Spoiler alert: I don't intend to paint my house green. In fact, our current house and outbuildings used to be green and we went to pretty great expense and effort to change that. And green kitchen cabinets may be the current trend, but they're not really for us. Honestly, you won't even find green throw pillows around here.
However, we do love living green! Our new property is covered with trees, rolling hills, and ponds. I want to see it. All of it. All the time. That's why I don't need green things in my home--I want to be surrounded by all the natural green scenery! (we won't talk about those 8 months where everything is white). If you take a look at the floorplan above, we have lots of windows! In fact, our entire floor plan was designed around the ability to have 3 walls of windows on our main floor. What you can't see in the sketch above is we also have a second set of windows--a 6' wide transom window above every single operating window and door. That's 12 large windows/doors just on our main level (if you want to hear a secret, there's actually a 13th window that I'll talk about more later!) We're also still playing with the budget to see if we can make that patio door 9' or even 12' wide :)
But living green means a lot more than just pretty scenery! Because we love our land, we want to help protect it. That's why we're going to extreme measures to create a house that's "green" in the eco-friendly sense! A few of our choices:
-Structural insulated panels (SIPs). I'll explain more in another post, but the SIPs manufacturing process greatly reduces building waste and also creates a super-insulated, super-tightly sealed home to greatly reduce energy use for decades to come.
-Geothermal heating! Did you know that geothermal heating is typically 400% efficient? Science is cool.
-Triple pane windows. Big shout-out to Marvin Windows for creating an exceptional product.
-Radiant floors. Not only is it amazing to always have warm feet, but radiant heat is also more efficient than forced air.
-Small footprint--less space to create and heat!
Sadly, going green means a few sacrifices. Top of the list is probably the front door. As much as we would LOVE a double door made from real wood, the reality is that not only was it out of budget, but double doors just don't seal well, and wood is a terrible insulator. Fortunately, there are many beautiful alternatives :)
What else should we consider? Do you have any favorite eco-friendly building methods or products?
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