Build to the Green
“Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun”, quoted from Frank Lloyd Wright a famous architect that designed buildings that looked as if it was create by earth itself and used material around the site to create a perfect flow of nature to a home. Kevin Contreras states in the documentary Green Building, that “Building green means working with nature not against”. Architects, builders, and homeowners have been creating alternative ways of becoming more energy efficient by changing the materials, designing techniques, and creating plans of ways to keep the green movement active and passed in the future. This text overviews green materials, alternative construction, home improvement, home lifestyle changes, and the organizations helping this green movement happen.
Harmonize with site, build little as possible, heating and cooling, maximize resources, and showing that green homes are gorgeous in the environment are five basic concepts David Arkin, a green architect featured in the documentary Green Building, states are used to create and understand building more green and energy efficient. Harmonizing with the site is to know the topography, vegetation, climate patterns, and location of the site. By doing this you will have a different view of what resources you can use and create a home that belongs in that location and is built in a way where the maximum amount of energy efficient alternatives are incorporated with the building and complement the surrounding site. Building little as possible is a strange concept for architects to wrap their fingers around because some think more is better but in reality it’s less expensive to use less material and have a more spacious home. By creating a more space efficient home you use less energy to create the building itself and you create an easy design that is capable of heating and cooling itself. This leads into the next goal where the home should be able to heat and cool by itself because of the usage in alternatives like solar panels and radiant floor heating. Using these concepts and understanding how to maximize your resources is another goal to succeed by knowing where your materials come from and what impacted they have on the environment. Finally creating a green home that appeals to the environment but also to the eyes of the community is a great deal to accomplish to show how beautiful green homes can actually be.
Constructing a green home involves understanding alternative green techniques and green resources. By knowing energy efficient alternatives such as straw bale walls, and recycled flooring. In straw bale construction you create a foundation and footing just like any other building site. After lying in the foundation and footing you create a frame of the building with green alternatives and then stack the 6 feet block straw bales like a wall and plastered once finished with natural breathable plasters, creating a wall just like any other normal wall just thicker. Straw bale buildings are becoming more favorable to insurance companies and building code officials because of their extreme energy efficiency and fire resistant. Straw bales have a R rating at 45, which an R rating is a measure of a materials resistance to thermal change and results in having great advantages in insulation. Many people think straw bale walls are unsafe but bale walls burn less easily than a regular wall and rot less easily then a regular wall. Straw bales is the one material you can get straight from farmers and it’s stated that farmers grow enough to meet all of our residential building needs and is a less expensive alternative. 
Strawbale Construction. Digital image. The Los Angeles Design Group (The LADG). WordPress.com., 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://theladg.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/barn-house-lexicon/>.
For alternative materials you can use for the frame is wood or steel and even though steel takes more energy to make, it’s green benefits such as recycled steel, and no termites. One of the things you must be careful with is concrete and how much you use. Using concrete does have some green benefits that it’s all natural material, done with locate materials, and durable. There are also downfalls to concrete such as cement, which is a material that causes greenhouse gases and is difficult to recycle. Concrete could become greener by using more fly ash in the concrete which is more environmental friendly and also gives the concrete more strength but it does take longer to set and dry. Flooring is also a way you can interpret green building by using nontoxic material such as concrete, nature wood, bamboo, and cork. Using carpet is not a green material to use because of the toxics trapped in the carpet like dust mites, house hold dust, and toxic glues used to keep the carpet down.
There’s not just alternative materials used to create a greener home, there’s systems such as radiant floor heating, solar panels, and lighting. LED lighting is a great easy change you can make in your home because using LED light bulbs in more energy efficient and longer lasting. Solar panels can be used in many different ways like heating up a building, heating up water source for sinks and showers, used for electricity, and kitchen appliances, even a solar panel oven that is used like a crock pot, but it’s a box that is outside in the ground and covered with solar panels. Radiant floor heating is used as an alternative to other heating systems using ventilation. Floor heating is created before laying out the concrete floor slab with installing special tubing which will have heated water running through the tubes creating a more uniformed heated room. Having heated flooring instead of convention heating is more cost efficient and energy saving. Floor heating is more health then conventional air force systems causing health issues because of the air flow picking up dust, pollutants, and allergens.
Building green is not just about the materials, it’s also about the household toxins left to release harmful chemicals in the air creating your home’s air five times more toxic then the air in the city. In a general home you have cleaning supplies and used paints that can be taken to recycling companies that with dispose of the toxics properly. Also there are stores like Environmental Depot that sells nontoxic materials which Alyssa Alvord health expert believes these nontoxic products are better for your home and improves the air quality. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) which was created by the U.S Green Building Council (USGBC) a non-profit organization focuses on the standards that have changed over the years and helps shape and expand green building throughout the country. LEED also focuses on human and environmental health including sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor air quality.
“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.” - Frank Lloyd Wright. Building a green home should be energy efficient, money efficient, environmentally friendly, recycling system, and should be formed with the earth and have a connection to be complementary with the location. Homes shouldn’t be damaging our nature but instead embracing the natural resources our modern world has forgotten.
