Capital Remodeling Inc Green Constructions

By Vanessa A. Doctor

The green building trend that has taken hold across the US in the past few years, and is surprisingly evolving toward a whole new level. Whereas before when there were only a few green real estate developments, today this trend in sustainable development has expanded to whole communities and neighborhoods as well.

The west coast city of Portland has been well known as an urban-design innovator, particularly for its transit-oriented developments, and is noted to be among the pioneers of green building and design.

Single-Family Home Builders Are Now Joining The Trend

The basic tenets behind green building- energy and water-efficient buildings that have features that stress the natural over the chemical, the recycled over the new and the renewable over the finite- have now become firmly mainstream.

According to environmental and real estate consultants, big developers today are slow to move, but they still see a using eco-friendly designs and materials green building. Even in the suburbs, which are home to large-scale builders of single-family homes, there is a lot more consumer interest swelling. In a McGraw-Hill Construction survey done in March of 2006, it forecasted that green building would reach a “tipping point” in 2007 and that two-thirds of US builders will be constructing greener homes.

Why Home Builders See The Need To Go Green

Home builders and real estate developers and are not simply riding the green building trend purely out of a sense that it’s the right thing to do. The housing and development industry knows that they can’t afford to be left behind. By 2007, it is expected that at least 6% of the nation’s non-residential construction, which represents a $15 billion slice of the industry, will be green, according to green-building experts, as six years ago it was less than 1%. More real estate developers are finding that using green technologies and construction materials adds no more than 1%-2% to total costs, which area easily recovered through energy savings.

Offering Incentives For Developers To Go Green

At present, the federal government, 15 states and 46 cities now require new public buildings to fully comply with the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), that requires the use of non-toxic building materials, among other things.

Four states and 17 cities now offer incentives for LEED-rated private buildings. The Green Building Council has certified nearly 550 buildings across the country since 2002, and recent real estate developments have adopted eco-friendly standards by creating greener multi-structure projects, such as South Waterfront in Portland, Oregon. The Green Building Council is also working on creating LEED standards for single-family homes as well.

The corporate world was the first to see the value of going green that are way beyond energy savings. Businesses and companies now notice less absenteeism among workers, less time lost to asthma, allergies and other illnesses aggravated by mold, stale air and chemicals found in many conventional buildings.

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By Rene Brin

More and more NH builders are using energy saving building techniques in Southern New Hampshire., offering some of the latest technology in heating and cooling homes. The term green construction is becoming more common as energy costs soar across the nation.

There has been a lot of interest in Geothermal technology which takes advantage of the relatively stable temperature of the earth to help heat and cool your home. A series of pipes, called a loop, is installed underground. A water solution is circulated through this loop where it picks up heat from the earth. This heat is brought back to a heat pump in the home and from there it is circulated through duct work to heat your home. In the summer months this process is reversed so that heat is extracted from the home and deposited back into the earth. According to the PSNH website, actual operating costs average 48 cents per square foot per year for heat, hot water, and A/C. Even though the systems are costly, the advantages are obviously reduced operating costs, lower maintenance, its cleaner than burning oil, wood, gas or coal and you should look into Energystar and power company incentives.

Other energy savings and eco friendly techniques that are embraced in New Hampshire are solar and passive solar technologies. There are simple and subtle changes that can be made with new construction, without installing solar panels, such as orienting the house to be facing South and installing lots of insulated triple pane glass; we see sunrooms with tile floors that open up to main living spaces, separated by doors to cut down heat loss at night, but open them up and let the sunshine and warmth flood in during the day. Builders and property owners have not embraced wind technology in NH at this point.

With the high price of energy and New Hampshire’s cold Winter climate, alternative energy sources are becoming more and more popular. This year we have seen a resurgence of “clean coal” that is marketed as washed and is not the messy dusty coal of the past. It is marketed with clean burning coal stoves.

Tax Credits are Still Available

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 extended tax credits for energy efficient home improvements (windows, doors, roofs, insulation, HVAC, and non-solar water heaters). Tax credits for these residential products, which had expired at the end of 2007, will now be available for improvements made during 2009. However, improvements made during 2008 are not eligible for a tax credit. The bill also extended tax credits for solar energy systems, wind energy and fuel cells to 2016. New tax credits were established for small wind energy systems and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

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