Green Home Conversion
Last year saw a focus on using the term “green” in marketing, and there has been a rise of businesses offering services which appeal to this idea. The idea of a “green” home is much older though. I can remember a few years ago when the concept of green home was really taking off in the main stream media. Straw bale construction was considered way out there at the time, and few home inspectors knew about the building codes for this type of construction (or cared for that matter). Now more people are aware of this building style.
Most of the focus has been on green home construction, but not on converting existing homes to a green one. Of course we are all aware of certain steps that we can take to reduce our environmental footprint and reduce energy. CFLs are quite common (I see them in home inspections all of the time), but I am not really seeing contractors who specialize in converting a home to a green one. Many were predicting that this would be a real growth industry starting at this time. Considering that Realtors are being trained to point out green features, and there are new designations for Realtors to show off their environmental credentials. Maybe this green remodeling industry is sure to follow soon.
Before this industry goes into full swing, there are means for a homeowner to start converting a home on their own. This is going beyond what is typically mentioned as do it yourself projects like the light bulb conversion. What we need is a plan to follow which will make our homes meet a higher standard, but we also need to consider ways to emulate green techniques when our homes were not designed with that idea in mind.
With this series of posts, I hope to indulge in a little fantasy in thinking about how these green conversions could take place, and I want to look at how these conversions can take place now with products which are readily available. With this post, I want to set myself the goal of writing a post a day on this topic/series.
Related posts:
- Green Home Conversion: Reusing What We Have The first step in a green home conversion is thinking...
- Green Home Conversion: Heating and Cooling Part 1 An overview of looking at your home's air conditioning and...
- Green Home Conversion: Heating and Cooling Part 3 Discussing air flow versus temperature to create comfort in a...
- Green Home Conversion; Heating and Cooling Part 4 Passive cooling is not part of our design methodology, but...
- Green Home Conversion: Heating and Cooling Part 3.5 During a home inspection, I found an unusual air flow...
- Fantastic Green Product Claims, But this Driveway Could Be Truly Green Before I went out to perform some home inspections, I...
- Book Review: Green from the Ground Up Green from the Ground Up is a good background and...
- Green Home Conversion Heating and Cooling Part 2 My home inspections reveal many problems with insulation or preventing...
- A look at the National Green Building Standard; ANSI 700 An expanded version of the post that I wrote for...
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