What Color is Your Home?

Energy efficiency, health, and comfort all are hallmarks of a green home. Often referred to as high performance, eco-friendly, or energy-efficient homes.

Common Features of a Green Home

Some Homes are Certified as Green Homes while others are homes with Green Features. You can live a Green Lifestyle and live in a resource efficient & energy efficient home without certifying your home as Green or buying a Home with a known certification.

If you desire to live in a property that incorporates systems and features that lower your utility bills, minimize your carbon footprint, and improve your overall health and comfort, then you’re likely seeking a Certied Green Home or a Home with Green Features.

Where to Start

There’s a vast array of strategies you can implement to achieve energy and resource efficiency.

You can start with small, inexpensive upgrades, which include changing out incandescent light bulbs with new LED lights. You can also install high-efficient water measures, such as 1.5gpm Shower Heads and Kitchen and Bathroom faucet aerators.

Now that you’ve started with some easy retrofits you can begin looking into installing a Smart Thermostats and less visible elements such as weather stripping, efficient insulation, and air sealing. These will make your home more efficient and more comfortable.

Large more costly projects include heating furnaces, solar panels, and triple-pane windows, which will certainly provide larger financial and environmental gains.

Newly Constructed Homes

New homes are built to higher standards and these standards improve new homes efficiency with each new iteration of the International Energy Conservation Code® (IECC®). Green Builders today consider all aspects of the construction and attempt to ensure that a property’s design, layout, and systems work in concert to create a functional, comfortable setting that addresses environmental concerns.

How to Locate Green Features

When you’re looking at a home with green features, here’s a short checklist of considerations:

• Energy efficiency in home features like appliances, water faucets, lighting, heating, cooling and water-heating systems.
• Efficient building envelopes with high performance windows and well-insulated walls, floors, and attics.
• Non-toxic building materials and finishes, such as recycled or renewable woods and low- and zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) paints and sealants.
• A landscape featuring native plants that thrive without chemical fertilizers or excessive watering.
• Location efficiency, meaning a community where public transportation and the needs of daily life are accessible without a car.