At my school we are in a future city competition and we need to build green homes for the future. Do you have any ideas of how we could do so for a low cost?
Libby Lyon, Student

Paul Shahriari, CEO, ecoScorecard; contributor to The Green Wall: I am happy to hear that your school is getting involved with the green building movement. Since you are looking at a future city scale solution rather than just one home or project, you will be able to do things that can greatly impact the sustainability of the project and also keep cost reasonable.

One of the biggest impacts you should focus on is the layout and design of the entire project you are working on. The site and orientation of the city will greatly affect issues such as energy consumption (daylighting, solar loading, heat island effects), transportation impacts, water usage and retention, and access to open spaces,etc. The USGBC’s LEED for Neighborhood Development is the best resource to reference when looking at those issues.

Now onto the question about your green homes. The main advice I give clients is to focus on the systems in the homes that can make them the greenest with the least moving parts and maintence. Try utilizing elements that harness the power of mother nature and utilize her cost saving resources . Sunshine for lighting is a great example. Properly places windows with the right amount of exterior shading, provide free light with very little heat. Those windows also can provide ventilation if the prevailing breezes on the site can easily move fresh air through the homes. Cisterns capture the rainwater that is delivered right on top of the buildings that need them.

When you have exhausted those efforts on a project you then need to look at the system within a project. For example, When looking at the energy effiency of the homes. the orientation can provide the largest reduction with no cost at all. Next look at the skin of the home. Try using Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) and/or Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPS) to completely wrap the house in a very effiecent skin. This will help keep the cool inside during the summer and the heat inside during the winter. Windows are the next step. Choose the correct performance characteristic for the location of your city. Now we have lower our needs and demands on the HVAC system we will be design and buying for the home. On my own home that I am working on, we reduced the size of the HVAC system by 50% which allowed me to by a centeral dehumidifer and fresh air system (I am in SW Florida) and a HEPA filtration unit for no extra cost to the original budget.

If you can keep the home designs similar and have interchangeable parts, you can take advantage of economies of scale, The manufactures and vendors will be able to provide green building kits for a major project. This will help bring the prices for green solutions lower.

Best of luck with your project.

Member Comments