary. 

  • 161: A Fitbit for your home

    161: A Fitbit for your home

    Imagine having a Fitbit for your home and being able to see, in real time, how it’s performing. You could also be notified of any hazards like high levels of CO2 and VOCs as they occur – before you start to get a headache or start having respiratory problems. I spoke with Dustin Jefferson Onghanseng, cofounder…

  • 160: What is in an unhealthy home?

    160: What is in an unhealthy home?

      Caroline Blazovsky is America’s Healthy Home Expert. She makes it easy for people to find out what might be the cause of an unhealthy home and therefore, how to fix it. My Healthy Home mainly checks houses in the US. If you’re in New Zealand, get in touch to find out more about getting…

  • 129: Vastu Architecture

    This week I discuss Maharishi Vastu Architecture with Jon Lipman. Where ancient philosophy comes together with modern science to make spectacular and enriching buildings. Links http://www.maharishivastu.org/principles-of-maharishi-vastu-architecture http://www.maharishivastu.org/text-book https://www.facebook.com/MaharishiVastu http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/users/jonlipman http://jlipman.com/

  • AURO Eco Paints

    When we renovated our house in Christchurch, we wanted to make it warm, comfortable and healthy. Pulling up old carpet to reveal beautiful hardwood timber floors was all the rage, and so was polyurethane. But I’d heard that polyurethane isn’t healthy and this concerned us because we were about to have a baby in the…

  • Leaky Buildings 2.0

    Most of us are familiar with leaky buildings – the perfect storm of poor design, poor cladding systems and poor workmanship, culminating in allowing rain to get in. Now we’ve moved on and have cavities, more stringent weather-tightness checks and hopefully we like eaves again. So what’s leaky buildings 2.0? If we’ve dealt to the…

  • Earth Building

    When she was 16, Verena Maeder came to New Zealand from Switzerland for a working holiday and fell in love, but not with a kiwi. Verena fell in love with earth buildings. So much so, that she returned to Switzerland and started training as an architect with the specific goal of learning how to design…

  • Sustainability Options

    Phil and Nik Gregg run Sustainability Options, an ‘altruistic business’ that aims to work for the benefit of others in their community. When I first had the pleasure of meeting the brothers last year, I was slightly confused and also inspired by their commitment to return 85% of their profits to charity and community in…

  • Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood

    It was a privilege to talk with Robin Allison about her journey of creating and growing Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood. Robin turned to architecture as a choice of profession because she saw how powerful and important good architecture can be. I find this incredibly inspiring, and I’m not even an architect (although this thought makes me seriously…