Four Rules of Green Home Design
The way we humans are currently living isn’t going to be sustainable for long. This is a fact that we’re becoming more and more aware of every day. Because of this, green home design is becoming a more and more mainstream part of the housing market. Some experts predict that green home design will soon make up a huge slice of the real estate industry.
In the United States, homes create 38% of the total carbon emissions. Especially if we want to stop global warming, building our homes with green home designs will have a significant effect on the future. If you’re looking to incorporate a bit of green home design, there are a hundred small things you can do to green-up your home. But if you’re seriously interested in reducing the impact your home has on the environment, there are four basic green home design concepts to follow.
Green Home Design Rule 1: Smaller is Better
There’s something gloriously attractive about large, mansion-like homes. Unfortunately, large home need a huge quantity of fuel for heating and cooling– fuel which is generally in for form of environment-killing fossil fuels. These homes also require more resources for building and create more waste as a result. So if you’re looking to incorporate green home design in your building plans, build small.
Green Home Design Rule 2: Incorporate Passive Solar Design
Passive solar heating is one of the backbones of green home design. The relatively simple concept behind passive solar design is to design a home according to the climate. In warmer climates, homes are designed to absorb less heat. In colder areas, design is used to reduce the amount of heat lost. To do this, green home design is incorporated into the orientation of the building, the location of the windows, the flooring (stone is best), and other elements of the home to reduce the amount of energy wasted.
Rule 3 in Green Home Design: Recycle and Reuse Materials
Almost everything used in a traditional home harms the environment in some way, either by its manufacture (plastics and artificials) or its transport (naturals). The use of renewable or recycled materials which are manufactured locally helps to reduce the damage building can have on the environment. Consider installing bamboo or recycled wood flooring and incorporate a green home design using recycled materials, such as cellulose insulation and lumber composites, throughout the home.
Rule 4 in Green Home Design: Shrink your AC
Heating and cooling a home accounts for the huge majority of its energy consumption. And no matter how tempting a large AC system might sound during the hot summer months, this type of system can ruin your good intentions for a green home. Big air conditioning systems cool the air too much and too quickly, causing them to turn on an off constantly. Because of this, they don’t last nearly as long as smaller systems, creating a huge amount of waste along with energy loss.