What is green remodeling?

• Energy efficiency
• Healthy indoor air
• Durability and
• Resource efficiency.

Healthy Lifestyle

Green remodeling uses healthy building materials and therefore helps to eliminate potential health risks. One of the biggest areas of concern in green remodeling is ensuring proper indoor air quality.

Preserving the Environment

Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is becoming a greater concern to Americans. Fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, are used to produce energy but green remodeling can reduce energy use by 50 percent in a home without costing a fortune.

By saving reusable items such as doors, windows, or even appliances, we can then take them to organizations that can reuse the materials which are still in pretty good shape.

Cutting Costs by Saving on Water and Energy Use

Of course, simple things like changing your light bulbs to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) can help you cut costs; lighting can contribute anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of your electrical usage. LEDs will cost a little more upfront but they last more than 11 years and they don’t contain the toxic element, mercury, as the less expensive Compact Fluorescent Lights do.

You can also invest in better insulation for your remodel. The less heat exchange from inside to outside the home, the more money you will save.

Another big cost-saving benefit is to use re-circulating pumps to help you save water. Most of the time when the water is turned on, it’s not hot right away, so people just let it run until the water heats up. The average American family can waste 10,000 gallons of water each year just waiting for it to get hot.

Re-circulating pumps are devices that push the water through the pipes and re-circulate it back to the water heater instead of pushing it down the drain. That process can amount to a couple hundred dollars of savings in your water and utility bills.

Homeowners are considering solar panels to supply electricity to warm their pools, generate home electrical needs, and even supply power for a plug-in electric vehicle.

Responsible building practices like caulking the gaps in wall framing or taping over the seams on house-wrap contribute to the overall integrity of the finished product, and do not add significant expense, however many contractors do not perform these simple tasks on a project because they are simple ‘corners to cut’ that a homeowner typically will not notice.