Hayward Score Healthy Home Director Carl Grimes, HHS CIEC, has a unique combination of experiences. He has both the personal experience of how an unhealthy home created his disabling impact, plus the professional experience in various industries working in the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) field. He has a deep understanding and appreciation of the uncertainty, exhaustion, and skepticism inherent in the struggle that others face – because his home was not a safe and secure “castle,” but was instead the culprit behind his declining health and well-being. Only after years of many complaints, many doctors, many diagnosis, and many failures was he able to eventually identify many patterns of how a home itself could become a source of contamination. He also discovered that the vast majority of the issues were easily solved – if only we understood what was happening!
Carl wrote Starting Points for a Healthy Habitat in 1999, detailing possibilities of what could occur in a house to make its occupants sick, how to identify what was happening, what to do about it, what not to do, and how to verify the results.
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The book led to an invitation to speak at the national conference of the Indoor Air Quality Association, which led to an invitation to serve on a committee that wrote the first mold remediation standard. This was followed by revising the ANSI accredited water damage restoration standard, duct cleaning standards for two organizations, fire residue in HVAC systems, and eventually to the creation of IAQA’s Home Health Committee. Under his leadership a new course was developed in partnership with the National Center for Healthy Housing and Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City: Healthy Home Assessment: Principles and Practice.
Other activities included serving on the Board of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ) as the Vice President of Practice, on the ethics committee of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), the Joint Task Force workgroup of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology and the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI-ACAAI). The latter developed four medical practice parameters for allergists plus an entire issue of a leading peer reviewed journal on mold. He was on the committee that wrote the ASHRAE Mold Position Document and is currently working with them on defining “dampness.”
He is a frequent speaker nationally and internationally focusing on how indoor air quality must include people from start to finish. That a problem has not been solved until the occupant can re-enter a previously troublesome location without previous complaints – or, remove themselves from exposure by leaving that location. The combination of science, standards, and hard won experience through engagement with clients has led to a creative approach for helping people. He feels that what happened to him was not necessary, and that what continues to happen to others is also not necessary.
This is the knowledge and experience Carl brought to Hayward in 2013. Hayward Score is the result of the expansion of a team of passionate, dedicate professionals. Plans include additional programs to educate the public on healthy homes and how to support their influence on industry.