Carbon-Conscious Home Design
Low-carb home designs can save you tons of money in energy costs, it helps reduce your reliance on potentially volatile sources of energy, and it’s good environmental stewardship. Here’s how to bring these virtues to your new home or cottage.
Carbon-Conscious Design Strategy #1: Maximize heating and cooling efficiency
Not all insulation systems with the same R-value perform the same way. That’s why you should consider non-hollow wall and roof framing systems such as structural insulated panels (SIPs) and insulated concrete forms (ICFs). SIPs offer especially impressive energy performance. One Brock University study showed that a SIPs house used 60% less energy than an identical stud-frame home built to code with the same nominal R-values and tested in side-by-side situations.
Carbon-Conscious Design Strategy #2: Minimize Carbon-to-Energy Ratio
Woodstoves, pellet stoves and solar collectors are all carbon-neutral sources of heat. The carbon dioxide released by burning biomass fuels was already in the biosphere previously, unlike fossil-based carbon is all new. If you must opt for a fossil fuel heat source, choose a fuel type that offers the most heat for the least carbon burden. Natural gas and propane release 25% less carbon per unit of heat output than oil and 50% less carbon than coal (most commonly used for electrical generation).
Carbon-Conscious Design Strategy #3: Choose 21st-Century Energy Technologies
On-demand hot water heaters eliminate standby energy loses from tank-style water heaters. Radiant in-floor heating provides greater comfort at lower room temperatures. Choose appliances with an Energuide label that shows close-to-minimum energy consumption compared with competitive models. Choose florescent lights with energy-saving electronic ballasts.
Tailoring your building plans to curb global warming isn’t about sacrifice. It’s really about building smart in a way that offers greater long-term economy, lower foreign energy dependency and building details that anticipate the needs and values of the new century.
It’s Easier Being Green
A fundamental shift in the environmental status of grid-delivered electricity is unfolding right now, but unless you understand the significance you might miss out on the benefits.
Until recently, anyone describing conventional electricity as ‘clean’ was either misinformed or deceitful. Sure, you’ll never see smog pouring out of a wall outlet, but the industrial activity behind traditional electrical generation comes at a steep environmental price. Airborne particulates from coal-fired plants, nuclear waste that still kills 100,000 years from now and mercury-contaminated watersheds from hydroelectric flooding are all part of the hidden pollution behind old-style electrical power.
But all this is changing as new, certified-green sources of electricity come online. A growing number of Canadians now have the option of paying modest premiums for environmentally-sound sources of electrical power, opening up a whole new world of low-carbon home design options. Now you can honestly consider specific sources of household electricity as green and completely carbon neutral.
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