Ways to Go Green When Building Your Home

Investing time and money into building a green home is a smart decision if you wish to create a clean and efficient home you can live in for many years. Developing energy efficient house plans before constructing a new home is an investment worth making.

Here are some tips for building an energy efficient home.

Don’t skimp on insulation

Creating a controlled environment indoors is the first step to lowering heating bills, and it all starts with proper insulation. If you lack a proper amount of insulation, the internal temperature of your home can sway with the weather outside. To maintain comfortable temperatures inside in these conditions, it will inevitably cost a lot of money.

Install a good heat system: invest in a smart thermostat

Make sure your heating and cooling systems are of high quality to save on your energy bills. You might also want to invest in a “smart thermostat” to efficiently adjust temperature and control energy use. They are programmable and provide a great deal of useful information on the energy usage in your home, making them well worth the investment.

Invest in both a dishwasher and a sink for doing dishes

Dishwashers are great appliances, but they are wasteful when you are not washing an entire load of dishes. Dishwashers commonly use roughly 4–6 gallons of water for each run, considerably more than you would use hand-washing dishes. Therefore, it will save you money to also have a sink that is equipped to handle manual dishwashing duties from time to time.

Avoid west-facing construction

For the same reasons as above, homes constructed with west-facing windows will allow in much more light and a lot of heat to your home. Energy efficient house plans should create a controlled indoor environment, which is difficult to achieve with the added heat from west-facing windows, which could also cost more to regulate.

Create a power-outage kit

Creating a small kit of supplies for eventual power outages is significantly cheaper than purchasing and maintaining a generator. Your kit might include candles, flashlights, and food that doesn’t require electricity to prepare.

However, you may wish to purchase a generator to heat your home if there are winter power outages. In such a case, use your generator sparingly to keep costs down.

For more information about building green homes using energy efficient house plans, read our list of energy considerations for homeowners.