The DeRose Difference - Green Building

We’ve gone GREEN!

What makes a home Green?

A home is Green when it is designed, built, renovated, operated, or reused in an energy efficient and resource-conserving manner. Green homes are designed to:

1. Protect your family’s health
2. Reduce your energy, water, and general resource usage
3. Reduce the impact of your home on the environment
4. Contribute to the national economic and energy security

Why Build Green?

Traditional building practices often overlook the interrelationships between a home, its components, its surroundings, and its occupants. The design, construction, and maintenance of buildings have a large and measurable impact on energy usages, the environment, and the supply of natural resources.

More than 76 million residential buildings currently exist in the U.S., and millions more will be built in the future. These residential buildings have been estimated to use much more energy than necessary and to account for 20% of the nation's total annual energy usage. Consumers pay over $150 billion per year for utility and fuel bills. Some of the energy used is wasted through inefficiencies in building practices. For example, the U.S. DOE estimates that poorly sealed windows and doors waste about as much energy as we get from the Alaska Pipeline each year.

In addition, because homes use fossil fuel-based heating/cooling/lighting and hot water systems, they are one of the leading sources of pollution, including sulfur dioxide emissions, nitrous oxide emissions, and particulate emissions, that causes urban air quality problems. Buildings also produce carbon dioxide emissions, the chief pollutant blamed for climate change. The North Carolina Solar Center estimates that a typical home is responsible for 23,406 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Likewise, the average home consumes more of our resources than necessary, negatively impacts the environment, and generates a large amount of waste. Three to seven tons of waste are produced and more than one acre of forest is consumed during construction of a typical wood-framed house. In addition, construction can add to the pollution of local waterways if adequate erosion and sediment controls are not in place during construction. Construction of more buildings also adds to a community's overall percentage of non-pervious surfaces that further degrade adequate natural re-absorption and recharge of underground water supplies.

Research indicates that pollutant levels in the air inside our home may be several times higher than the air outside. Pollutants can be caused by cleaning products, building materials, and furnishings, that typically contain volatile organic compounds (VOC) that can contribute to allergic reactions or asthma. In addition, moisture problems contribute to mold growth, another potential source of health problems, along with dust and dust mites. Since people spend up to 90% of the time indoors, at home or work, the impact on health and productivity from poor indoor air quality can be significant. For example, asthma, which can be triggered by a variety of indoor pollutants, afflicts about 20 million Americans, including 6.3 million children. Asthma causes 14 million school days missed each year, affecting not only the children's ability to succeed at school, but their parents' ability to be productive at their jobs.

Our current challenge as homeowners and renters is to transform the marketplace, through educating ourselves as consumers, so that products for operating homes, as well as products and designs for renovation and new construction, will use a minimum of non-renewable energy, produce a minimum of pollution, and cost a minimum of energy dollars. Using these techniques can result in increased comfort, health, and safety of families today and in the future.