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Index: city home, town home, country home, treehouses, green roofs, links

Get Blueprints for a Green Home

Reducing your impact on the earth is not just a question of what you drive but also of what you live in. Residential energy use accounts for 16% of greenhouse-gas emissions. If you begin thinking green at the blueprint stage, however, low-tech, pragmatic techniques will maximize your new home's efficiency.

Installing those systems from the ground up is cheaper than retrofitting. "Doing simple things could drastically reduce your energy costs, by 40%," says Oru Bose, a sustainable-design architect in Santa Fe, N.M. For example, control heat, air and moisture leakage by sealing windows and doors.

Insulate the garage, attic and basement with natural, nontoxic materials like reclaimed blue jeans. Protect windows from sunrays with large overhangs and double-glazing. Emphasize natural cross ventilation. "You don't need to have 24th century solutions to solve 18th century problems," Bose says.

Next, consider renewable energy sources like solar electric systems, compact wind turbines and geothermal heat pumps to help power your home. When you're ready to get creative, the below links will help you find bamboo flooring, cork tiles, and countertops made from recycled wastepaper.

To see the variety of options available, Dream Green Homes may have what you want. Or visit Sustainable Build which has tips and articles on all aspects of green building.

Visit the eco-home on the most northerly part of UK at Zero Carbon House.

The Green Light Trust, a Suffolk-based environmental charity, has won an RIBA award for its new green headquarters. Suffolk’s first carbon-negative building has been nick-named The Weetabix House.

For more energy saving tips, visit our home energy or renewables pages.

Ditch the Mansion

Oversize houses aren't just architecturally offensive; they also generally require more energy to heat and cool than smaller ones, even with efficient appliances. In the U.S., big houses were the norm until mid 2008, even though a relatively inefficient small house consumes less energy than a greener large house and uses fewer building materials, which expand the carbon footprint.

A typical new single-family home in the U.S. was nearly 2,500 square feet in 2007, up from about 1,000 square feet in 1950, even as the average household has shrunk from 3.4 to 2.6 people. Ever wondered how the 2008 sub-prime crisis started?!

Passive Homes

A German family share a five-bedroom "passive house", with heating costs 90% lower than their neighbours'. Extra insulation and state-of-the-art ventilation recycle the energy from passive sources such as body heat, the sun and household appliances to warm the air. When it gets really cold, they just turn on the TV.

The German government has thrown its weight behind the idea, guaranteeing low cost loans for people who want to build a passive house. They cost about 5% to 8% more to build than a standard one. Invented in a German-Swedish joint-venture in he early 1990s, about 10,000 have been built in Europe so far, most of them in Germany—and just three in the U.S.

There's everything from treetents for avid campers, Lifepods for the modern nomad, eco spheres and how about a "tree house" that is wholly grown of living trees!

Low-Impact Homes & Buildings

Sustainable Country Home

Low-impact green dwellings and straw/adobe buildings are a real alternative today. As always, location is all important, but we hope some of these links can inspire you and put you in contact with those who already have a small footprint.

Check-out a stunning village retreat at the foot of Snowdon, north-west Wales. Cae Mabon retreat is a hamlet of jaw-droppingly beautiful low impact buildings.

Try this excellent small site of a low-impact woodland home and more on planning permission, country-side, eco-villages, perma-culture land, here.

Community Choices for Sustainable Living (CCSL) aims to give people and communities in Somerset, Dorset and Devon the support they need to choose a more sustainable way of living. CCSL is funded by the Department of the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs’ Environmental Action Fund.

Brook Farm near Glastonbury, Somerset is a permaculture holding with events and courses for low-impact living. The owner Caroline Barry lives in her strawbale home and takes visitors and gives advice on organic gardening/horticulture, planning permission and a wealth of other topics. Visit Brook Farm.

A permaculture small-holding near Somerset has been developing its teaching centre for sustainable living since 1998. Develop your roots in the earth at Avalon Permaculture Gardens. Taoism precepts and healing are also covered here.

How about composting toilets? Well for more on green loos, find out how to compost.

Live Small

If you really want to live small, visit Jay Shafer. The former art professor dwells alone in a home fit for a hobbit, 100 sq. ft. in northern California that he designed and built himself in 1999. Shafer now runs Tumbleweed Tiny House and sells custom designs for miniature dwellings that range from 70 sq. ft. to 350 sq. ft. He made his move because he felt guilty about the size of his residential carbon footprint, and now prefers life tiny and tidy. "If I throw my jeans down on the floor, I can't get across the room."

Whether you are a corporate giant (like Barclays Bank PLC) or a small home owner planning a new shed, you can do great things with either pitched or flat green roofs. Barclay's HQ on the Isle of Dogs comprises three habitats, namely sedum mat, shingle and calcareous grassland.

Why not install solar panels on a green roof? They act as good partners since the panels provide shade, reduce watering needs and can promote biodiversity, whilst the green roof helps slightly reduce solar PV temperatures leading to greater PV efficiency (in hot weather).

If your site is on a slope, you might want to consider an earth-sheltered building with a green roof (naturally)!

Six feet down the stability of the earth's temperature helps to moderate the thermal fluctuations from above: meaning that it will take much less energy to either heat or cool the house.

If you dig into a south-facing hillside, or berm the north part of the house with soil, you can take advantage of this. The part of the house that is underground needs to be well insulated though, or the earth will continually suck warmth out of the house.

For external links on this subject, scroll to the bottom.

City Living

You don't have to go to Iceland to reduce your carbon footprint. City living isn't all that bad.

"Think of the skyscraper as America's great green gift to the planet. It packs more people onto less land, which leaves more wilderness undisturbed in other places, where the people aren't. The ultimate effect of cities is to make land far from the city uneconomic. Which returns it to wilderness, 100 percent green."

Peter W. Huber

Eco-Towns

For initiatives on built environments relating to sustainable cities and eco-towns in England, visit CABE site.

Or see what future green cities might look like here.

Green Towers

Almost everything about the Bank of America tower, a soaring skyscraper under construction near Times Square in New York City, has been designed to minimize the use of energy. Take the concrete. Making the stuff from scratch is very energy intensive, so the builders are using a mix of 55% concrete and 45% slag, a waste product from blast furnaces. Mixing slag with concrete saves energy and makes the concrete stronger. The tower will save so-called gray water from washrooms and use it to flush the toilets. The building will also generate much of its own electricity from natural gas, a less potent carbon emitter than coal. These features will account for $3.5 million of a total building cost of $1.2 billion, but the owners expect to recoup that in a few years with all the energy they'll save. When it's finished next year, the tower will be the second highest in the city, but it stands alone as the greenest building in New York.

Move to London's Green Zone

Homes in London account for 44% of the city's CO₂ emissions, more than twice the amount spewed out through transport. Worse still, the city needs to add 35,000 more every year to keep up with London's ballooning population.

That's why, on a brownfield site in the city's docklands, builders plan in 2010 to open the city's first large-scale zero-carbon housing development. All 233 homes on the 3-acre spot will hook up to a combined heat-and-power plant that turns wood chips into electricity and hot water, with extra juice from solar panels and wind. And should a chilly winter call for extra energy from the national grid, the plant will return an equivalent amount once demand from residents has dropped off.

Renewable energy isn't the only advantage. Home owners can expect greenhouses for organic food, plus car and bicycle clubs to reduce commuters' emissions.

A response to the challenge from London's mayor to show that zero-carbon homes can be commercially viable, the development could cost just 5% more than standard projects. At least a third of the homes will be reserved for affordable housing. Helping the planet need not cost the earth.

Mail Order & Online Store and trade & professional site with good green products can be found at Green Building Store.

Architects and trade professionals can be found at AECB Member Search.

There are already estate agents selling green homes in USA at Green Homes for Sale.

Check-out this USA site of award-winning green developer Living Homes and take a video tour of one of their Californian green homes.

Somerset College of Arts & Technology conducts courses on sustainable construction materials & techniques such as cob, rammed earth, fired clay, straw and timber. Check-out their Genesis Project.

Straw Bale Buildings

Take a straw bale building course or workshop at the Strawbale Building Association.

Build a straw bale building with advice from experts at The Strawbale Building.

The possibilities for a straw bale building are infinite. See straw bale plans.

More on Straw Bale Buildings here.

Newsletters, links and exchange of ideas at Strawbale.

Loadbearing strawbale classroom on rammed tyre foundation at The Carymoor Centre, in Somerset.

Another straw bale building specialist is Amazon Nails.

Although, not straw, try hemp blocks and insulation at Back To Earth who include cob and mortar products using harvested rainwater.

For a site on green roofs & earth sheltered buildings with good pros & cons article, click here or the USA greenroofs.

The main UK independent green roof resource is found at livingroofs.

For an extensive list of international green roof links to other sites, click here.

In Fukuoka, Japan, eco systems were created on the green roofs of the ACROS building as shown here.

General

A good Australian resource of green buildings (including Eco-Villages) can be seen at Green Living Pedia.

A USA designer has a packaged design called Earthship. This passive solar home makes innovative use of water and materials. You can visit his site here.

Green Phase has good articles and links for eco-homes.

For UK building magasine with good links page, try this link.

For a great, comprehensive site on selecting, financing and constructing a green building, build here!

See a great example of an award-winning sub-tropic sustainable home near Brisbane, Australia here.

The ecotist is a sustainable building developer.

For the Association for Environmental Buildings, click here.

From the USA, the Green Home Guide, or greener buildings provide loads of information.

For a green home product store (USA), try greenhome which has a tour showing you where you can save money and energy at home.

Gomersal Green Homes in Yorkshire, UK are developing a green hamlet called the Roundhill Project. We hope more such developments will spring up around Europe.

Most UK county and city councils have good sections on environmental sustainability. Check-out what your local authorities have on offer, such as Sheffield CC.

Bristol City Council have set up the CREATE Centre with an eco-home, conference facilities and organisations.

For on-line shopping, you can get alternative building products, including turf roofs, yurts and straw bales if you visit CAT shopping, or new builder for building magasine & newsletter.

For modern roofing to support green roofs, try Kingspan.

For rammed-earth buildings, barbeques and more, click here.

For natural light and ventillation systems, visit Monodraught Sunpipe.