Posts Tagged ‘Built Green’

Whenever we hear people talk about green building or designing and constructing eco-friendly homes, it’s mostly reservations and apprehensions. One of the major reservations is people thinking that they will have to give up convenient things and ‘settle’ for inconvenient, unreliable stuff – particularly when it comes to building material. Boy, are they wrong! Our aim to create green homes constantly brings us across wonderful eco-friendly products that are surprisingly better than what we’ve been using so far. And one such material is: American Clay Earth Plaster.

American Clay is a natural and environment-friendly substitute for regular plaster and performs all the functions of a regular plaster, only better. Regular plaster is made out of gypsum, cement, acrylic or lime, whereas American Clay is mud/earth/clay based. This makes a huge difference to the texture, stability, application, versatility, esthetics and health of the walls. American Clay Plaster allows walls and surfaces to breath, doesn’t attract dust and mostly importantly – takes much longer to ‘set’ than normal plasters – so you have more time to work, without waste.

American Clay Plasters are made of recycled aggregates, natural clay and uses natural pigments to achieve its 42 colors. American Clay makes three different types of plasters to achieve three different finishes and for three different types of plastering requirements. Coloring pigments are separately available so that users can create their own tints and hues based on a shading card. Their website, www.americanclay.com also has a ‘how-to’ section.

We’ve been talking about passivhaus a little too many times in recent posts, and you’ve also probably been wondering about what’s so great about passivhaus. Depending on what kind of research you’ve been doing about building or remodeling you might have come across the term ‘Passive House’. Well, passivhaus is the German term for the same.

Passivhaus is a building technique, or rather a set of building principles which result in creating a house that is extremely efficiently heated and cooled without the need for any external cooling/heating system. To make things simpler – imagine your current expenditure on heating and cooling – in terms of the system/equipment, the energy usage and the maintenance. Now bring this expenditure to almost 10% of its cost – this is what the Passivhaus technique looks at achieving.

Passivhaus achieves such efficiency by the inherent design and plan of the building itself, ambient and incident sunlight and weather conditions like windiness, cloudiness and sunshine. The principles of passivhaus are rigorous and strict ensuring that the structure built is extremely air-tight, optimally utilizes ventilation, super-insulated, and can remain at constant temperatures regardless of outside weather. Most of all – passive houses are sustainable, minimizing usage of energy and creating extremely healthy indoor air quality. Any energy, is required is produced with the help of solar systems – further reducing the carbon footprint and cost.

And contrary to what you might think, passive houses are as normal looking as regular homes and also not as expensive to build as others.

When you approach an eco-friendly contractor to build you an eco-friendly home one of the things he Is going to suggest (and carry out too) is the switch to solar electricity. Depending on your requirement, resources and the location, there are quite a few options you have when it comes to using solar electricity: You could install solar panels to generate total or partial capacity or you could buy it directly from your provider.

Your contractor will suggest that installing solar panels will be the most effective way to turn your home green. A better contractor, however, will suggest ways to make the best of the ambient sunlight you have for lighting purposes, so that you’re now powering other electrical appliances with solar electricity, and not so much the lights. This can be done by the Passivhaus standard which will entail constructing the home in such a manner that most of your rooms are lit up with natural sunlight, while ensuring that it doesn’t heat up the house unnecessarily.

The other things you want to discuss are appliances that save electricity: EPA certified one, CFLs, and the latest – LED lamps. Also, it is very important to ensure that you and the contractor carry out an energy audit of your existing house first in order to compare the savings your new house will generate.

When you finally meet a few green remodeling contractors who fit your bill, you need to discuss certain things with them in order to know which one of them you would want to trust your house to. This is a crucial junction, at which you can do a lot to ensure that the remodeling project goes off smoothly, and you get exactly the house you want. Asking the right kind of questions will help you make this possible.

1. Can he provide References: Always check a contractor’s past clients. If possible, check out the homes he has remodeled. This will give you an idea about his style and also directly get to meet with the clients. It is also important that this past project happened in the near past.
2. Is he a member of any trade association: This will ensure that your contractor has a verifiable and authentic background.
3. Why he is in this business: Green building requires a certain type of contractor. He’s got to have some environmentalist streak in him, in order to be a genuine green builder. From his answer you will be able to judge if he seems to be the genuine type.
4. Will he also get permits if required: Almost always remodeling projects require permits from local authorities. If your contractor can offer this, then it’s a huge task taken off your shoulders.
The NARI website also provides a good list of questions that you could ask contractors before selecting one.

Things to-do Before You Start Green Remodeling

1. Be informed: Green remodeling is a wonderful idea, but you should not jump into it without first understanding what it is and what it requires. You need to understand how un-green your house is now, what you can change, what you cannot and what are your options. Start by researching websites like http://www.epa.gov; http://www.energy.gov; http://www.energystar.gov; http://www.usgbc.com and other websites that will provide with resources on green building.
2. Do some home-work: You cannot start remodeling without first figuring out what is wrong with your house the way it is. Of course, a good remodeling contractor will help you with this, but it is good if you have some idea of your own. Start by finding out how un-green your house is currently. Carry out an energy-audit to find out how much energy your house consumes currently; calculate how much water you waste everyday and also what kind of harmful materials your house is using currently. The EPA website is a one stop shop for all info needs. Once you have some idea of how much your house accounts for environmental degradation, you can now have an intelligent discussion with your contractor.
3. Don’t forget the finances: Remodeling, green or not requires a decent sum of money. However, when it comes green remodeling, most authorities loosen their purse strings quite a bit. Most cities and counties in the US provide many incentives to homeowners for going green, in terms of tax benefits. Check with your county clerk or city civic authorities. Private organizations also offer loans to homeowners for green remodeling – for example – GE. Most importantly, you need to determine the current value of your home, and what the value of your home might be after it is green built. If the equation doesn’t sound appealing, you might want to think it over.