When building a new green home, staying within your budget is essential. First-time home builders often stray too far from their budget and end up in a mid-build crisis! Here are five easy tips to help you build a more sustainable home.
1. Choose the Right Materials
The optimal building materials for a sustainable home include lightweight, durable, prefabricated products. Examples are cross-laminated timber, composite roofing shingles, and insulated concrete framing. Using the right building materials can help reduce maintenance costs and can provide additional insulation when needed.
2. Find Your Location
Location plays a big role in the degree of sustainability your home can reach. The layout and direction of the house determine how much heat enters the home. Hillside construction can add natural insulative value, but that will depend on the orientation of the home. Determining access points for sunlight can also assist with solar panel implementation.
3. Explore Renewable Energy Sources
Installing residential solar panels is a fantastic way to take advantage of the Florida sunshine. Solar energy is free and can be stored in batteries for long-lasting usage. If at any point you have excess power you don’t use, you have the option to sell it into a national electricity grid. Solar panels can generate power during daylight hours and don’t always require sunny weather to work.
4. Eco-friendly Insulation
Any type of insulation will help to cut down on energy used for heating and cooling. There are some categories of insulation that contain fillers and sprays to assist with insulation, but they contain fillers, sprays, and toxic chemicals. An increasingly popular alternative is hemp insulation, which maintains all of the same insulative properties of traditional fiberglass insulation.
5. Select a Green Architect
Find an architect familiar with the history of the location and the area for future planning. Green architecture is becoming extremely popular in the building industry, and many experts are now receiving certifications for building green. Look for LEED Green credentials when choosing an architect to feel confident about your sustainability goals.
