Energy Efficiency Tops with Green Home Owners
“Greater energy efficiency drives consumers to choose a green-built home,” according to a survey by the National Association of Home Builders. With the cost of fuel skyrocketing, and consumers looking to fuel efficient cars to help at the pump, it is no surprise that they would also be looking for energy efficiency from their buildings.
According to the survey, which polled 800 registered voters about how important certain features would be in their decision to build a green home or remodel their current home to be more green, 64% said that energy efficiency would be the most important feature, the healthier environment of green homes came in second at 55%, and 49% percent believed it would be the right thing to do for the environment.
Home builders and designers who can provide energy efficient homes will have a better chance of surviving the recent housing slump. While general home sales are down, recent studies have shown that the sale of green homes is remaining steady. Green houses also tend to be worth more.
The one concern most consumers have is the cost of green homes. While tax credits and rebates help, home owners should be looking at the long term benefits of owning green. With lower energy and maintenance costs over time, the additional premium is worth it. Also, as technology and building techniques evolve, construction costs will come down.
In today’s volatile fuel market, energy efficient buildings are going to be all the rage, and delivering quality homes at a reasonable price will help many builders rise above the slumping market.
Solar water heaters are far more efficient and have a much shorter payback period than do solar photovoltaic systems. Getting heat from direct solar radiation is extremely simple (just step outside on a sunny day), and can be done with far less complex systems than what solar PV requires.
As I walked around last year’s Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in Las Vegas, I asked where I could find the green products. I was encouraged to put on my walking shoes and make the trek to a minor hall where I found about twenty square feet devoted to five or six products that left little impression on me. Much has changed, it seems, in only one year. Green is the buzzword at this year’s show, helped in no small part by the host city, Chicago, showing off its green-ness through LEED building projects going up within sight of the convention center. Just about every booth displayed information on how green their products were. “Green building has become the spark that has added some life to this industry,” a representative from MasterBrand Cabinets told me. 
Today is a cold, wet dreary day. Which inspired me to dig the 
Wildfires aren’t usually on my radar, because I don’t live in a region that is much susceptible to them. But, in the past couple of weeks, everyone has become more aware of them. They have been widely across the news because of the number of serious wildfires in southern California recently. At the same time, recent news coverage has also looked at drought conditions which are being felt in Georgia and North Carolina. While these two are be peripherally linked in other ways, it makes some sense to look at these issues from the perspective of sustainable building.
Efficient materials can sometimes seem to be the ideal path for green building. If we can find a way to more efficiently produce the materials we need to build our buildings, it would seem that we would be well on our way to reducing our impact on the planet.
For all our technological advances, our buildings remain incredibly dumb constructions. Automobiles have multiple onboard computers that help maximize their performance and improve efficiency and coordinate the various systems. But the average house has very little, if any, control to aid in its operation despite the wide range of conditions (from below freezing winter nights to scorching summer days) they are forced to deal with. Even large, complex buildings operate with fairly minimal control systems. Yet we expect them to provide a standard comfortable environment for us year round.
