What is a Green Home?
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
There are so many ways to make a home green. The major concepts involve making a home sustainable, optimizing your energy efficiency, creating a healthy air-space, and reducing carbon footprint. Read below for a brief explanation of these terms and then visit my green housing website for practical applications and more.
A home is built sustainably if it has a very small effect or no bad effect on the environment. Use materials that are biodegradable that won’t end up in a land fill when their use is up. Choose materials that can be produced and reproduced quickly like bamboo floors instead of normal hardwood. Use Insulated concrete foam, straw bale, adobe or steel as the structural frame instead of traditional wood frames. Re-use or recycle old materials whenever possible.
Minimizing energy usage is a huge part of going green. Using energy efficient appliances is a great option when replacing appliances. Start with basics like replacing incandescent light bulbs with more efficient fluorescents or halogen lighting. Build solar tubes in your home to bring in more natural light so that you don’t need light bulbs at all! Use appliances in off-peak hours. Remember that most of our electricity currently comes from the burning of fossil fuels that are not renewable.
A healthy environment is a green environment. We must be careful of off-gassing that can happen with paints and other materials used in home construction or remodels. We must make sure to have proper air circulation and filtration. Use washable air filters in forced air units. Make sure your home and ducts are properly insulated. Buy an air purifier to increase air quality.
In everything we do, we must remember the carbon footprint we leave. When purchasing remodeling materials, seek materials and companies that believe in producing their products in eco-friendly ways. Also, it is always best to buy local because less transportation means less pollution.
If you are looking to buy San Diego green homes for sale, I welcome you to visit my website. And I hope you will see the benefits, both for your health and your pocketbooks, in going green in your home today.
San Diego Realtor Adam Pascu asks you to visit his San Diego green housing site for in-depth information on a variety of living green topics.
Tags: green, green homes, green housing, green living, homes, Real Estate