The Newest Must-Have Home Amenity for the Rich: Purified Air
Pollution, allergens and Covid have homeowners focusing on filtration systems and flexible designs to improve indoor air quality
Pollution, allergens and Covid have homeowners focusing on filtration systems and flexible designs to improve indoor air quality
Visitors to John Bautista and Pedro Salrach’s San Francisco home can’t get enough of the lap pool, sauna and movie theatre. But they also get a whiff of something else they value: clean air.
“The house smells new—and after two years it still smells new,” said Bautista, an attorney. “I know when I’m home because it smells clean and fresh.”
The six-bedroom home with seven bathrooms and two half-baths includes an elaborate air-filtration system meant to deal with the region’s varying air quality. The tightly sealed floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors offer hilltop views of the bay and access to the backyard without sacrificing air quality.
Bautista plans to further upgrade his system this year with the aim of filtering and recirculating indoor air rather than fresh outside air during periods of heavy pollution. Despite the home’s superior air quality, the family can still feel a difference on days when the outdoor air is filled with smoke. “We’ve suffered, as most people have in the Bay Area,” he said. “What we want to have is isolation.”
Developer Gregory Malin, who specialises in wellness-focused real estate, sold Bautista the home for $32 million, he said, plus an additional $5 million for fixtures and furnishings.
Luxury homeowners are known to splurge on sleek kitchens, custom decor and art, but they are increasingly turning their attention to something less visible. Forest-fire smoke, the pandemic and increased awareness of sensitivities to mould and other irritants are making their interior environment a priority.
Many are investing in complex systems and flexible designs that promise healthier indoor air but still include spaces, such as glass-enclosed rooms, that make being indoors feel natural.
Listings are increasingly touting pollution-fighting amenities to lure home buyers. In Santa Rosa, Calif., a 13-acre estate for sale at $15 million has a whole-home air purifier. This spring, the Dovecote building, under construction in Manhattan’s Harlem neighbourhood, will offer six, three-bedroom condos built to strict green and clean-air standards, starting at $1.5 million.
Malin, founder of Troon Pacific, a San Francisco-based developer of $15 million to $45 million properties that he calls healthy homes, said he focuses on the smallest details that can affect air quality. New tools allow for more-precise measurement of various particulate matter and carbon dioxide levels, he added. “Covid changed people’s perspective on connecting air quality to health, and the [wildfires] only enhanced that.”
His company’s newer homes have exhaust fans, tied to ventilation systems, in laundry rooms and under sinks, where there are various pollutants and harmful cleaning products, said Malin. Their garages have separate exhaust fans that go on long enough for three air exchanges after the door opens. Ionisation-based filtration systems also are included to eliminate airborne particles too tiny to see but hazardous when inhaled.
His homes also feature perforated piping with in-line fans to exhaust air from under slab foundations to keep contaminated soil vapours from entering the houses.
He said his company is considering building to the Living Building Challenge standard, in which homes have their own electricity, water and waste management. Demand is high for such standards, he said, including passive-home construction, where airtight homes are built using specific materials and energy-efficient systems that circulate highly filtered air. He said passive-home certification is costly, especially for big homes, and has limitations that some homeowners don’t want, like bulky windows. In the long run, however, he said eliminating most heating and cooling bills is probably worth it.
Clean air has become more of a talking point in homeownership, added Elliott Gall, an associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering who researches indoor-air quality at Portland State University.
While high-rises are often built to be airtight, there is a greater focus now on having windows that open while adding better filtration systems, he said. Units with outdoor access sometimes give homeowners another way to control the humidity and indoor air-pollution levels inside the home, he added.
To improve the air quality in her new Charleston, S.C., home, Caroline Smythe, 67, imported a hemp block covered in a mixture of lime and sand for the construction, rather than standard brick. Living in a high-humidity area means moisture can cause mould, said Smythe, whose 2,400-square-foot Lowcountry home was completed in 2023 for about $1 million, including $250,000 for the land.
Incorporating the new material allows the moisture to get absorbed in the walls and keeps humidity steady in the home. “It has very much an earthy feel,” said Smythe of her thick, soundproof walls.
Inside, the home’s two bedrooms and two offices have additional air-filtration elements, including stand-alone air filters for each bedroom. Smythe, a psychiatrist, chose a bamboo kitchen countertop and mineral-based wall paint to prevent any chemical off-gassing. “It makes a huge difference,” she said.
Homeowners have long tried to improve air quality. In the early 1900s, homes that let in fresh air were critical to good health, but by the 1950s some owners were trying to tame outdoor air pollution by focusing on better insulation. More recently, the pandemic made access to outdoor air essential, and turned the focus again to indoor-outdoor living.
Today’s picture is mixed. Climate change has made outdoor air quality less reliable, with the added problems of prolonged forest fires.
Many people are realising their indoor air quality is often compromised by a combination of poor indoor airflow, activities like cooking and cleaning, and outdoor pollutants that settle into confined spaces, said Gall. Homeowners now want better control over their wider living space, including modifiable systems that deal with both indoor and outdoor pollution, he added.
Jason Glatt, a commercial window contractor, and his wife, Lauren Glatt, a stay-at-home mom, of North Bethesda, Md., built a $2.5 million home that includes a children’s slide into a basement playroom, an attic-level cigar room and plenty of entertaining space.
The 11,000-square-foot home’s most striking feature, however, may be the five HVAC units tucked inside utility closets and other closed rooms, controlled by eight thermostats that regulate the air quality as well as temperature in each part of the home. Their $120,000 HVAC system also includes UV lights to prevent mould.
Seth Ballard, an architect who worked with the Glatt family, said individually controlled temperature zones and more return-air vents promote better air flow. Costs can be $100,000 to $200,000 for a 10,000- to 15,000-square-foot house. “They are choosing this over a kitchen countertop,” he said of homeowners in general.
Charlotte of the Upper West Side, a building in Manhattan that opened in 2023, has seven full-floor units, each with a private entrance. The building has airtight construction with enhanced insulation. Each unit has an independent heating-and-cooling system with fresh-air filtration directly into the home that isn’t shared with other spaces.
The system can achieve full air exchange 13 times a day in normal-use mode and more than 28 times a day in boost mode, said the building’s developer John Roe of the New York-based Roe Corp. The building uses louvers outside the windows to deflect the heat of the sun and cut energy use on summer days.
Roe, who lives in one of the building’s 3,570-square-foot, four bedroom, 4.5-bathroom homes, said the air-filtration system and strict passive-home construction added 15% to the building cost.
Three of the building’s units are on sale, from $8.35 million to $17 million.
He said there is little dust in the home, and he swears it now takes longer for his cut white hydrangeas to wilt.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
There are Corvette fans for whom the base US$68,300 car is plenty powerful enough. After all, it produces 495 horsepower and can reach 60 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds. But hold on, there’s also the approximately US$115,000 Z06—with 670 horsepower and able to reach 60 in 2.6 seconds. These split seconds are important for busy people—and for marketing claims. And if that’s not enough go power, there’s the even more formidable 900-horsepower ZR1 version of the Corvette, starting around US$150,000. The hybrid E-Ray, at US$104,900, is pretty potent, too.
But if they’re still too slow, fans of American-engineered muscle can consider the exclusive Texas-built Hennessey Venom F5, a limited-edition carbon-fibre hypercar. Ten years ago, the Hennessey became the world’s fastest production car, defeating the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, with a top speed of 270.49 miles per hour.
That world title is much sought after, and is currently held by the Sweden-built 1,600-horsepower Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, with a two-way average top speed of 277.8 mph. But Hennessey is still very much a contender. The company is hoping the 1,817-horsepower F5 (with 1,192 pound-feet of torque) can exceed 300 mph on the track this year.
Hennessey’s previous Venom GT model (introduced in 2010) was based on the Lotus Exige, with a GM LS-based engine, and was built by partner Delta Motorsport. Spokesman Jon Visscher tells Penta , “The new Venom F5, revealed in 2020, is a 100%bespoke creation—unique to Hennessey and featuring a Hennessey-designed 6.6-litre twin-turbo V8 engine boasting 1,817 horsepower, making it the world’s most powerful combustion-engine production car.” Leaps in performance like this tend to be pricey.
This is a very exclusive automobile, priced around US$2.5 million for the coupe, and US$3 million for the F5 Roadster announced in 2023. Only 30 Roadsters will be built, with a removable carbon-fiber roof. The 24 F5 coupes were spoken for in 2021, but if you really want one you could find a used example—or go topless. In a statement to Penta , company founder and CEO John Hennessey said that while the coupe “is now sold out, a handful of build slots remain for our Roadster and [track-focused] Revolution models.”
Only 24 Revolutions will be built in coupe form, priced at US$2.7 million. There’s also a rarefied roadster version of the Revolution, with just 12 to be built.
The Venom F5 coupe weighs only 3,000 pounds, and it’s not surprising that insane speeds are possible when combined with a hand-built motor (nicknamed “Fury”) created with power uppermost. The V8 in the F5, installed in a rear mid-engine configuration, has a custom engine block and lightweight forged aluminium pistons, billet-steel crankshaft, and forged-steel connecting rods. Twin turbochargers are featured. The F5 can reach 62 mph in less than three seconds, but top speed seems to be its claim to fame.
The driver shifts the rear-wheel-drive car via a seven-speed, single-clutch transmission with paddle shifters. The interior is not as spartan or as tight as in many other supercars, and is able to handle very tall people. The butterfly doors lift up for access.
“With 22 customer Venom F5 hypercars already delivered to customers around the world, and a newly expanded engineering team, we’re focusing the Venom F5 on delivering on its potential,” Hennessey says. “Breaking 300 mph in two directions is the goal we aim to achieve toward the end of this year to claim the ‘world’s fastest production car’ title.”
Hennessey says the car and team are ready. “Now the search is on for a runway or public road with a sufficiently long straight to allow our 1,817-horsepower, twin-turbo V8 monster to accelerate beyond 300 mph and return to zero safely.” The very competitive Hennessey said the track-focused Revolution version of the F5 set a fastest production car lap around Texas’ 3.41-mile Circuit of the Americas track in March, going almost seven seconds faster than a McLaren P1.
The Revolution features a roof-mounted central air scoop (to deliver cool air to the engine bay), a full-width rear carbon wing, larger front splitter and rear diffuser, tweaked suspension, and engine cooling. It’s got the same powertrain as the standard cars, but is enhanced to stay planted at otherworldly speeds.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.