Green Homes are Healthy Homes

Green building is so much more than saving energy or reducing a home's environmental footprint. Homeowners of a certified Green Home can realize many more benefits as described below.

Reduced Maintenance & Replacement And Lower Operating Costs - Increased useful life of products and materials will result in cost savings. A properly planned landscaping package will reduce the amount of time spent working in the yard and allow more time to enjoy the outdoors. Your Green Home will have lower energy and water bills as a result of energy and water efficiency measures.

Higher Performing & Durable Home - You will benefit immensely from a better built and higher performing home; 3rd party verification of duct leaks and house air leaks will insure that any deficiencies discovered can be addressed and repaired during construction, saving untold amount of wasted energy; certification experts will approve your home for your LEED (Leader in Energy & Environmental Design), NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) or other local approved Green certification programs, resulting in a higher valued home.

Environmental Friendly & Sustainable Measures - Can one family building a Green Home solve global warming or bring a complete halt to diminishing resources? No. Can one family building a Green Home contribute to the solution and be part of a movement that one day may be the new standard? YES! Through the use of sustainable practices, recycled and renewable products, and more energy efficient systems, we can reduce the impact on our environment and precious resources.

Financial Incentives & Resale Advantages - As green home building has become more mainstream, there are increasingly more federal tax credit and local government and utility company incentive rebates available, lower cost Green mortgages available and more recently, insurance companies are beginning to offer lower premium options. Your certified Green Home will have a higher value than a comparable standard home and if you decide to sell your home, multiple listing systems used by Realtors to sell homes are now recognizing green certification programs and it is much easier to market the benefits of home to buyers.

More Comfortable Home Environment & Increased Safety - Imagine the personal benefits to you and your family by living in a quiet, clean, safe, secure and controlled indoor air quality home - is there anything more important that the health and welfare of your family? Is there really a price tag you can assign to the benefit of building a Green Home to you, your children and your grandchildren? Your family is better protected with the use of high performance smoke detectors

, carbon monoxide detectors, radon testing detectors and security system.

Healthier Home & An EcoGreen Luxury Lifestyle - With improved indoor air quality, less harmful off gases and prevention of water intrusion, which can create mold, your family should be healthier, miss less work and school, which hopefully will result in less medical bills. Now that you have decided to build a high performance and healthy Green Home, your life is changed forever - all for the better!

Would you furnish your new home with anything other than safe, healthy, organic and eco-friendly products? Might you consider living a healthier lifestyle? Will you sleep in peace knowing you have provided your family a safe, clean, healthy living environment? As you can see, there are so many more benefits in owning a Green Home than just "energy efficiency" or being "eco-friendly".

Tips for Green Building

Voters overwhelmingly elected Barack Obama in November 2008, indicating a desire for change. We can only hope our faith is answered with more than intent and rhetoric by this administration. Although it's politically expedient and correct to be pro-environment, we need more than words to solve this global dilemma. The global problems we face cannot be solved by any one man or any single administration.

There is a lot of talk lately about the need for a green economy. We all need it desperately. Regardless of whether the need is for lean manufacturing, green building, recycled materials, or renewable energy, it has become a moral and economical imperitive.

Government can't and doesn't change things of this magnitude, citizens do. It's time to think globally but act locally. We all know we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly foreign oil. I believe this is a matter of national security.

The technology and capabilities are available to reduce energy consumption by as much as fifty percent for every home in America and we can accomplish this within a reasonably short period of time.

There are approximately 120,000,000 homes that need to be retrofitted to become more energy efficient which will also reduce month to month living costs. This can only happen one home at a time by individual consumers. If we can accomplish this, we stand to save $700,000,000,000 every year that is currently spent to fuel our addiction to foreign oil.

It's individual efforts over time that translate into quantifiable global reductions in energy consumption. One changed community multiplied exponentially equates to real change. Every dollar saved or recaptured through energy efficiency is a dollar that could be reinvested into our economy via retail sales, vacations, college education, or debt reduction. Increased revenues for individual states would be realized through the collection of sales taxes which benefit schools, teachers, state funded health organizations, fire and police departments and much more.

One state at a time we can change a nation. We need to rely on our own knowledge, abilities, and talents to accomplish sustainable lifestyle changes. This is the type of change that is positive and contageous.

Our government continues to spend and borrow money we can't afford, from foreign countries that are willing to buy our debt. This mortgages our children and grandchildren's futures. Eventually these countries will either own our nation or our dollar will be worthless. Either way, the outcome is devastating and unsustainable.

It's time for our country and people to evaluate our own nation's history. If we continue on this path, history is sure to repeat itself and this current recession will become a depression.

Our country and it's people have become complacent, forgetful, and too dependent on our government. During World War Two, forty percent of the produce consumed by Americans was home grown in what were called "victory" gardens. This meant that many average American families took it upon themselves to plant, maintain, and harvest fruits and vegetables from their own yards. This was not accomplished through a government mandate, people just took the initiative to take care of themselves. They thought globally, but acted locally.

Remembering our heritage is part of where our strength and resiliance comes from as a nation. This is where we should look to gain the inspiration necessary to carry on and do what needs to be done. It's adaptive spirit and ingenuity that allowed our parents and grandparents to endure the hardships of previous wars. They were able to convert automobile factories into facilities that produced ammunition, aircraft, and military vehicles that supplied our nation and our allies with the hardware and supplies necessary to turn the tide or war in our favor. This is what allowed us to prevail in World War Two.

It is that Tye of ingenuity that makes our parent's and grandparent's generations worthy of respect. They knew what it took to win and were willing to make hard decisions and we need to learn from their example.

Time is not on our side as it relates to tackling green initiatives. However, if we all take individual steps and individual responsibility for our actions, we can make a difference. One person, one home at a time, we can make a difference. If millions of us start to participate, we will see the change in our lifetime. It's the type of change we can be proud of. We also need to let our voices be heard in Washington. We need to become more involved and vocal as a people. We cannot allow government spending to become an out of control runaway freight train. We have to voice our opinions regardless of political affiliation.

We're Americans first. Membership to any political party is secondary.

Our children are counting on us to get it right. Let's do the right thing while there is still time.

Tips for Green Building

For the past 30 years homeowners have been remodeling for various reasons to include, increased space, aesthetics, child safety, or just an overall improved quality of life.

Back in the 70's Americans experienced the revelation that our country and citizens had become too dependent on foreign oil. As long as the oil embargo endured, Americans sought out ways to reduce their energy consumption which included retrofitting their homes.

The United States Department of Energy introduced a solar research program which focused on reducing building energy and consumption. It was determined that we indeed knew how to reduce energy consumption in homes and in home building. If we had kept building energy efficient solar homes we could have saved the equivalent of the amount of oil we were importing from middle eastern countries by now.

Eventually oil prices began to come down. Unfortunately, this diminished the interest and emphasis on creating and sustaining energy efficient lifestyles. The tax benefits and credits for utilizing solar energy expired back in 1985. The entire solar industry contracted as a result.

Asians and Europeans assumed the quest and continued down the path to energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption in virtually all sectors. As a result, their countries are among the global leaders in energy reduction. America, the sleeping giant, is finally awakening again.

We've come full circle as a nation and as a society and we find ourselves crossing the same bridge again, however the stakes are much higher now. According to oil experts we have already exhausted more than one half of all the oil in the world. The balance of remaining crude oil is further underground and therefore more difficult to access.

Offshore oil reserves are farther out to sea and the oil is more chemically complex which creates unique challenges. Essentially these challenges create difficulties that inevitably make oil more expensive. Oil will eventually become too expensive to utilize.

All fossil fuels are becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain. Our country now imports most of our natural gas. The world demand for coal from China is also causing costs to rise. Now that we've considered the ramifications and global impact of burning fossil fuels, we've finally faced the realization that we can no longer bank on fossil fuels to sustain our power requirements for the future.

Solar Hot Water Heating

Solar hot water benefits

One of the most energy intensive (and therefore costly) processes in any house is the heating of water. Heating water accounts for more than 20% of residential energy use in the USA and around 40% of energy used in Australian homes.

This represents not only a massive chunk of your power bill, but also a substantial proportion of carbon dioxide emissions. A solar hot water system, over a period of time, will save you money and lessen your environmental impact.

Solar hot water equipment types

There's two main types of solar hot water systems

Passive: A passive system consists of a tank for hot water storage, a solar collector, piping and frame. The entire system is mounted on the roof. Water heated by the panel flows upward naturally and then is gravity fed into the house.

Active: An electric pump is used to circulate the fluid through the panel collector, meaning that the tank does not need to be on the roof. The advantages of an active system include:

a) can be easier to get local government approval
b) less weight and strain on the roof
c) doesn't require major roof modifications
d) more aesthetically pleasing design

Solar collectors

The solar collector is the business end of a system, heating the water and many advancements have been made in solar collector technology in recent years to improve performance. The most common types of solar collectors:

Flat plate

A flat plate collector is the traditional type and consists of an insulated box containing a black sheet of metal with embedded pipes. The heat is absorbed by the sheet and transferred to the water in the pipes.

Evacuated Tube

An evacuated (or vacuum) tube collector consists of glass tubes with a layer of heat absorbent coating through which water pipes run. As the tubes encasing the water pipes are a vacuum, this reduces heat loss; making them more efficient than flat plate collectors; so these are particularly suited to colder climates. While evacuated tube systems are a little more expensive than flat plate, their increased efficiency (up to 97% thermal energy retention) more than makes up for the added cost.

Heat pumps

Heat pumps are a form of solar hot water technology that don't use any sort of collector. Heat pumps use heat in the air to raise water temperature - even in freezing conditions down to -10 Celsius (14F). A heat pump is like a refrigerator, but in reverse. I've spoken to a few people who have these units, and even in the depths of winter they've had no problems with a steady supply of hot water.

Steps to Live Green At Home

In this section are 10 more things you can do as an individual or along with family members to shrink your ecological footprint while retaining your quality of life, thereby making the future of our planet much brighter.

•Drive less
Walk, bike, and ride-share more.

•Eat Greener
Eat lower on the food chain – it's good for the planet.

•Energy Efficiency
Make your home energy and water efficient.

•Think Beyond Grass
Let your lawn go natural for wildlife.

•Perfect Paper
Save trees by reducing your junk mail and using paper with 100% post-consumer waste content.

•Recycle Electronics
Recycle all computer diskettes, CD discs, videos and batteries, and shift to using less hazardous, rechargeable Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries.

•Reuse Whenever Possible
Drink more water, and use reusable mugs and dining-ware.

•Recycle Everything Else
Recycle your aluminum, glass, and plastic products, as well as newspapers and mixed paper.

•Contribute
Make a contribution to conservation by supporting local, national, and international environmental non-profits.

•Get Involved Locally
Take conservation actions in your own community.

Easy Steps to Live a Green Lifestyle

Green living is not only about people. It is also about plants, animals, and the places they live. Green living means thinking about climate change and energy use, as well as about biological diversity and the well-being of those who draw their livelihoods from nature.

We know this takes effort. Here is a useful list of simple steps you can take to begin thinking greener, acting greener, and living greener.

1. Be Informed
The first step toward being a responsible green citizen is knowing the issues and taking time to think about them.

2. Travel Sustainably
Next time you go on vacation or need to take a business trip, consider ways you can cut down on carbon emissions.

3. Be a Green Consumer
It is becoming easier and easier to know what effects the things you buy have on the environment.

4. Eat Green
Environmentally friendly eating habits are easy and healthy.

5. Explore Biodiversity
The diversity of nature is everywhere. So why not roll up your sleeves and see what’s been living right outside your door?

6. Enhance Your Local Biodiversity
Contributing to diversity in your own neighborhood can go a long way toward feeling good every day.

7. Minimize Your Carbon Footprint
By reducing the energy and fossil fuels you use, you are saving the environment from further damage.

8. Offset Your Carbon
After you have done everything you can to minimize your carbon footprint then you can think about how to offset what residual impacts remains.

9. Influence Your Friends, Family, and Community
A green You is a great role model for your friends, family, and colleagues.


10. Be a Conservation Advocate
Do a little or do a lot, but raise your voice today.