Building Green From the Ground Up

When you’re building a new house, you’re faced with all kinds of choices which will have an impact on your life to come, how long until your home is finished and your budget. It’s easy to get caught up in the business and forget that these choices have an effect on others as well, and, more broadly speaking, the environment.

Building Green

If you’re looking to build a green home, make sure to find a design and construction company focused on eco minded solutions. They are more likely to be both willing and able to help you achieve your goal. Not only will they have experience and familiarity with the basic principles, but they will also have connections with the companies that provide green and environmentally friendly materials. They will also be able to provide expert advice on what works, what doesn’t and what the costs are.

Orientation

Even before you begin designing your eco-friendly home, you want to consider where it will be built, and what direction it will be facing. The orientation of your home is especially important with regard to sunlight. If you are planning to use solar power, orientation will affect the amount of sun exposure on your panels. Even if you aren’t planning to go that route, the orientation of your building will affect how much you spend on heating and cooling, for example.

Insulation

Another thing that will greatly impact how much you spend on heating and cooling is the insulation in your house. On the one hand, better insulation means less energy wasted on heating and cooling. On the other hand, many insulation materials are produced through toxic means and can be very bad for the environment. More efficient insulation doesn’t have to be more toxic, but make sure to ask about how effective and how eco-friendly your insulation is.

Construction

Construction can be costly, not just to you but also to the environment. Trucks driving in and out and machines that run on gas and electricity create a near-unavoidable carbon footprint, but there are many things you can do to make the construction of your home more eco-friendly. Use sustainably produced and recycled materials wherever you can to reduce the impact of your home’s construction.

Conservation

The whole point of building a home is to live in it. With that in mind, as you buy appliances and systems for your home, make sure that those systems do everything they can to lower water, electricity and gas usage. If everything in your house from the foundation to the roofline is working to conserve energy and resources, you will know that you have done the best you can to save the planet. You will feel the benefit of the choice to build green every day, and so will the planet.

Choosing to build green is a decision that will pay off again and again. Your energy consumption will be lower so your utility bills will be consistently less expensive, your family will be healthier for it and your conscience will be just that little bit clearer.