Building or renovating a sustainable home is not only good for the well-being of the planet, it is also important for your health and productivity. If you choose VELUX skylights, you will enjoy our sustainable daylight solutions for over 30 years. With skylights from VELUX, you ensure natural heating of your home, but also a good indoor climate with plenty of daylight and good air quality. Have you decided to build a sustainable home or make your current home more sustainable? Then you probably know better than anyone that this takes a lot of time and attention. There are many different things to take into account. This sometimes makes it difficult to know where to start. Read further in this article and discover the different steps you can take to realize the dream of your sustainable home.
Building a sustainable home: what you need to take into account
A sustainable home must respect natural resources by optimizing energy and water use. Essentially, when building an eco-friendly house, sustainability must be ensured and high-quality materials must be used with a low impact on the environment. Below are 4 tips that will help you build this sustainable and environmentally friendly house:
Conduct a life cycle assessment
A life cycle analysis is a method that maps the influence of the chosen building materials and construction activities on the environment. This analysis looks at the entire life cycle and provides an idea of the environmental effects of your new home. This analysis looks, for example, at the sustainability and transport method of the chosen materials. The analysis looks at the entire life cycle of the home and therefore also the lifespan of the materials and how they can be processed at the end of their lifespan (for example reuse, recycling, or incineration). VELUX skylights have an above-average lifespan and with the take-back service, VELUX skylights can be recycled in a high-quality manner at the end of their lifespan.
Important points
- Invest in energy-efficient solutions such as good insulation and lighting with a low environmental impact, such as LED lighting
- The environmental friendliness of material depends on various factors such as how material is produced, used, and processed.
- Use high-quality windows and doors made from sustainable materials.
If you carry out a life cycle analysis early in the design process of your home, this will result in a significantly greater carbon reduction and cost minimization than if this is done later in the construction process. At the beginning of your project you can consider more different alternatives and maximize the reuse of existing materials that are already present.
“Building or renovating a sustainable home is not only good for the well-being of the planet, it is also important for your health and productivity. A sustainable house ensures a good indoor climate with plenty of daylight and good air quality.”
Use sustainable building materials
To reduce the environmental impact of building your sustainable home, it is recommended to use environmentally friendly building materials. What makes a material environmentally friendly depends on several factors. How is the material produced, used, and processed once it has reached its end of life? Materials that are easily recycled and reusable are considered more sustainable than materials that ultimately become waste. Where possible, consider reusing, recycling, and repairing existing materials. This also applies, for example, to furnishing your home with furniture. For example, buy secondhand.
It is also important to look at the lifespan of the materials. When building materials last longer than 30 years, they are also relatively more sustainable than materials that have to be replaced every 5 years. Take the time to become familiar with the materials you want to use when building your sustainable home. This gives you a good idea of the impact that these materials have on the environment.
Save energy in your home with energy-efficient solutions
Another way to make your (new) home more sustainable is by choosing energy-efficient solutions. This includes investing in good insulation, installing light sources in your home with a low environmental impact, and using plenty of daylight to save energy. Ensure windows and doors are of high quality and durable material so that they have a long lifespan. If your windows and doors are poorly sealed, air currents from inside and outside will make it difficult to maintain a consistent temperature in your home. This wastes energy and money. Consider fitting a VELUX skylight. This provides plenty of daylight and natural heating for your home, saving you money on your electricity bill and making your heating systems work smarter. Roller shutters are a handy way to keep the heat out in the summer so that you can turn off the power-guzzling air conditioning in the summer.
Choose a sustainable construction company
Want to be sure that your home will be environmentally friendly? Consciously choose an Austin custom home builder or contractor who also considers sustainable construction important and may also have experience with this. In this way, they can help make sustainable choices, from construction methods to material selection.