A 105-year-old home in Pittburgh with asbestos and lead, a problematic chimney, structural issues, old electrical and a damp basement is proving to be a dream house for the University of Pittsburgh.
How’s that? Well, the university purchased it so that students can use it to work on developing solutions to help make home environments healthy and safe, especially for older adults and people with disabilities. The intent being that these solutions allow people to live independently for as long as possible.
As reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this home is now the university’s Healthy Home Lab, and was owned by one family for generations. And the home even demonstrated the need for aging-in-place solutions: when it was purchased there was a bed in the dining room as the grandmother could not navigate the stairs anymore.
While the home has many issues, as outlined above, these are real conditions of many homes in the area – homes they are looking to develop solutions for, making it an ideal lab situation. The plans include installing smart-home technology, from automatic lights to programmable thermostats. For more about the plans for the Healthy Home Lab, check out the Post-Gazette article here.
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