There's a lot of attention being given these days to building "green" homes, and to renovating existing homes to be more green. This is a Very Good Thing, in my opinion, for many reasons, not the least of which is, these homes cost less to run.
But how many think about something very basic, the thing that makes any home "greener than thou", when it comes right down to it?
What is it? Do you think you know? Ponder it for a moment, then read on.
The answer is TIME.
Not the time it takes to build the house. Not the time it takes to pay for the house.
No, the time the house is built to last. If a house is built to last for 10 years, then must be replaced, it has a certain environmental cost made up not only of the materials used to build it, but the materials used to build the replacement home, as well. If the house is built to last for 50 years, the environmental cost is much less, over time. If the house is built to last for generations (as some houses in Europe have), the environmental cost is dramatically less, even taking into consideration repairs and renovations that are made over those generations.Houses that are designed with additions in mind, if they should become necessary in future, houses that are designed to be living things, to "grow" with the families that inhabit them over time, houses that are built to work well in the environment in which they find themselves, are the greenest of the green.
As a culture, we have a tendency to disdain the old and insist on the new. That's not the environmentally friendly way to think, however. If a house is sound, if it was built to last forever, the last thing that needs to be done, if you want to be truly "green", is to tear it down and build a new house in its place.
Without that very basic approach, we're hampered in building green homes, and in treading gently on the earth. And yet I never hear this mentioned in all of the talk of "green building", of how the quality of the house and its ability to last over time is, with how it's oriented on the lot, the very foundation of building green.
Wonder why that is?
;)
;)
Tricia, even Consumer Reports Magazine does not take into account how long the products they test are likely to last. I think we need to think very differently about our housing stock in this country - as well as all of the stuff we have inside our houses