Making homes healthier to live in, NHS incorporates Green Rehab Specifications

By: Raevyn Jones, Marketing Coordinator, NHS of Baltimore

With the stimulus money brought about by the Obama Administration, the opportunity has come for many homeowners to buy more energy efficient appliances for their homes. To create healthier living environments, NHS has “gone green” with new green rehab specifications.

With these new specifications, homeowners who get home rehab services from NHS could get paint and carpeting among other things that are less toxic to their homes. Environmental friendly paint and carpeting can help prevent the amount of off-gassing in a home. This is extremely important because when newer homes are built, they tend to be sealed up tighter therefore more off-gassing may occur. Energy efficient products in your home also make it more comfortable to residents with asthma or other respiratory problems.

In the initial stage of home rehab services at NHS, a list of specifications is generated and edited by a computer program to incorporate green specifications. Low flow toilets, tankless hot water heaters, bamboo flooring, solar tubes, compact fluorescent light fixtures, and low-VOC paint are some of the green specs that go into the home rehab services. Because energy efficient products are costly, the rehab specs must coincide with what the homeowner can afford. However, every new project that gets written up has green aspects to it.

NHS recently used green standards in the rehab of six homes in Riverview by covering exterior walls with environmentally approved house wrap under vinyl siding, insulation of the hot and cold water pipes, low flow faucets and showerheads, “energy star” labeled fixtures, and double panned energy efficient windows. In the future NHS plans to do larger scale projects that will attempt to make home rehab even more environmentally friendly.

These new specification writing programs have put NHS of Baltimore a step ahead when it comes to home rehabilitation. They have been very helpful in generating a scope of work that automatically comes out green and make our clients homes healthier to live in.