What Does It Take To Make A Green Home?

Written by Bruce Sullivan for Bend Living

What does it take to make a green home? It’s more than bamboo floors or low-VOC paint. A green home contains a collection of design elements, materials and equipment assembled with careful attention to detail.

Save Energy

The centerpiece is energy efficiency. You start with the outside shell. It’s like an overcoat – pack as much insulating value as you can into the walls, ceilings and floors. Windows lose seven times more heat than walls, so install the best window you can afford. The building shell has no moving parts and should last the life of the house, so it pays to make it as efficient as possible.

Turn next to the heating and cooling systems. Ducts must be sealed with mastic paste and tested. High efficiency equipment is essential.

Protect Health

Most of us spend 90 percent of our time indoors. If you share your day with dust, mold and toxic chemicals, you increase your health problems. Green homes strive to eliminate assaults on health by minimizing exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs), formaldehyde, mold and other harmful elements. What can’t be avoided must be flushed out through an automatic fresh air ventilation system.

Conserve Resources

Make the home durable enough to last at least 100 years. The number one cause of premature building failure is moisture. Rain and surface runoff assault the building from outside. Water vapor generated by occupants attack from inside.

Live Small

A well-designed small space can be more comfortable than a huge empty expanse. Small houses also cut construction cost, which can be applied to higher quality finishes and furnishing. Use material with post-consumer recycled content. This makes landfills last longer and reduces resource extraction. Buy local products made from local resources. Materials should travel no more than 500 miles. Use local sources of building materials and architectural styles that are appropriate for the local climate. Forested regions could use wood construction. Desert regions could use soil blocks or stone.

Enjoy Nature

People need to connect with nature. Preserve the indigenous values of the building site by carefully preserving existing trees and shrubs. Use native plant species for landscaping. Keep irrigation to a minimum. Protect streams from runoff.

Keep It Simple

That’s a lot to remember. How can you employ these principles without going crazy. Hire skilled designers and builders that have experience with green projects. Get your home certified by an independent third party, such as Earth Advantage. Certification programs set the standard for what it means to be “green.” You can be confident that a certified home shows more than a pretty face, and that it’s beauty is more than skin deep. Certifiers work with builders to identify a package of green features and then visit the home at least twice to insure that these features are properly installed.