Most of us spend the majority of our lives indoors – at home, work, school, shopping centres, leisure facilities and more. So it makes sense to choose construction materials that protect our wellbeing.
Comfort is probably the most important factor in our health and well-being. An interior which makes its occupants feel as comfortable as possible is a healthy, actively beneficial environment.
Comfort is a state of well-being that derives from the material conditions of an environment: the way it is designed, built, decorated and furnished. The intelligent choice of materials and the way those materials are used is a major factor in determining the quality of an interior, and thus the level of comfort enjoyed by its inhabitants.
There are four key elements which contribute to general comfort. Together, they amount to goals building materials must achieve:
• Thermacare - insulation and adaptation to temperature variations
• Visiocare - the amount of light, the sense of space, the aesthetic qualities of the materials
• Silentcare - sound insulation
• Atmocare - clean, healthy air
The comfort level of an interior is closely linked to its performance in terms of thermal comfort, appearance, noise levels and indoor air quality. Every component material must be chosen with this performance in mind.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of the purposes of the various materials & products used to build a home:
• Preparing and finishing floors (self-levelling compounds and smoothing mortars, screeds, coatings)
• Tiling (adhesives, under-tile systems, grouts, etc.)
• External wall construction and renovation (renders, paints and waterproofing solutions, etc.)
• External wall insulation (improvements to thermal efficiency)
• Construction (everyday mortars and concretes; products for sealing, repairing, protecting, etc.)
All of these materials are critically important for making a home comfortable inside. It is easy to change the paint on a wall, the layout of the furniture or even your home automations. But it is much more complicated (and thus expensive) to change your tile adhesive, the material inside your partition walls or the mortar on your external walls.
Weber is a leading brand committed to the well-being of everyone who uses its products and who occupies buildings constructed from them. That commitment is the guarantee that all our products are designed with the material conditions of a comfortable home in mind.
Most of us spend the majority of our time indoors or in semi-enclosed spaces such as our homes, workplaces, schools, shopping centres and recreational facilities. The air we breathe in such locations can have effects on our bodies ranging from discomfort to causing or exacerbating conditions such as respiratory allergies, with your children and older people especially at risk.
While it is difficult for individuals to change the quality of the air outdoors, there are solutions which allow anyone to make significant improvements to their indoor air quality.
Human habitats and activities have changed dramatically over the ages, and the sound environment in which we live today would have been unimaginable even a hundred year ago. More than half the population now lives in cities, yet noise pollution is not inevitable: noise can be combated in various ways during building and renovation works.
The effects of noise are not just confined to our ears. Excessive noise can affect the whole body, ranging from discomfort to effects including cardiovascular problems, reduced attention span and memory capacity, agitation, reduced field of vision and gastrointestinal problems.
Thermal insulation is the major consideration when building or renovating a home. A home with a good energy performance preserves the well-being of its inhabitants, limits heat loss and cuts CO2 emissions.
Temperature differences between warm and cool environments cause energy transfers from the warmer ‘side’ to the cooler. For example, energy leaks out of houses in winter. In summer, heat will penetrate the home. This energy transfer is essentially by means of thermal bridges. As well as energy loss, thermal bridges cause damp problems including surface condensation which causes moulds and algae to appear and the degradation of load-bearing structures.
Visual comfort comes from the aesthetic pleasure offered by a building whose interior and exterior are in harmony in terms of materials, colours and appearance.
The challenge is to reconcile beautiful finishes such as varied external wall colours and innovative, on-trend interior decoration with the home’s technical performance – its thermal behaviour and the performance of high-quality, hard wearing materials. External wall coverings need not only to look good and offer wide choices of colours. They also need to perform.