|
| ||||||||
|
|
How to Green Your Home Buying What’s the Big Deal? The housing market may have had a rough time of late, but there are still plenty of us out there looking for a new home. Whether you are a first time buyer or a seasoned veteran, it is worth remembering that buying a house is one of the biggest decisions you can make, and not just financially. The location, size and style of your house, along with what you chose to do with it, can have a huge impact on your ecological footprint. So choose wisely, ask all the right questions, and check out some of our handy hints below. Happy hunting! 1. Get good help Not long ago, if you’d have told your realtor that you were looking for a green house, they’d have handed you a gallon or two of emerald-hued paint. Nowadays, with increased eco-awareness and energy prices going through the roof, it’s not just us TreeHuggers that are worried about things like indoor air quality and energy efficiency. When screening potential realtors, ask them how much they know about home energy performance and other environmental issues that matter to you. Alternately, services like EcoBroker, Modern Green Living, and other green residential tips can help you seek out a green real estate pro. Learn more about what to look for in a green realtor in our post on Verdant Vocations: A Real Estate Agent? 2. Conduct an energy audit If your green realtor is on their game, this one will go without saying, but it's not an automatic. You can tell a lot just by taking a careful look around. Check out the heating and cooling systems carefully and make sure they are in good working order and sized appropriately. Take a gander at the windows, and check if they're single or double-paned, and at the doors, to see if you feel a draft coming through around the edges. Be on the lookout for missing or inadequate insulation, or signs of mold. To get really good info, though, we recommend hiring a professional for your audit. They'll use things like infrared cameras and special fans to pressurize your house and determine how leaky it is; this will help you determine if your potential new house needs any big efficiency upgrades, and if something like new insulation will make sense. Sister site Planet Green has more info on the benefits of a home energy audit. 3. Remember: location, location, location New Yorkers have the some of the lowest ecological footprints in the United States, and it’s not because they are all amazingly eco-conscientious. Rather, it’s because they tend to live close to shops, entertainment, and places of work. If they don’t live close to all those things, they live close to a subway or a bus line that will take them to these locations. The lesson here? Choose your location carefully. Even if the countryside is definitely for you, it’s worth thinking about commuting distances, proximity of local facilities, and how you are going to get around. How to begin? Visit Walk Score to locate restaurants, parks, grocers and other businesses and amenities within walking distance of your possible future home. 4. Buy small, live large It’s the closest thing TreeHugger has to a mantra: small really is the new big, and less is the new more. The smaller your living space, the less energy is needed to heat and light it, and the less you have to spend on utilities too. With some thoughtful, careful interior design, you can create beautiful living environments out of some surprisingly small spaces; we recommend multi-functional and transformer furniture to help you get the most out of your space. 5. Kick the tires Unless you really luck out, your new home will almost certainly require a few aesthetic and maybe even a few structural changes. Slapping on a fresh coat of low-VOC paint is easy, affordable, and won't contribute to poor indoor air quality; ripping up old, off-gassing, difficult-to-recycle wall-to-wall carpeting to refinish the hardwood underneath is tougher on you and on the planet; replacing leaky, rusty, lead-leaching plumbing is a taller order yet, so be sure to "kick the tires" of the houses you're looking at, so you can get an idea of the changes you'll want or need to make to create a greener, healthier home. 6. Reuse, renovate, recycle If a LEED-certified, solar-powered penthouse downtown remains just out of reach, consider looking for place that will benefit from a upgraded green kitchen or bathroom -- the two rooms where you typically get the best return for your renovating dollar. As long as it doesn't need major structural repairs, or you don't have to gut the place to get the rooms and layout you want, you can renovate according to your ecological principles and get a double bonus: a greener, more efficient home and a higher resale value (market-willing) upon your departure. Just be aware of the work involved, prioritize to get the best bang for your buck, and don’t get carried away with romantic notions of a grand marble staircase, an all-red billiard room with a giant stuffed camel and a disco room with your own disco dancers. Renovating is hard work -- get more tips on green renovation before you get going -- but the rewards can be substantial; you might even achieve LEED Proactinium. 7. Research your renewable-energy potential Until recently, generating your own power was out-of-the-question expensive for most of us. As the costs of alternative technologies like solar, wind, or geo-thermal power come down, they're becoming easier to find and easier to afford. If your dream home isn't already plugged in to off-grid technology, don't fret; you can discover your renewable energy potential to see if it makes sense to generate some or all of your own power, and then check in with DSIRE, the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency to see what sort of rebates and deals are available in your state. 8. Certifiable! LEED-H, or LEED for Homes, just released final guidelines for their residential green building certification in January, which means there aren't a ton out there right now (we spotted the first one in the western US), though about 400 builders representing 10,000 homes across the U.S. participated in the LEED for Homes pilot program (you can find your local LEED for Homes provider here). And, if you're looking in New England, Energy Star Homes certify that homes meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA's) performance guidelines for energy efficiency. They're two programs on the rise, so be on the lookout for more green homes from both of them (and read more below in the "Getting Techie" section). For now, there's lots of best practices to glean from both programs' guidelines and principles. 9. Shade grown? Trees are good for a lot more than hugging, so take a peek outside your potential new digs to check out the foliage the comes with the place. Big deciduous (leafy) trees are great natural climate controllers; in the summer, their leafy branches block the sun and can help keep your home cooler (reducing cooling costs), and, in the winter, the bare branches let more natural light and heat through to your home (reducing heating costs). Big old trees also offer potential homes for our fine feathered friends, who can be helpful in maintaining your organic garden. Your neighborhood's biodiversity will benefit, too. 10. More great outdoors Ask yourself a couple more questions: Is there is big lawn that requires care (and lots of water) to maintain? (Remember, this isn't always up to you; some neighborhoods have homeowners' association rules that requires a certain level of lawn manicuring.) Is there a good, sunny place for a garden, to grow your own food, or is there a good space for some good container gardening? Will you have room for a compost pile, or just a small compost bin? Read up on How to Green Your Gardening and match your potential homes with the size of your green thumb. |
|||||||
|
||||||||
Send mail to KeysDAN@keysdan.com with
questions or comments about this web site. |
||||||||
