Innovative, healthy building materials profile: Red List-free PROSOCO Products
Greening Homes takes its motto “renovations done responsibly” very seriously. It speaks to our commitment to accountability and transparency, ensuring that our clients are well-informed every step during the process, and that they receive the best value per dollar.
It also speaks to our commitment to safeguarding the health and well-being of the homeowners. That’s why we keep abreast of the latest innovations in non-toxic building products, such as those produced by PROSOCO.
This is important because thousands of chemicals are incorporated into building materials and other products that enter the average home. How do these chemicals interact with one another and impact our health?
We were drawn to PROSOCO because so many of its products are listed in the Living Building Challenge.
The Living Building Challenge is a highly regarded, rigorous performance standard for buildings, part of the International Living Future Institute, and is considered the gold standard against which all other products are measured. Through the Challenge, products are evaluated through a product label called Declare, dubbed as “nutrition labels for safe products, energy independent buildings, and happy employees.” Any products that don’t meet this standard are placed in the Red List, which details the level of toxicity in the product.
PROSOCO is a U.S.- based manufacturer of products for cleaning, protecting and maintaining concrete; making building envelopes air and water-tight; and cleaning, protecting and restoring new and existing masonry buildings.
We use several PROSOCO products, including R-Guard Air Dam, an air and weather barrier sealant. Greening Homes became a distributor in 2015 for PROSOCO North of the border.
While Air Dam is more expensive than its off-the-shelf competitors, we get better use of it, which reduces the discrepancy in costs. Typically, sealants are used in caulking guns, which tends to continue to spill out even when you don’t want it to. So much product is wasted as a result. Air Dam comes in sausage packaging, reducing this problem and making it much easier to use. There is also more volume in the packaging, which helps reduce packaging sent to the landfill.
We use Air Dam to seal windows, doors and pipe penetrations. However, we have found that it also works very well as a subfloor adhesive, as opposed to the standard subfloor adhesive found in many big box stores that are laden with high volumes of volatile organic compounds – or VOC’s as they are commonly referred to.
Air Dam isn’t the only PROSOCO product we use. We employ Fast Flash, Joint and Seam Filler, and Spray Wrap MVP in preparing window and door openings, and installing an air barrier on the exterior of a building, respectively.
Bottom line, careful and informed material selection, such as the use of PROSOCO products, has many benefits to a high-performance build that Greening Homes offers. Their cost can be up to three times more expensive than their competitors, but their efficient application help provide best value for the project and in turn the client. Using Living Building Challenge ‘Red-List Free’ materials also reduces the amount of unhealthy chemicals in your home. And that, we believe, is priceless.
PROSOCO R-Guard Air Dam’s sausage packaging produces less waste than the alternative.