Building a Green Home - Six Ways to Save Energy (and Money)

There are many areas where you can experience significant energy savings when you are building a green home. By working with an architect in the early design stages, many of these areas can be addressed in the design of your energy efficient home, helping you to save money in the future and enjoy a healthier home:

1) Footprint: Reduce the size of your home. Your home design should be limited to only as much space as your family needs. This will keep your energy usage to a minimum right from the start.

2) Windows: Windows are a break in the thermal insulating barrier of your home. The higher quality window you choose the better performance the entire home will achieve.

3) Insulation: Even if you do nothing else, by choosing a superior building envelope for your home like structural insulated panels (SIPs panels) and/or an insulated concrete form foundation system (ICF), you will enjoy huge savings in heating and cooling your home (up to 50%-60% over a home without SIPs).

4) Passive solar design: By incorporating sunlight for lighting and heat and natural ventilation into the basic home design, you can reduce the size of mechanical systems and lighting in the home.

5) Heating system: Consider a renewable energy system to heat and cool the space and tap water in your home (solar, wind, geothermal).

6) Ventilation: Incorporate an air-to-air exchanger, or heat recovery ventilator (HRV) system into your home. This will replace stale air with fresh outdoor air while maintaining the temperature inside the home and conserving energy.

There are many other areas of the home that can be addressed to increase energy efficiency and save money over the life of your home. In the beginning stages of the home design, your green architect will discuss your opportunities to save money while providing a healthy environment for your family.

About the Author: Jeremy Bonin, a principal partner of Bonin Architects & Associates http://www.boninarchitects.com, is an award-winning green architect and the author of TIMBER FRAMES: Designing Your Custom Home. With a special interest in sustainable design and green homes, structural insulated panels (SIPs), as well as timber frame construction, Jeremy incorporates renewable energy practices where possible, including geo-thermal, solar, radiant heat, and energy-efficient foundation systems.

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Building a New House

There are many good reasons to build your own home. The first is probably saving money. The stats show you can save easily thirty percent if you have a good idea about what it is you are doing. There are always exceptions to the rules and it could be more or it could be less but more than likely you will save money over buying an already built house. Another reason is that you get exactly what you want in a house. You get to decide just how big the rooms are and where they are located. If you want the master suite on one side of the house and the rest of the bedrooms on the other, you get to plan it out.

The kitchen is one of the most important rooms since you will be spending so much time and effort in that particular room. Having it laid out in an ergonomic way is very important, especially if you are a gourmet cook and enjoy cooking and baking. Since it is a room where people seem to congregate during parties it may be connected to a larger open family room. You get the idea; it is all up to you.

For instance, you can be creative with a variety of precast concrete products either underground or in the yard or as part of the house. For one, if you live in an area without city sewers, you will need to choose one of the precast septic tanks for your waste. It gets somewhat technical so hiring a professional to help plan this part of it might be wise. Other precast possibilities include making walls out of precast bricks. They are relatively easy to do as they go together nicely. If you are in California you might be able to find some Sacramento precast concrete products for your creative ideas.

Creativity is the fun part of building your own home. There is the business side to it and it is equally as important. Having the right contracts and agreements in place will make the building of your own home a nightmare or a dream. There are numerous things that can go wrong and you need to be as proactive as possible. Having a plan is imperative to heading off those irritating showstoppers such as having the materials on site when the work is suppose to start. There are a number of activities that can occur concurrently and some that have to happen in sequence. If you've never built a house, purchasing a plan may be the prudent thing to do.