What is the main thing you look for in a renter?

Because of severe allergies, we need our renters to have never used highly-scented laundry products like Tide, Gain or any dryer sheets. We also need people to be fragrance-free while staying here. There is no shared air space between the apartment and the upper part of the house, but synthetic fragrances still make it upstairs and get blown out the dryer vent.

Unfortunately, clothing washed with chemically-intense products like Tide or dried with dryer sheets keeps the fragrance even after several washings and I suffer migraines when exposed to the chemicals.

How big is the apartment & how many bedrooms?

The apartment is 980 square feet. It has two bedrooms and one bathroom.

Do you allow pets?

We allow friendly dogs and all kitties, but cats need to be indoors only pets while staying here.

How can you allow pets and still be safe for people with pet allergies?

All of our furnishings are fully washable. Between each guest rental, we wash the slipcovers on the furniture. We also wash all bedding - including the duvet, mattress & zippered pillow covers. We wash all rugs and thoroughly vacuum and mop the floors. Our vacuum is built in and vented to the outdoors.

If you let us know before your visit, we can also treat the apartment with an ozone machine and run an IQair air purifier. We can leave an IQair purifier in the apartment upon request. On high they have an air exchange rate that purifies all the air in 1,000 square feet of space every 10 minutes.

Do you provide cleaning and laundry supplies?

Yes, we do this because we are very careful about what chemicals we introduce to the environment in our house. We ask that our guests use only the products we provide and let us know if they run out.

How much noise will we hear in the apartment?

When we built our house, we did it with having renters on the lower level in mind. We added soundproofing in the ceiling and had the sheetrock hung on resilient-channel, which is designed to reduce the transmission of sound. The bedroom walls have insulation in the walls, then a layer of plywood and a layer of sheetrock. We also installed a door to separate the apartment’s bedroom area and the living room/kitchen area. This is to keep sound down in the bedrooms when someone is watching TV or cooking.

Our house is three stories and we mostly live on the third floor. We are quiet people and don’t wear shoes in the house. We are especially quiet between 8pm and 9am and if you are a daytime sleeper, just let us know and we will confine our kitties to the third floor and walk extra-quietly when on the floor above the apartment.

We wanted the apartment to be as quiet as possible. However, we also wanted it to be bright, even at night or on rainy winter days, so we installed recessed lighting in the living room, bathroom and one of the bedrooms. We have since learned that recessed lights can transfer sound, so you may hear footfalls from the floor above, which I describe below.

With that said, we haven’t had any noise complaints and we keep an open dialogue so if we became noisy, we our guests could let us know. One of our renters recorded a podcast and needed absolute silence during parts of the day. We were easily able to accomodate.

For an incoming travel nurse that was going to work night shifts and need to sleep during the day, we tested out sound transfer by having two people (on the floor above the apartment) talking loudly while playing music, and having the tv up unpleasantly high. They did this, while I went into the apartment to see how much sound transferred. I found that in the bathroom I could hear upstairs noises better than from any other room. I think this is because of the ceiling fan and recessed light.

From inside the east bedroom I could hear muffled voices and footfalls - they were being really loud and stompy upstairs.

From the north bedroom, which has no recessed lights and is under the TV room upstairs, I couldn’t hear anything except the fountain outside (which we can switch off).

From the living room and kitchen area, I could hear muffled voices and footfalls.

From the back hallway laundry area, I could hear when my two noisy helpers were yelling up and down the staircase. There is a stairway behind the far wall of the apartment and a solid-fire-grade door, but we do not typically yell up and down the stairs; this was just for testing how noisy it would be if we did.

In the opposite direction, we cannot hear anything going on in the apartment. Our podcasting renter played piano, guitar and sang. We couldn’t hear any of it.

How loud are the neighbors?

Our neighbors are extremely quiet, they’re friendly, but not noisy. The whole neighborhood is quiet, we generally do not get airplane or road noise. There are two exceptions. One is that our next door neighbors have gardeners that come every-other Sunday for about 30 minutes around noon. They use a bunch of mowers and blowers all at once, zoom around and then leave.

The other exception is on Seafair Weekend. This is the weekend of the first Sunday in August and it starts on the Friday before. Seafair weekend involves an air show, music and hydroplane racing on the lake below our street.

Other than that one loud weekend, this is a quiet area… oh I forgot about 4th of July. Lots of fireworks around the lake. If you like fireworks, there are plenty of free shows if you walk down to the lakeshore or come up to our top deck to watch the fireworks across the lake.

Does the air exchange unit filter out wildfire smoke?

The air exchange unit brings in air from the outside, and sends indoor air outside. It doesn’t filter out small particles like smoke. It can be turned off if it is smokey outside. For that, we have Blueair air purifier in the apartment. It has an air exchange rate of 1,000 square feet every 10 minutes - that’s when it’s on high, but it doesn’t need to be on high to keep the apartment’s air clean from smoke. The windows are very well-sealed.

How well can you accommodate people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity?

Very well. As a person suffering from this problem, I fully understand how hard it can be to find a place to stay without chemicals. Not only do we use fragrance-free laundry products and cleaners, our home was built without any toxic materials and has no furnishings with MDF. There is also no oriented strandboard behind our siding or anything that offgassses formaldehyde or phthalates or plasticizers in our home. In the building of the house, I spend 24 hours with every material to make sure, nothing would be toxic.

Our mattresses, sofa and chairs have no flame retardants and washable covers makes it so if somebody fragrant sits on the sofa or touches it with hand lotion, we can wash it and have it back to scent free before your visit. Here are some of the steps we can take:

All of our furnishings are fully washable. Between each guest rental, we wash the slipcovers on the furniture. We also wash all bedding - including the duvet, mattress & zippered pillow covers. We wash all rugs and thoroughly vacuum and mop the floors. Our vacuum is built in and vented to the outdoors.

If you let us know before your visit, we can also treat the apartment with an ozone machine and follow that with airing it out and then running an IQair air multigas air purifier (https://www.iqair.com/us/air-purifiers/gc-series). We can leave an IQair purifier in the apartment upon request. On high they have an air exchange rate that purifies all the air in 1,000 square feet of space every 10 minutes. We have three of these units in the rest of the house and rarely need to put them up to high.

Many years ago, our neighbors next door switched to fragrance free laundry detergent so their dryer vent also doesn’t vent chemical fragrances into the air.