Exciting Green Home Building Techniques! - Elements of a “Green Home.” Part Two.

More “green home” ideas from the blogosphere:

• Here is a very exciting and interesting individual who has been involved with “green” construction techniques. This gentleman likes to reduce the environmental impact of home construction by using native materials like rocks and straw bales for walls. Kelly Hart also advocates the use of earth bags for insulation. Earthbags include a variety of insulating materials like rice hulls, crushed volcanic rock (such as scoria), vermiculite and perlite. He is even using these bags to construct homes in Haiti.
• Cob Cottage Company promotes the use of cob which is basically a mixture of earth, sand, and straw. This material is about as environmentally friendly as you can get, offers good protection from the elements, and is easy to sculpt into walls with curves, domes, or just about any shape. Cob can be made by mixing earth sand and straw with hands and bare feet. Cob homes have even been known to survive hurricanes. Cob is one of the oldest known home building materials.
• Here’s a company that strives to be the number one resource for green modular homes. These pre-built homes can be set up in a day. Because they are modular, you can add sections on to them as you wish.

• And now for the biggest surprise of all! Insulation made of recycled newspaper (aka cellulose insluation) is not only an environmentally friendly material, it is 57% more resistant to fire than fiberglass insulation!

Are you renovating your home? Sell the materials you are tearing out to people who will use them. Some contractors will buy used timbers. Habitat for Humanity might appreciate your old cabinets or kitchen appliances. Get a little money and reduce your project-related waste.

Back to Minnesota real estate pages.

Subscribe to the feed for more posts in this series!