Materials & Toxicology

What this domain covers

This domain governs what is allowed into the house, item by item. Every interior-affecting item passes through an Approved Materials Catalog before it is specified. Every entry is versioned and nothing is overwritten, because an audit can only confirm what was recorded before installation.

It covers the bar a product must clear to be admitted, the documentation that must come back with it, the timing of wet-applied finishes so their heaviest emission period falls before anyone moves in, the cleaning agents used at the final clean, and the language discipline that keeps a manufacturer's marketing claims out of every Sage Co. document.

A product that has not cleared admission is recorded as undocumented and is not installed. It is never described as safe, and never as unsafe.

Why it matters in Central Texas

Heat and humidity change how materials behave. Emission from many building products rises substantially as temperature rises, and rises again with the moisture in the air — the same product in an Austin summer is not the same product it was in a laboratory at standard conditions.

That is the plain reason this domain carries more weight in climate zone 2A than in a cool, dry one. It is also why the Standard treats the timing of finishes and the ventilation that follows as part of the material decision rather than separate from it.

How depth is chosen

This domain offers two rungs rather than three: Essential and Comprehensive. Essential is the admission floor Sage Co. keeps beneath the outside specialist's own bar, and that floor cannot be lowered for any project. Anything concealed inside an assembly is held to it at every depth, because once it is covered it cannot be changed without opening the wall.

Comprehensive adds a further set of screens applied at admission, aimed at the finished interior surfaces a family lives against. There is no middle rung here.

What we document

The Record holds every catalog entry with its version and the version of the admission bar applied to it, the safety and disclosure documentation behind each admitted product, the finish schedule with its dates, the catalogued cleaning agents, and confirmation that nothing undocumented was installed.

Verification in this domain is a documentation audit by an independent auditor, comparing every installed item against its approved entry. It is not a measurement. What a finish released cannot be measured after handover, and the air in the finished house is Indoor Air Quality's measurement, not this domain's.