Posts Tagged ‘Design Build’

Getting eco-friendly furniture is now easier than ever. Many more people are joining the green bandwagon and manufacturers are more than happy to tap into this market, while doing their bit for the environment. More and more people are opting for furniture made from reclaimed or recycled materials over wood and companies are happily going first to landfills and then to the banks.

After bamboo, recycled rubber, tin cans and cane, it is now time for Urban Wood. This is a relatively new entrant is the eco-friendly market but is catching quite fast. Urban wood furniture is made from wood that is salvaged around cities from tree falls, demolitions, and generally from the road side. Most of this furniture maintains its rough and ‘woody’ look and people seem to fall for it.

Another very unique and beautiful furniture or rather material option is found with Kirei USA. Kirei manufactures tiles and furniture material made from coconut, wheat, bamboo and kirei. Their tiles made for coconut bark and fiber area thing of beauty and their Wheatboards bamboo are excellent fire-resistant substitutes for wood. Their flagship Kirei board is lighter than wood but as durable and strong. Each of these materials also possess a texture and colour unique to the raw material that adds to its aesthetic appeal.

Quite frankly, it is not to much effort. Building technology has developed to a great extent since the passivhaus standard came into existence, and it is quite a bit easier to build a passive house now than it was 10 years ago. Most of the building material that you require are easily available. Passive houses are as comfortable to live in as any other homes and in fact are healthier and safer because of the building design.

Passive houses are more expensive to build than conventional homes because of the materials required between five and ten percent depending on size. However, over the long run, they have proven to be much cheaper. When you look at how much a conventional home costs in terms of heating, cooling, ventilating, electricity, and air conditioning – a passive house turns out to be a cheaper bargain.

Passive homes are not that uncommon either. Although it is difficult to find a completely passive house in the US – they’re common in the UK and across Europe. Closer to home, we have green homes that make use of some of the principles of passivhaus and add their own two bits to create an energy efficient green home. In Washington DC, we have architect and green builder Travis Price’s four story green home, just about 10 minutes from the White House. His house was featured on the Discovery channel’s World’s Greenest Homes – which, by the way, is a great show to see how much and how easily people can build green homes for themselves.

In order to be called as a ‘passive house’ a house must be built with certain standards in mind. These standards were created in Europe and hence apply to homes built in the European countries, but are used more or less in the same manner throughout the world:

1. The house should not consume more than 15kWh/m2 in a year for heating and cooling requirements.
2. Its total energy consumption in a year must not be more than 42kWh/m2

In the US, these standards change a little in the following manner:

A house to be called a passive house must be designed in such a way that it consumes 1 btu per square foot per heating degree day for space heating purposes, compared to traditional homes which use anywhere between 5 to 15 btu. Your contractor should be able to explain better what standards he expects to achieve.

Along with these there are also standards for insulation and air-tightness. The structure should not leak air any more than 0.6 times the volume of the house.

Standards of this type make most people think that achieving them will be rather expensive. However, in the long run, the energy consumption of a passive house is less than 25% than that of a normal house. Plus, the overall cost of building, installing and operating a regular house and a passive house are almost the same.

One can’t have a green home without actual greenery, can one? Open spaces, gardens and green areas are quite important in a house, not just for aesthetic appeal, but also because they help largely in maintaining fresh air indoors and keeping a steady temperature. If you’re few of the lucky homeowners whose homes have backyards then there’s nothing like it. We strongly suggest that you make use of the backyard to have your own compost pit or recycling plant. This is not difficult or messy. You’ll get helpful tips on how easily you can make compost at http://www.helpfulgardener.com/.

If you don’t have the advantage of a backyard, you can still do a lot. For starters, depending on the kind of walls you have, you could speak to your contractor about having a controlled ivy growing on the outside wall – but do this with a professional gardener’s advice only. If you have a terrace you could go about converting it into a terrace garden. It’s not too technical and it can keep your roof quite cool during summers.

Indoor plants are an excellent idea. A better idea is to create space outside windows by installing racks for keeping potted plants – They’re an excellent way of providing privacy. Many homeowners will also create indoor gardens – complete with waterfalls. Although these are expensive, you could speak to your contractor about the possibilities.

Remodeling – The Home Plan

Truth be told, when homeowners start off with remodeling their home; they have no idea as to what they actually want the home to look like, unless they know something about construction and architecture. Normally, they will wait till the contractor draws up certain plans, and then will generally approve or disapprove with little conviction in either case. So, when your contractor approaches you with the plans, this is what you should be noticing, and asking:

1. First and most important identify how family members use the rooms. The space requirement and positioning of rooms should be made accordingly in the plans. For example, does your wife take the kids’ lessons while cooking? If so, then the kitchen must be large enough to accommodate the wife’s requirements and sit the kids comfortably while they study. Similarly, if you work from home in the study, then you need to have the bathrooms close by. Or if you like entertaining guests every weekend, the living room needs to be large enough.
2. Keeping the family’s requirements in mind, is the house plan as eco-friendly as it could be? Ask your contractor to explain how much energy the new house will save as compared to the old house and if changes in the plan could make it better or worse. Don’t worry; contractors are more than happy answering questions.
3. How easy will it be to maintain the house, keeping in mind the time you have, and the environmental conditions?