We all have heard this by now “Green Homes” or “Green Building” but let me ask you, are they really green? A lot of builders these days advertise building “green homes” and I’m always amazed at how little of “green” is in them, and I don’t mean the color of the builders logo J.
We use the term “green” when we want to express something that is friendly to our environment, something that is friendly to earth, sustainable, renewable, and ecologically positive.
We all get exited as we see a new house coming up, a young family moving into this house and a new life begins. I personally love this picture, the feeling of a new home, the excitement of building that custom home is paramount. But I have to admit that there is one part that does make me said in this process.
To build an average 2000 square foot house it takes 26,700 board feet of lumber. One tree, 20 inch wide and 42 foot long will produce roughly 260 board feet of building lumber. So to build that average house we’d need at least 103 mature, full grown trees. That is a little forest that is being cut down every time we build a house.
What is even more said is that the life-span of that house is on an average 40-50 years, after that it requires a major repair and even more trees to be cut down. So the question is how can such growth be sustained?
The good news is that there are other methods of home building that does not require such brutal genocide of our natural resources.
There is an excellent alternative to wood framed homes. Homes built with insulated concrete. No tree cutting required.
There are multiple benefits to Insulated Concrete Homes. They are very energy efficient, their life-span is 10 folds of a wood framed home, they are excellent in their structural strength, virtually nothing can bring down steel reinforced Insulated Concrete Home, short of a nuclear bomb, of course. The list goes on and on.
Research ICF Homes and you will see that really these are truly to be called a “Green Homes of 21st Century”
Now next time you see those ads of “Green Home” construction, ask, if it’s ICF Home or if it’s just the good name and regular home underneath.