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| Green Building from the Ground Up |
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| Home & Building |
| Written by Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp |
| Monday, 18 January 2010 00:00 |
Photo courtesy Vine & Branch
When you build a new home, you have the opportunity to be green from the ground up. And it starts when you select the land. For new construction, building on a vacant lot in existing urban or suburban neighborhoods is more green than building in a new development, said David Gulyas, who recently built a 1,710-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home in urban Bloomington. Many of these vacant lots are within walking distance to retail shops and services, said Gulyas, a LEED-accredited member of the American Society of Interior Designers. His new house is one-fourth mile from his neighborhood’s farmers market on Bloomington’s west side. Prime lots are wooded, and when the house is sited correctly, trees shade it in summer and allow the sun to warm it up in winter, reducing heating and cooling costs, said Uriah Bontrager, owner of Bontrager Homes, an Indianapolis-area builder who specializes in green custom homes. If your lot is wooded, you should work with a certified arborist knowledgeable about tree preservation before the home’s footprint is designed, said Jud Scott, owner and president of Vine & Branch, a tree service company and a certified consulting arborist. Wooded lots add tremendous value to properties, so it’s smart to determine which trees are worth saving, he said. The arborist, working in conjunction with the builder, architect and landscape architect, can discuss vistas and establish a plan with contractors to protect the trees during the construction process. “We usually get called a year or two after the house has been built with questions about why the trees look so bad and what can we do with them,” Scott said. “I ask them where they would like the firewood, because it’s too late. One client, with a $1 million log cabin, showed me a tree that he said was the focal point of the property. The tree was rotted and cracked. A lot of builders do not know how to evaluate the health of trees.” Think energy conservation If financing is severely limited, put your dollars in the heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems and in energy-efficient appliances, especially the refrigerator and clothes dryer. Installing faucets and plumbing that conserve water also reduces the use of that resource and cuts bills. 
Photo courtesy David Gulyas
When designing and building the house, consider adding the elements or infrastructure necessary for the future installation of sustainable initiatives, such as solar collectors, said Gulyas, who built his garage in Bloomington with just that in mind. Sustainability experts Gulyas agrees and advises consumers to select an architect, designer, landscaper and contractor who are knowledgeable about sustainable construction. These LEED-certified professionals should be able to do the research necessary and develop the best approach to sustainable construction methods and materials. The experienced builder knows which elements offer the best savings for the investment, from how walls are made to which windows to install. Return on investment In Bloomington, Gulyas built an all-electric house, which will allow him to participate in energy credit programs with his utility, which will get his usage to net zero. “The best reason to go green is energy efficiency, which is a huge savings,” Bontrager said.
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Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, editor of Indiana Living Green , is a director of Garden Writers Association . She is secretary of the Marion County Extension Office , director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Horticultural Society, secretary of the Friends of Garfield Park Inc., and president of the board of the Business Ownership Initiative of Indiana.
In reality a Green Building is a course of action defining to the building construction and also known as the green construction. It is a process adopting an environmentally green scheme of designing, construction and operation of sustainable building practices.
These practices of Green Building expands and compliments the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability and comfort.
As always said, technology updates every single minute across the globe and while man has always been conducting research on how to best make life easier, technology these days offers us a number of luxuries and breakthroughs in terms of home or industrial functions.
And although new technologies are constantly being developed to compliment and in accordance to the current practices in creating greener structures, the common objective is that green building are designed to reduce the overall impact of built environment on human health and the natural environment by saving energy and water, reduce waste and pollution that is particularly for the living environment.
Green Building and technology is applied and practiced varying from region to region following essential principles deriving from methodology. Whilst Green Building concept is adopted in the construction structures, a green building technology produce as well a great cumulative effect. These are the features offered in the innovative smart systems of home automation solutions that controls your household functions in most commonly the lights and air conditioning that which are the vital utility used at every home and in the industries, thus other functions are as well controlled and monitored through a smart green building system.
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