Expanding Your Business By Calling The Builders

Want to build a green home?

When it comes to the construction of green homes, you'll often hear home builders tell their clients that they'll need to use sustainable building materials. Using sustainable building materials helps to improve the energy performance of homes, resulting in significant savings on energy costs in the long run. It also helps to reduce the impact of home construction projects on the environment.

But what building materials are sustainable?

In the context of green home construction, sustainable is a generic term that could mean several things, including the following:

Using sustainably sourced building materials

If you want to build a green home, you should be concerned about the source of the building materials you use. The materials should be sourced and supplied in a way that ensures their continued availability in the near future.

Timber is a good example of a construction material that is sourced in a sustainable manner. The trees used to make timber construction products are harvested from managed forest plantations that can be restored by planting more trees. This ensures forest availability for future timber production.

Using recycled building materials

Recycled building materials, such as crushed concrete, recycled brick, salvaged wood, and recovered concrete blocks are also great sustainable building materials. These materials are usually sourced from other construction sites for reuse.

Using recycled materials is a plus for the environment because it helps to reduce the need to manufacture building materials from scratch, thus conserving natural resources, such as water and energy.

Using non-toxic building materials

Building with sustainable building materials also means avoiding the use of materials that contain toxic elements, which may cause problems for people and the environment.

Building materials that contain hazardous substances like lead, cadmium, and VOCs are generally not suitable for building green homes.

Using locally available building materials

Building materials for green home building should be sourced locally rather than abroad, whenever possible. This is because the carbon pollution from transportation is greater when moving materials over a greater distance. Keeping the hauling distance short helps to combat the global environmental issue of climate change. 

Sustainable building materials usually feature one or more of the above talked-about characteristics. These characteristics go a long way in reducing the impact of construction activities on the environment. If you're having a difficult time deciding what materials to use in building your green home, don't hesitate to consult a new home builder based in your area.