Beyond Comfort: Why We Started Asking a Different Question About Homes

We bought an HVAC company expecting the work to be about equipment. The homes we walked into kept asking a different question.

After we took over an HVAC company in Calgary, we assumed the job was furnaces, air conditioners and water heaters. Some of it was. The rest surprised us.

Equipment that works, a home that doesn’t

A technician would finish a call. The furnace passed its checks. The thermostat read 21°. The homeowner would still tell us something felt off: in the bedroom, the basement suite, the room over the garage.

The equipment was doing its job. The house still wasn’t working for the people living in it.

The same lesson, from another direction

My own family taught me the second half. As my parents grew older, their house stayed a good house. It was solid, cared for and familiar. It had also stopped fitting them. Steps, bathrooms, lighting and temperature that had worked for years began to work against them.

Nothing in that house was broken. It had stopped supporting the people inside it.

A different question

Those two experiences changed the question we ask. We still ask whether the equipment is working. We also ask whether the home is working for the people inside it.

That second question is harder. A thermostat measures one thing. A home is doing more than that: air, humidity, temperature, water, light, sound and layout. Several of those can be measured, room by room.

Understanding comes before action

So we made ourselves a rule. Understand the home before anyone buys anything. Measure first. Explain what the readings mean in plain language. Recommend work only when the readings call for it, and say so when they don’t.

That rule became Wellness by Home™: a way of looking at a house as the place people live, as well as a set of mechanical systems. I wrote Beyond Comfort for the same reason. I wanted homeowners to understand their homes before someone tried to sell them something.

Start with three minutes

Curious about your own home? The Wellness by Home Readiness Check takes about three minutes. It’s free, private and non-diagnostic, and it asks for no payment details.

Prefer to read first? The opening chapter of Beyond Comfort is free.

Carla Berezowski
Founder, Wellness by Home™ · Author, Beyond Comfort

Wellness by Home is an environmental assessment framework. It does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness or medical condition.