How To Build An Eco Friendly Home on a Budget
by Green Living on September 13, 2010
in Eco Housing, Eco-Friendly
This is a guest post by Cynthia Booth from architecture career opportunities blog.
New Jersey school of architecture professor shows us how to build an environmental-friendly house cheaply
Do you know two NY based designers designed an asymmetrical home with fixed cost of $250,000?
Designers and Jersey City citizens Richard Garber (assistant tutor at NJ-New Jersey Institute of Technology’s University of Architecture and Design in Newark) and Nicole Robertson of GRO Architects in NYC rose to the difficult task of designing and managing the building of a single-family house that’s a real proof of both innovative design and eco-friendly technology.
Denis Carpenter not long ago bought a compact vacant lot and, to accomplish his concern for the environment, wanted a residence that was cost-efficient and easy to maintain.
What’s so exceptional about this home?
- In the home, on the floor level, radiant heating under the exposed concrete floor heats up the full bathroom and two sleeping rooms.
- In the attic-like second level, sleek aluminum and stainless steel railings accent the bamboo stairway to the mezzanine, family room and an artfully designed kitchen made with salvaged appliances and cabinetry.
- Passive a/c strategies like fans and clerestory windows make it possible for occupants to be cool during summer months and warm during winter.
- The roof includes 260 sq ft of solar panels that provide about 2,000 kilowatts of energy per year to a battery stored in the basement.
- The roof has a 2-foot-square area planted with drought-resist to harvest rain.
This single family 1,600-square-foot home was built in 6 months and won a 2009 American Institute of Architects merit award and the 2010 Green Building of the Year Award from the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency.
Ok now what? How can you convert your home into an eco-friendly home without investing too much dollars?
If you’re renovating a home, execute an energy review first to help you determine what energy efficiency changes should and can be made to your home. In this way you’ll analyze how much energy your home consumes.
My favorite eco-friendly technique is the passive solar cooling/heating design.
Passive solar usually means that your home’s windows, walls, and floors can be designed to collect, store, and distribute power from the sun in the form of heat in the winter season and reject solar heat in the summer.
Existing homes can be adapted or “retrofitted” to passively collect and store solar heat too.
The following 5 aspects constitute a comprehensive passive solar home design:
The Collector – The area through which sunlight enters the building (usually windows).
The Absorber – The hard, darkened surface of the storage element. Sunlight hits the surface and is absorbed as heat.
The Thermal Mass – The materials that retain or store the heat produced by sunlight below or behind the absorber surface.
The Distributor – The system by which solar heat circulates from the collection and storage points to different areas of the house.
The Controller – Roof overhangs may be used to shade the aperture area during summer season or Thermostats that signal a fan to turn on.
About the Author – Cynthia Booth publishes articles for the architecture career opportunities blog. It’s a nonprofit internet site dedicated to give help for young designers who need resources for their careers. With this she would like to boost the consideration on eco-friendly home design and change the general public perception of energy efficiency.
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Really nice articles, tremendous job