Here's a company with a variety of IAQ test kits. They have a radon kit, mold and bacteria kit, and formaldehyde kit. The formaldehyde kit is said to be the best available, accurate to 0.01ppm, and $49.
I had been planning to do a broader test, like the one I've linked earlier for $249. Whatever kit I get should have 0.01ppm formadehyde resolution because 0.1ppm is the threshold level for safety, and people can generally smell below 0.1pm but not usually 0.01ppm.
I've read that tests showed an average of 255 days being required for formaldehyde outgassing to fall 50%. To get to 10% (like 0.01 in 0.1) would require 3.3 times that much time, or 2.3 years.
It would be reasonable to guess I have something like 0.1ppm now (inside the room when door has been closed awhile with 90 degrees ambient), so 2.3 years should get me to the point where the formaldehyde can't even be smelled, even if the room has been closed, under those same conditions.
On Thursday night, having had one door open for awhile, I smelled absolutely nothing, anywhere in the room. On Friday afternoon, ambient temperature above 90, with both doors open since the previous midnight, I smelled very little, it took effort to smell anything at all. So it seems to me that in the months since construction of the various parts that might be causing the smell, it has decreased somewhat notably since the interior painting was done in Jan-Feb. But unfortunately I never took careful notes about when and how much the smell would go away.
That 255 day number, however, is determined from actual homes in various locations. I'm trying to beat that through keeping the building as open as possible for an entire summer, cleaning interior surfaces, continuous fan operation, continuous incandescent light operation, and whatever else I come up with. I'm still thinking about using high power lights like 500W halogens to speed up paint curing and outgassing. I was also thinking about using a humidifier.
They do in fact say that formaldehyde outgassing can be accelerated with heat and humidity.
I had been planning to do a broader test, like the one I've linked earlier for $249. Whatever kit I get should have 0.01ppm formadehyde resolution because 0.1ppm is the threshold level for safety, and people can generally smell below 0.1pm but not usually 0.01ppm.
I've read that tests showed an average of 255 days being required for formaldehyde outgassing to fall 50%. To get to 10% (like 0.01 in 0.1) would require 3.3 times that much time, or 2.3 years.
It would be reasonable to guess I have something like 0.1ppm now (inside the room when door has been closed awhile with 90 degrees ambient), so 2.3 years should get me to the point where the formaldehyde can't even be smelled, even if the room has been closed, under those same conditions.
On Thursday night, having had one door open for awhile, I smelled absolutely nothing, anywhere in the room. On Friday afternoon, ambient temperature above 90, with both doors open since the previous midnight, I smelled very little, it took effort to smell anything at all. So it seems to me that in the months since construction of the various parts that might be causing the smell, it has decreased somewhat notably since the interior painting was done in Jan-Feb. But unfortunately I never took careful notes about when and how much the smell would go away.
That 255 day number, however, is determined from actual homes in various locations. I'm trying to beat that through keeping the building as open as possible for an entire summer, cleaning interior surfaces, continuous fan operation, continuous incandescent light operation, and whatever else I come up with. I'm still thinking about using high power lights like 500W halogens to speed up paint curing and outgassing. I was also thinking about using a humidifier.
They do in fact say that formaldehyde outgassing can be accelerated with heat and humidity.
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