Green construction is here to stay….hooray. People want to be green, the government wants you to be green, and mother earth needs us to be green. The really unfortunate thing is that green construction still needs to make some major gains to be truly green.
A recent survey showed that the majority of people considered green construction green when it created a home that was energy efficient and used sustainable building material.
The fact of the matter is that most homes pass this request with flying colors. Homes are more energy efficient than they have ever been and they are using sustainable building materials such as wood and bamboo which are replaced easily after harvesting.
What is considered green by most people is not even close to being as green as it should be to be considered green construction. Wood framing, sheathing and insulation needs to be replaced with a better system and materials.
The first step towards a green construction home is to build it with a steel frame.
Substituting wood framing with steel framing would create a tremendous positive impact on our environment. Logging for timber for home building has seven times the impact on CO2 green house gas emissions when compared to recycling steel. Harvesting wood is responsible for 20% of green house gas emissions. Moving to steel in all new home building would have 2.9 times the positive impact on the US CO2 emissions over requiring that every new car and light truck sold to be a hybrid or other technology that doubled gas mileage. Now that is what can truly be considered green con
The next thing is to substitute fiberglass insulation in the stud walls and blown insulation in the attic with radiant barrier and continuous ridged exterior insulation.
Radiant heat loss and air infiltration are the two main sources of energy inefficiency in a dwelling. Common BAT insulation only resists these two things. It does nothing to block them. In other words it only slows down radiant heat loss and infiltration.
Contrary to conventional insulation a radiant barrier system blocks radiant heat infiltration. It blocks as much as 97% of radiant heat infiltrating the home during the blistering hot months of summer and blocks as much as 85% of radiant heat loss during the summer.
Bringing together all these items together can create green construction that is highly energy efficient. On average, a house built with this system can see utility costs decreased by as much as 60%. Add this together with the recycled steel with it’s features you have created a truly green house.
Green Building is the future for our children and grandchildren. Right now is the time to start building more Steel Homes In Oregon.
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