Many factors govern how you apply green priciples to a house.  Its location, the terrain of the lot, the vegetation,the view,whether it has water frontage or not, local codes, subdivision covenants,availability of local resources and supplies, remoteness,and not the least important is the desires,health needs and preferences of the occupants.

Here is a list of some of the major driving forces one might use to decide which “green” priciples to use:

1.Health Issues:

     Do you suffer from allergies or other respiratory problems? Do you have infants or young children?  Or  do you just want to avoid illness and have a clean living environment? If so, then you want to concentrate your planning and budget on a well sealed house with up to date heating and ventilation technologies which produce greatly reduced pollutants in the house.  Included in this category would be carpets,paints and other items used that use reduced or no unhealthy compounds.  Most companies are making thier products with that in mind these days. Ask your suppliers for low or no VOC – volatile organic compounds- in your carpets,paints,wallpaper, insulation etc. Ask your heating and air conditioning person to design your system so that you have fresh, well filtered air.  Generally if you let your contractor or tradesmen know that you are concerned with indoor air pollution, they can provide the solutions.  In my opinion health is the most important reason to use green principles.  After all, our health is dependent upon the health of our environment.  Both indoors and out.  Let’s not pollute it.

2.  Energy Issues:

      This category covers a broad field of products, systems, and ideas. I break it down into two sub categories.  First is conservation and second is creation.  In my opinion the importance of these two fields can be stated in two words- Petroleum Independence. The survival of our planet depends on this.Not just from the pollution standpoint, but also from the standpoint of wars, terrorism, and other political nonsense, which are all rather unhealthy aren’t they?

   The first category- conservation- deals with how to use as little energy as possible in your house.  The obvious issues here are insulation, house orientation [ in relation to the sun], lighting, heating and air conditioning, efficiency of appliances and fixtures etc., windows and more. The less obvious issues deal with the amounts of energy used in the production and delivery of items used in your home.  For instance you could buy bamboo flooring to reduce deforestation, but what if it had to be shipped halfway around the world just to get to the U.S. , and then had to be trucked from port to your outlet.  Then had to be trucked from your outlet to your jobsite.  That is a lot of petroleum being used up, creating a lot of pollution etc. Again there are many products and options to consider when thinking about energy usage.  Usually your contractors and trades are up to date on the issues and products etc.

  Next is energy creation. For this, unless you have some knowledge in the alternate enery field, you probably need some real assistance from a professional.  Believe me, you want a pro to deal with this. It has to be done right.  Energy creation [ alternate energy] includes things like photovotaics [ solar electricity], windmills, water generators, geothermal and others. If you can generate you own energy and put it back into the power companies grid [ they will pay you for it] you will greatly reduce your energy use and costs.  If you design it right, you can get your annual electric bill to  Zero. A house like this is called a ” Net Zero” house.  If every house in America had solar electric panels on thier roof and ran that power into our “grids”, I believe we would be quite close to petroleum independent for the production of electricity. The next hill to climb would be transportion wouldn’t it?