New Homes & Environment

Building an energy-efficient home isn't only a way of getting lower energy bills. It's also an environmental option...

New Homes, Energy Efficiency and Environment

Heat Losses You need to implement the right elements of design construction to get an energy-efficient home, friendly to the environment.

For that you don’t need to compromise your comfort, though you may need to adapt your demands and make the right choices.

Environmentally-friendly homes

To get an environmentally-friendly home, take into consideration some key elements:

- Home Orientation to the sun and siting;
- Home Layout (floor-plan) and home size;
- Home heating and cooling zoning;
- High levels of insulation and sealing;
- A proper sealed and located duct system;
- Advanced windows and glazing (and their number and size);
- Efficient lighting system and advanced appliances;
- A good ventilation system;
- Colors (prefer interior light colors for daylighting, and light colors for roofs to avoid roof overheating in summer);
- Thermal mass (of the construction materials, namely of floors and walls);

These features will allow, in combination, a small heating system (in cold and temperate climates) and little or no air conditioning system, which is great for the environment.

Choose a good homebuilder

If you are going to build a new home, look for and work hard with a builder already informed with energy-efficiency construction.

Most builders aren’t familiarized with energy-efficient home construction. Most of them aren’t aware of green features and methods and will have great difficulties in building a truly green home.

Tastes and Size

Complex and luxury tastes and details aren’t environmentally-friendly. Prefer a modest sized home, with a simple shell. A too big home will squander lots of energy.

We don’t need to compromise our comfort to have an environmentally-friendly home. But we may have to reeducate ourselves and the way we see our homes and the projects associated with them.

Buying an environmentally-friendly home

When buying a new home, pay attention to what is behind its walls. There are extremely important elements such as air sealing and insulation, or framing, that you may have some difficulty in assessing. An energy audit is often the best way to evaluate these features and the energy-efficiency of a building.

A green rating (from Energy Star or other reputable entity: see Buying a new home) is a guarantee that what’s “behind the walls” isn’t a fraud in terms of energy-efficiency and that you will get a home that is friendly to the environment.

See: Buying a new home