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Many people are now choosing to design and build their
new homes incorporating principles of green building design.
At Tierra Concepts, we have extensive experience as a green
builder of sustainable custom homes in Santa Fe. We'll help
you plan a home that is energy efficient and environmentally
friendly.
"Green Building" has developed
quite the momentum as of late, and rightfully so. It is
composed of a lot of good ideas "whose time has come".
Green Building has several component parts or areas of
application. A list of those areas would include: the
Indoor Air Quality, the Thermal Performance, the amount
and type of Resources needed, and the Embodied Energy
of the materials used to build the house.
Indoor Air Quality mostly refers to the off-gassing of
chemicals and vapors by the various building products
used in the house, the quantified concentration of these
chemicals (like formaldehyde) and the time period they
are expected to remain in those concentrations. It also
includes the systems in place to control, condition, and
filter the air inside the home.
The Thermal
Performance of the home is about how much energy is required
to operate for the comfort of the occupants. This discussion
includes the insulation, vapor and air barriers, the
efficiency of appliances using electricity, and the use
of passive and active solar heating, and photovoltaic
or other "renewable" energy source electricity
production.
The Embodied
Energy of the Resources includes the amount of energy
or other resources used in the manufacture of the particular
material, the amount of transportation needed to get
the product to its end use location, the amount of clean-up
and waste generated, the ability of the material to be recycled,
the amount of landfill required to accommodate it at
the end of its life-cycle, the "hazard"
to the environment and employees of handling the material.
Also, not
neatly tucked into one of the categories is how much
water is used by the home and whether there are systems
for wastewater reclamation or for capturing rainwater.
All of this
leads into the broader category of "Sustainable
Living" which begins to ask questions about
how we produce and distribute our food, how much time
and transportation is required for work and other activities,
and how much of the money we spend every day stays in
the community. It asks how all systems are related to
and interconnected with each other and what are the hidden
costs not being factored in to the equation.
At Tierra
Concepts we have been working with these concepts and
applications for many years. Let us help you decide on
the best approach to include sustainability for your
design goals. |
