I got sick in a house that looked fine.

I’m Ava Hartwell. I built a home I trusted. Light still hit the floors. The paint still looked new. For a long time I was told it was stress. A quiet leak in a wall, and the growth behind paint that still photographed well, is what finally named what my body and my kids had been doing in that hallway.

There was a closed bedroom that kept its own weather. A windowsill that would not wipe like dust. A strip of carpet under the glass that stayed cooler than the middle of the floor. A smell that came back after the system ran. I wanted a kit, a machine, a sentence that would settle it. The house kept talking anyway.

Why this site exists

I write so someone else can recognize a room earlier than I did. IndoorAirInsight.com is one person and a small library. It is not a clinic, not an inspection company, and not a set of medical instructions. I am not a doctor. Nothing here names your body or tells you what a landlord must do.

What belongs on these pages are rooms, moisture, smell, a child who wasn’t herself, a body that felt different the minute we left, and products I actually plugged in or scrubbed with — including what did not help. If I can delete the house and a sentence still works as generic wellness, it does not belong here.

What you can expect

You can expect first person. You can expect the building before the lecture. You can expect one public-health sentence when it steadies something I lived, not a costume of science. You can expect corrections when I get something wrong.

If you want a door into the rooms, start at Start Here. The longer story is in the book When Your Home Makes You Sick. How I decide what gets published is on How I write here. If you need to reach me, use the contact page.

I still notice when a bedroom wants the door shut. I still follow a stain that will not wipe. I still take a body that scares me to a person trained for bodies. This site is the map I wish I had while the house still looked fine.