WHY WOULD I WANT a filter system for indoor air? In the culture that we live in, most people spend at least four-fifths of our time indoors. Think about it for a minute, and take the entire 24-hour cycle into account. About a third of the day is spent sleeping in your bedroom, indoors, and another third is spent working in your office, indoors. Add the time you spend shopping at the mall, cooking in the kitchen, eating in the dining room, and winding down in the den — not to mention driving around from place to place in your automotive indoor environment — and that adds up to about 80%. In Canada’s colder climate, this figure can be closer to 90%!
IN THE SOCIETY THAT we live in, almost every product in our home has been embedded with carcinogenic VOC’s — Volatile Organic Compounds. Yes, almost all corporations achieve high performance by using toxic chemistry and passing those poisons on to innocent consumers. It’s much more profitable for them, but it’s disastrous for us. This is why, first and foremost, we advocate using all natural non-industrial products; the number one way that you can ensure that you don’t ingest VOC’s is by not bringing them into your home in the first place! Having said that, if you aren’t yet ready to go cold turkey from industrially-produced consumer goods and start spinning your own wool and tanning your own leather — then it is highly advisable to figure out a way to filter your indoor air in the interim.
IN ANY CASE, THERE NEEDS to be circulation of indoor air because humans consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, so if the air is not infused with additional oxygen, your mental faculties will begin to deteriorate and you will eventually suffocate! The industry organization appropriately-named ASH-RACE — the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers — stress that to ensure quality, all indoor air must be refreshed every ten or twenty minutes. The air inside your home or office is between two and five times as toxic as the air outside of it. But a living wall can remove more than 98% of the volatile organic compounds that you can smell, and between 66% and 99% of the compounds that you can’t!
AT NIGHT, LIVING WALL PLANTS respirate much as mammals do, consuming oxygen and producing carbon dioxide. But in the daytime, they do the opposite, consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Therefore, when connecting a living wall to an HVAC system (Heating-Ventilation-Air-Conditioning), it is important to hook it up to an automatic timer, so that during daylight hours the living wall filters the indoor air, eliminating toxins and replenishing oxygen, and during night-time hours fresh outside air is brought into the house to purify the environment, as it is in all other buildings. So if you make your living wall responsible for oxygenating your home or office during the daytime, it can cut down on about half of your heating and cooling bills, as well!
The green leaves are pleasing to your eyes…
the drip-drop waterfall is pleasing to your ears…
the fresh air is pleasing to your lungs…
the eco features are pleasing to your heart…
and the fossil fuel savings are pleasing to your wallet!
