Green Remodeling: Using Natural Building Materials in Your Remodeling Projects

Remodeling kitchens Peabody MA is usually an inside or an outside job. Whether one really wants to make changes for the interior of your respective home, or beautify a walkway or patio, green remodeling is easily the most economic and eco-friendly approach to take. Natural building materials might be anything from salvaged barn wood to pervious concrete.
The best advice with an eco-friendly remodeling project is to select natural materials which might be locally available. Building materials can result from all over the world to make it to the local do it yourself box store. That means extreme fossil fuel usage, associated pollution, insufficient regard for local businesses, and frequently abusive labor practices. Using a beautiful dark wood like wenge to create a countertop might sound appealing, but because this wood can only be found in West Africa, were talking lots of air miles. Finding building materials locally, eradicates those socially unconscious characteristics.
Visit locally-owned hardware stores, find woods which have been harvested from within the region, or visit salvage yards. Make the next remodeling project as green as possible. It will be an outing and an education. The U.S. Green Building Council is a wonderful resource for specifics of green building issues.
If planning an indoor remodel, consider green materials that are not only earth-friendly, but will be completely different from the cookie-cutter box store materials that everybody uses. Natural materials that are gaining popularity with eco-conscious remodelers are bamboo, cork and reclaimed wood.
Bamboo can be used for flooring, paneling and molding, to mention but three options. The downside of bamboo, as green and sustainable as it is, is that it usually have to be transported great distances. Cork is employed for flooring and might be made almost exclusively from post-industrialized waste.
Reclaimed wood is promising as well. Raiding old buildings (with permission) for doors, paneling and flooring is often a cost-effective and completely green strategy to recycle the old into new. You can even repurpose items like classic style doors from barn conversions to construct a table, as well as to make into some wall paneling -- a very unique wainscoting design.
Concrete can often be used for outdoor projects like patios, walkways and for other pavement projects. While concrete can be a durable material, its production is energy-intensive and its particular production involves high emission degrees of pollutants -- one tonne of cement produced means 2 tonnes of CO
2 released into the atmosphere. Concrete also inhibits ground use of water. This makes concrete less environmentally-friendly than other available choices. If you are set on the use of concrete though, be sure to aren't prone to get rid of it in the near future. If you keep it for years to come then it could end up like a better long lasting solution. There are also more green variations of concrete you can consider.
Walkways and patios may be paved with permeable concrete pavers. These solid pavers are installed over sand or cut stone. Water drains between your slabs, thereby preparing groundwater resources. Water that goes to the ground beneath permeable concrete pavers promotes cooler pavement.
Pervious concrete, made from stones and cement, allows drainage at the same time and is EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recommended. Permeable concrete pavers and pervious concrete are simply two samples of green ways to improve a backyard area. Explore the options.
Find what suits specific needs and share the information with neighbors and also the greater community. House-by-house, yard-by-yard, green remodeling makes a difference in the new world of global climatic change and other environmental challenges.
Green remodeling has extraordinary benefits. Environmentally, it reduces solid waste and promotes healthy air and water quality. Economically, using natural building materials reduces building costs and takes pressure off of expensive fossil fuel consumption. In some cases, there are federal and local tax good things about making green improvements. At the community level, remodeling the green way promotes a wholesome and eco-conscious standard of life and supplies proof of the viability of green building projects.
US Green Building Council,
Concrete production,
Mother Earth News,
Image credits:
Salvaged barn wood - coffeehaus/photobucket
Cork floor - laxsupermom/photobucket
Patio - Kelly8743/photobucket