We all hear words and phrases every day like: environmentally friendly homes, green homes or homes that make less of an impact.  Have you considered what these ideas really mean with regard to your home?

The Passive House” has been the subject of conversation for quite a while now. It has been described as “Green Without Gizmos”. The seeds of the Passive House standard originated in the U.S. and Canada in the mid  1970’s and were codified in a central Europe standard for the first time in the late 1980’s. The “Passive House” has two basic goals, minimize energy losses and utilize passive energy gains.  Houses built to this standard result in buildings that use precious little energy. More details on the history of the Passive House standard here.

By the way, minimizing energy losses is a good first step for reducing the environmental impact for much of the existing housing stock in the U.S. If you own one that is serviced by Baltimore Gas and Electric, they will help you minimize your energy losses with rebates of 50% of the cost up to $2000. See my post about the BGE Energy Audit Program. 

Click Here for a brochure on “The Passive House“ from International Passive House.

Heating water for our homes requires an extraordinary amount of energy. It is one of the ways we as consumers can really help our environment is by saving on our hot water usage. This will help to save energy, power, and keep our earth more ‘green’. We are all aware that the next generation, our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, will inherit this earth from us. The expectation is that we will leave the environment in a better position for them.

Discover in this article how much hot water are you wasting? If you gather the data on how much you use in hot water for your home, you may find as they indicate in this article that you could buy Starbucks! Read more on “How Much Hot Water You are Wasting” by Clicking Here

Let us all work together!

Green Residential Real Estate is housing that lessens its environmental impact. The Journal of Industrial Ecology states that four areas dominate and account for 70-80 percent of the environmental impact of individual households:transportation, diet, housing construction, and energy-using products.

So how can we lessen the environmental impact and live in a more sustainable way? Lets look at housing construction which is impacted by the manufacturing, transporting, and assembling of building materials, and the first place to start here is with the size. It should be obvious that the bigger the building, the more resources consumed, the greater the environmental impact. Big is not green, small is green.

Even if we build a net zero energy house, a big one will require more materials to build and more renewable energy to power energy using products such as appliances, lighting fixtures, and heating and cooling units, etc. Photovoltaics and other clean energy alternatives require manufacturing, transporting, and assembling just like any other material used to build. A bigger house needs more. Big is not green, small is.

To be sure there are many other ways to lessen the environmental impact of housing. However, I think size should be the first consideration. We have to stop building more than we need. Statistics from the U.S. Green Building Council show that buildings in the U.S. accounts for:

• 72% of electricity consumption
• 38% of all carbon dioxide emissions
• 40% of raw material use

The first step to shrinking these numbers is to build smaller houses.

SMALL IS GREEN!