There’s a lot of talk these days about “going green” as part of a great political outcry over what is happening to the environment. You hear companies talking about it, politicians talking about it; even homebuilders are talking about building green homes, otherwise known as alternative building. Yet, in the midst of all this media attention and hype, is there something to this green movement? Is it possible and practical to build your home with green technology? Or, is that just something for leftover hippies and other fringe elements?

When people talk about green they are usually talking about key ecological design principles. That definition may not apply all that well to how to build your home; so, let’s start by defining “green building technology” at least in a manner that we can all agree with. In the case of a house, once the construction is finished, the home itself isn’t going to produce much garbage or pollution; so that’s not what we’re talking about. No, for a home, the term “green” is more about energy efficiency than anything else.

Building an energy efficient house isn’t just politically correct; it’s good financial sense for your family as well. For most families, energy costs are one of their major budget items. So, anything that can be done to reduce the home’s energy costs will help your family have more disposable income for the things you want to do.

In This Section, We’ll be Talking About:

• Energy Efficient Homes
• Benefits of Making Your Home Green
• Passive Solar Design for Your Home
• Active Solar Design for Your Home
• Using Green Building Materials in Your Home
• Installing Solar Roof Shingles

• Installing Solar Modules
• Putting Solar Hot Water Heating in Your Home
• Saving Water in Your Home
• Do You Want to Install a Hot Water Recirculating System?
• Geothermal Heat Pumps
• Wind Power for Your Home
• Solar Tube Lighting for Your Home

Designing a Green Home

If you want to build a green house, you must start right at the design stage of your home building project. Many of the most important things that you can do to make your home more energy efficient are extremely difficult to do as a retrofit, but simple when you plan to do them from the start.

Green home building technologies must accomplish one of the following:

• Save on heating costs
• Save on cooling costs
• Save on water usage
• Save on water heating costs
• Save on lighting costs

Since heating and cooling costs are typically the biggest part of a family’s energy bill, the first thing you must consider when building for energy efficiency is whether you have the potential to save more money on heating or cooling. People who live in the far south don’t have to spend much money heating their homes; not only do they not have much cold weather, but they don’t have the drastic cold of the northern states. On the other hand, keeping their homes cool is a major problem. So, for those people, energy efficiency means cooling efficiency.

Obviously the opposite of this would be true for people who live in the northern states. For them, being able to heat their home efficiently is the major consideration. So, for them, passive solar measures, such as large south facing windows are a great advantage. For the southerner, those large windows just mean more cooling costs.

Justifying the Cost of More Active Green Measures

Passive solar heating is one of the easiest and least expensive ways of going green in your home. “Active” green measures can include anything from solar hot water heating, to solar panels that produce electricity to installing a windmill for energy production.

The biggest impediment for most active measures is the cost of purchasing the original equipment. Granted, that equipment will probably last the life of your home, but for many people, that additional expense, at the same time they are building their home, is more than they can handle.

It’s important to do a cost analysis on any active green measures you are thinking of installing in your house. Let’s take a windmill for example. That windmill may cost several thousand dollars to buy and install. Okay, but the real question is how much money is it going to save you every month on your electrical bill? That’s how the windmill is going to pay for itself.

Just to pull a few numbers out of the air, let’s say that windmill costs $5,000 to buy and install, but it will produce enough electricity to save you $100 per month on your electrical bill. Of course, your actual savings depend upon electric service rate. Dividing that $5,000 of investment by $100 a month gives us 50 months, just a little bit over four years. That’s a pretty quick return on that investment. Not only is it paying for itself in four years, but after that, it’s still saving you that $100 per month. If you were a banker, and someone offered you a deal like that, you’d probably be very interested. So, as long as the initial investment doesn’t increase your mortgage payment by more than what it’s saving, it’s a good investment.

On the other hand, you may not be able to justify that additional up-front cost, even with the savings. That doesn’t mean that you have to throw the idea away. In cases where you can’t justify the initial investment at the time of construction, you can always build your home so that it is ready to receive that green technology, and then add it later.

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