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Hmmm. . . I know a guy who has a Hummer . He has it set up to run on Compressed Natural Gas and refers to it as a "Green" Vehicle." Compressed Natural Gas is readily available in Utah. CNG is cheap here and burns clean. The same fellow has all four of his vehicles on the same system and fills them at his home pumping station. |
An engineer I know loves his Toyota Prius. It gets fantastic gas mileage and the hybrid synergy drive is a great engineering accomplishment. He rides his bicycle most of the time but takes the Prius when time and weather don't cooperate. He shares the Prius with his wife who also wants to be as "Green" as possible. |
Who is the "Greener" of the two? It's not rocket science to see that the Prius owner wins the battle hands down, but lets ask another question: Are we all better off because Hummer man uses CNG in his cars? Once again, not rocket science. Now, lets talk about Green Building: Question: What is Green Building? Answer: Green building is the most abused and misused term in the entire history of modern homebuilding. Every time you turn around these days you hear someone talking about being green, buying green, manufacturing green, or just plain living green. Builders all over the country are suddenly billing themselves as "Green Builders" and talking about green lumber products, green apliances, green paint. . . .everything but green grass. What can a consumer do to make certain he or she is building a Green home? First, lets look at the definition. For a relatively new term I like to go to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_building If you've got time for some reading you could start there, but my Readers' Digest condensed version is quicker: |
Green building is the practice of producing structures whose entire lifecycle is friendly to the Earth and its inhabitants. |
All it takes from here is to think about the entire project with this simple definition in mind. Then, decide just how green you want to be. Scorched Earth. . . Builders traditionally start every construction project by grubbing the entire lot. It provides a large area to work and stage construction materials. The trouble is. . . You pay to have the grub hauled to the landfill and then you pay to landscape all that disturbed land, usually with non-native species such as Kentucky Blue grass. Working under our close supervision excavators grub the footprint of the house and only the additional area to be landscaped. This saves in excavation and hauling charges and saves again when it comes time to landscape. You landscape a smaller area while keeping the maintenance-free natural vegetation in place. Waste not, want not. . . . Many builders make a lot of noise about being green, but how many of them walk the walk? Check your builder's job-site and dumpster. The buzz words of the recycling movement are a great place to start; REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE! With good job-site organization and supervision we manage to keep materials orders tight, preventing excess materials from ever getting to the landfill. You benefit twice; once from not having to buy more materials and once from not paying to haul it off. Any remaining useable materials end up at the recycling center. This simple process has a large financial component but an environmental component as well. Landfills across the country are bursting at the seams and one of the biggest culprits is construction waste! Energy Efficiency. . . Typically, builders have installed batt insulation to the minimal standard allowed in the building code. This saves money up front (usually for your builder) but costs you every day in poor comfort, wasted energy and the increased pollution that goes with it. Lifestyle Builders has substantially exceeded the code standard for insulation in every house we have ever built. We use blown-in fiberglass in walls and roofs. In addition, we specify double pane low-E windows and doors to create a high level of comfort and lower heating and cooling bills for your family. Appliances are the other big piece of the energy efficiency puzzle. High efficiency appliances cost more than others. |