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Green Building

Green Building is high performance building, with respect to resource efficiency in materials, waste disposal and environmental impact, using practices applied to construction through all phases that are sustainable in ways that promote a healthy environment. The Green Building philosophy fosters a global value shift toward a sustainable and secure future. Green Building includes practices from the manufacturing to the disposal of products with respect to resourcefulness and sustainable qualities. This Green Building philosophy is vital in achieving a harmonious existence with our environment. Green Built homes provide home owners with more natural light, improved air quality and other factors ultimately leading to a higher and improved quality of life that contributes to higher comfort, health, and levels of productivity. Green Building products save energy, conserve water and natural resources, provide a much healthier and productive indoor environment, and reduce impact on the environment and community.

Green Building Guidelines

The United States Green Building Council (USGBC), a non-profit organization, developed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design System (LEED) to provide a guideline and rating system for new green building and green built homes. By the end of 2007, more than half of the members of the National Association of Home Builders, responsible for building over 80% of the new homes in the United States, will be incorporating green building practices into the development, design, and construction of new homes.

Lot Preparation, Design, and Layout of New Home

Careful planning can reduce the environmental impact and costs of new home building in regards to the surrounding natural features such as soil and vegetation, while enhancing the long-term performance of the new green built home.

Efficiency of Resources

Certain styles and framing techniques of Green Building can optimally maximize the use of building materials and resources while reducing the cost and timeliness of home maintenance. Green Building practices equally construes important aspects and dramatic reduction of construction waste.

Energy Efficiency

Refers to the Green Building concepts most accurately measured in regards to the usage of energy efficient systems including lighting and major appliances which will ultimately yield dramatic utility bill savings, both long-term and short-term while providing increased comfort to green built home owners and decreased emissions, green house gasses detrimental to the environment.

Water Efficiency/Conservation

The significant need of an adequate and sufficient water supply is of growing concern for real estate and new home owners, varying from region to region. Applying Green Building practices in regards to water usage, Green Built new home owners will have reduced utility bills regardless of location and without sacrifice to jobs or tasks performed.

Occupancy Comfort and Indoor Environmental Quality

The Green Building practices deal with the effective management of moisture, ventilation, and other issues creating a healthier indoor atmosphere and breathable air quality resulting in the obscelecense of indoor mold spores and particulates and ultimately creating a higher quality and longer longevity of life with lower health risks and health related costs, as real estate and home owners spend 90% of their life inside. The medical costs and health insurance of poor indoor air quality from convention buildings and homes are endless, including higher amount of time with an illness leading to more ”sick days,” respiratory ailments, allergies and asthma, and decreased productivity.

Operation, Maintenance, and Education

It is important for new Green Built home owners to understand how these Green Building concepts are applied and integrated in their new Green Built home in order to maximize the available benefits, both long term and in daily usage, financially quantifiable and simultaneously environmentally and locally responsible, conducive to the maximization of appreciation of their green built home.

Why Global Demand for New Green Built Homes is Rising

Excessive consumption is an aspect of society largely responsible for the depletion of natural resources globally and locally and an accelerant of global warming, an alarming earth threatening consequence. The construction and maintenance of conventional buildings are directly responsible for 40% of United States energy use and 30% of wood and raw materials use. Conventional buildings that do not participate in the Green Building Philosophy are a main contributor to global warming by generating 30% of the Carbon Dioxide emissions in the United States. The federal government has also introduced financial benefits, rebates, and tax breaks for new Green Building and the application of Green Building practices in new homes, buildings, commercial real estate, offices, and schools. Green Building is continuously becoming more cost effective, providing an extremely comparable first-cost of Green Built homes to conventional homes to real estate and home owners, combined with federal government incentive and continual energy and water utility savings and less time and money spent on upkeep and maintenance, a major shift to Green Building and Green Built homes is eminent. A steady trend of the decline of the costs of Green Building materials and Green Building products and costs ultimately associated with Green Building, combined with increased experience and knowledge of planning, Green Built Homes are priced more reasonable at first cost than real estate and home owners are aware of. The financial benefits for a new Green Building and new Green Built home are between $50 and $70 per square foot, more than ten times the minor additional cost associated with new Green Building. The financial benefits of new Green Built homes and new Green Buildings include lower energy and water use, directly reflected in utility bills, dramatically lower waste, emissions and green house gasses, decreased time and resources in operation and maintenance, and increased overall productivity and physical health and well being.

Green Built Education

Green Built schools offer students and real estate and home owners a dramatic improvement of an educational environment which results directly in a quantifiable increase in test scores. Asthma, the leading cause of admission of children and students into hospitals, and the leading cause of days absent from class can be dramatically improved with the improved air quality provided from Green Building. Under the Federal Education Bill, public schools and their respective states will lose billions of dollars in federal funding if students do not meet annual standardized testing requirements. Students receiving their education in Green Built schools achieve 20% better testing results, quantifiably tested copious time with the same results.

Green Building Facts

The United States Environmental Protection Agency lists indoor air pollution in the top five environmental risks. Unsatisfactory and unhealthy air is found in over 30% of conventional buildings and in 0% of Green Buildings.

The World Health Organization finds that indoor air pollution causes over 14 times more deaths than outdoor air pollution.

Twenty percent of all conventional housing in the United States has particulates of lead, which results in poor medical health from kidney and red blood cell damage, to the impairment of mental and physical development, and an increase of blood pressure.

The United States, home to 4.5% of the world population, is directly responsible for over 15% of global wood consumption.