Green Building
Green Building
GREEN BUILDING
You can’t turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, or surf the Internet without seeing something about green building. Green building is making the shift from being a hot trend to a sought-after building practice.
What is Green Building?
Green building
is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings and
their sites use and harvest energy, water, and materials. Basically, a
green home uses less energy, water, and natural resources; creates less
waste; and is healthier for the people living inside. Green building
is not just about selecting green materials; it is about design
strategy as well with the overall goal of reducing building impacts on
human health and the environment through better positioning, design,
construction, operation, maintenance, and removal.
How About Sustainability?
Green building
is sometimes known as, or considered an essential component of, general
sustainability. General sustainability covers sustainable design,
building and developmental elements. Very generally speaking,
sustainability refers to the process of analyzing interactions between
many building variables and coming up with design solutions to maximize
efficiency on all fronts. There are different levels of sustainability,
so the level of efficiency can very from building to building. This is
sometimes referred to as "shades of green” – an informal indication of
how green the home is or the level of resource efficiency achieved.
Homes with one or two green measures are sometimes called light green
while homes with several green measures are called dark green. Read
more about green building rating systems.
What Goes Into Building Green?
There is not one single formula for green building. It is not as if you can put the same green building in four different states. They have to be regionally specific. Green building
architects perform a regional analysis of topography, soil, climate,
wind patterns, and sun angles. And, when designing a green building,
architects take an integrated approach thinking about how a building
works as a system and designing that system to be environmentally
friendly. They take into account elements such as positioning of the
home so that it benefits from everyday breezes, sun orientation,
passive solar heating and cooling, as well as use of ventilated roof
systems, carefully sized roof over hangs, sealed attics and green
energy appliances. Basically, they aim to make homes durable and low
maintenance. In the end it’s about good design that saves time, energy,
labor and materials.
What Are Some Benefits of Green Building?
Some of the many benefits of a green home
include economic benefits such as lower energy and water bills;
environmental benefits like reduced greenhouse gas emissions; and
health benefits such as reduced exposure to mold, mildew and other
indoor toxins. The Environmental Protection Agency ranks indoor air
pollution among the top five environmental risks (read more about indoor air quality). Green building aims to mitigate those risks. Read more about the benefits of green building.
What Does it Mean to Live Gently?
Green building spans
the complete building life cycle. However, the benefits do not have to
stop at the end of the building cycle. Consumers can choose to live
green – or live gently as some say. Choosing a lifestyle of reducing,
reusing and recycling materials, water and energy whenever possible
benefits everyone. Reduce the amount and toxicity of trash you discard.
Reuse containers and products; repair what is broken or give it to
someone who can repair it. Recycle as much as possible, which includes
buying products with recycled content.
Thinking about building a green home , we can help. Tell us about your ideas and we can match you with a green builder or architect.
- In This Section…
