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Green Built Homes-Making Efficient Decisions
Builders opt from a variety of green features. Rating systems are based on the number of features. Certain features are deemed more important/effective than others. These choices can be made by homeowners who want to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. Austin Energy offers a tremendous amount of information when you are making these decisions.
Save Money and Resources
- The first decision is choosing the appropriate home site. Large trees may increase the price of the property, but the energy efficiency that they can offer may make this a better decision, both aesthetically and financially. Siting the house on the property, to gain air flow and avoid western exposure, is the next step.
- A home designed with large roof overhangs will shade the home and prevent direct heat gain.
- Radiant barrier is coating on the inside of the roof is one of the most cost effective and effective features you can add. It has a metal ingredient that reflects the heat before it enters the space. These barriers can be sprayed or painted onto the surface.
- With natural gas and water prices on the rise, properly-sized and highly-efficient furnaces, air-conditioners, and water heaters save money every month. They also require less maintenance than standard units.
- Energy Star® units use much less electricity and water than average appliances, and make a smaller dent in your family’s utility budget and helps to reduce the family's Carbon Footprint.
- Advanced lighting packages, including compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), offer excellent light quality, extremely long life, and require only a fraction of the electricity of a normal bulb.
- Optimally-insulated walls and roofs are an integral part of an energy-efficient and comfortable building “shell”. Built Green builders use both blown-in products and expertly-installed batts to ensure that no energy is wasted in heating and cooling the home.
- Draft-free, well-insulated low-emissivity (Low-e) windows make a significant contribution to the overall performance of the “building envelope”. And since they resist the transfer of cold air, they expand the area of useable, comfortable space in a room.
- “Low-flow” faucets, shower heads, and toilets perform at least as well as their water-wasting counterparts, and markedly cut back on the household’s increasingly-expensive “water budget”.
- Advanced irrigation practices take the guess-work out of watering the lawn and complying with water restrictions. Landscaped receive the optimal amount of water, and become less of a burden on homeowners’ time and wallets.
- Furnaces and water heaters are situated centrally to where they’ll be most often needed, and their lines and ducts are well-insulated to minimize energy losses. Less waiting for hot water and more consistent levels of conditioned air are the result. Tankless water heaters can be energy efficient. Inquire about adding a pump to speed up the flow of the water. Often, you can waste water when using a tankless water heater. A pump will resolve this issue.
- Recessed lights can be the source of air leakage and associated thermal losses. Air-tight versions of these lights solve this problem.
- “Xeriscape” yard treatments combine drought-resistance with natural beauty, and marry creativity to the goal of conserving water with the inclusion of hearty native plant selection.
· Well-insulated doors are as stylish as any other, but offer the added benefit of correcting this thermal Achilles-heel of many building envelopes.
- Garage doors are often facing west. If not properly insulated, they can cause a lot of heat gain in the garage. If your garage is attached (not the greenest choice), this will add to your cost.
Durability and Low-maintenance
- Ask your builder how he plans to diminish construction waste. Will the waste that does result end up in the land fill? It can be ground at the site. It can also be buried and create an attractive berm, to become part of the landscape.
- Expertly air-sealed building envelopes fitted with meticulously-detailed moisture planes combine to create a wall system that resists the degrading effects of air and water transmission that can plague lower-performing walls.
- Outdoor decking and landscaping products made from low-impact polymers and composite recycled products not only look better than many types of lumber, but they also wear several times longer and require much less maintenance over time.
- “Engineered lumber” can be used throughout the home’s frame, and can provide a straighter, stronger, more consistent structure that protects forests by using only fast-growing, rapidly renewable tree species.
- Reclaimed materials are one more version of sustainable, green building. These materials also can offer a warmth and charm that can only come from reusing old, loved materials.
- Tough, long-lasting exterior finishes like stone, stucco, and fiber cement siding help to ensure that a home endures for generations, and that it requires less upkeep over those years as well.
- Landfills are heaped with lower-quality roofing products, but that won’t happen when your builder selects either long-rated shingles or durable materials like slate, cement, or metal. Metal is a radiant barrier.
- Even simple items like downspout extensions on gutters provide an effective means of keeping water away from foundations and basement walls.
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Healthy and Comfortable Indoor Environments
- Ducts transport conditioned air from the furnace or air conditioner throughout every room in the house. Or at least they’re supposed to. Too often, installed ducts are leaky enough to create negative pressures in a home that draw combustion gasses from the furnace and water heater into the living space. Tight ducts prevent this potentially dangerous situation, and make sure that the correct amount of warm or cool air is reaching every room.
- Since tight home enclosures make outside air much less likely to randomly leak into the living space, mechanical ventilation is a great means of providing the right amount of fresh air for your family around the clock.
- Careful attention to the location and particular performance qualities of windows throughout the home contribute to not only increased energy efficiency, but also to protection from overheating, glare, and damage to furnishings from excessive solar radiation.
- Carpets made from recycled materials or from less toxic materials look great, wear like iron, and improve the quality of the air you breathe every day.
- Cabinets made with low volatile organic compound (VOC) materials or solid wood components are a stylish assurance that the air in your home is as free from these chemical baddies as possible.
- Low volatile organic compound (VOC) interior paints are to be applied for a more beautiful and healthy home.
- Best-practice air filtrations methods, whether high-efficiency air filters or others, offer added assurance for families with sensitive children or heightened concern for indoor air quality.
- When special sealing practices are undertaken to isolate the garage from the house, homeowners can rest assured that what comes out of their car won’t go into their lungs. Best decision is a detached garage.
- We have a frightening increase of asthma in children. Improving home air quality is an important step to reduce this risk.
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