Green Remodeling: Using Natural Building Materials in Your Remodeling Projects

Remodeling is definitely an inside or even an outside job. Whether one wants to make changes to the interior of your respective home, or beautify a walkway or patio, green remodeling is the most economic and eco-friendly way to go. Natural building materials might be anything from salvaged barn wood to pervious concrete.
The best advice with an eco-friendly remodeling project is usually to select natural materials which can be locally available. Building materials can come from all over the world to make it towards the local home improvement box store. That means extreme fossil fuel usage, associated pollution, not enough regard for local businesses, and sometimes abusive labor practices. Using a beautiful dark wood like wenge to construct a countertop might sound appealing, but since this wood are only able to be found in West Africa, we have been talking plenty of air miles. Finding building materials locally, eradicates those socially unconscious characteristics.
Visit locally-owned hardware stores, find woods which have been harvested from inside 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 superb resource for details about green building issues.
If planning an indoor remodel, consider green materials that are not only earth-friendly, and often will be completely different from the cookie-cutter box store materials that everyone uses. Natural materials which can be gaining popularity with eco-conscious remodelers are bamboo, cork and reclaimed wood.
Bamboo may be used for hardwood flooring Peabody MA, paneling and molding, to call but three options. The downside of bamboo, as green and sustainable as it's, is that it usually should be transported great distances. Cork is used for flooring and can be made almost exclusively from post-industrialized waste.
Reclaimed wood is promising at the same time. Raiding old buildings (with permission) for doors, paneling and flooring is often a cost-effective and completely green approach to recycle the existing into new. You can even repurpose items for example classic style doors from barn conversions to develop a dinner table, or make into some wall paneling -- an incredibly unique wainscoting design.
Concrete is frequently used for outdoor projects like patios, walkways and then for other pavement projects. While concrete is often a durable material, its production is energy-intensive as well as production involves high emission numbers of pollutants -- one tonne of cement produced means 2 tonnes of CO
2 released to the atmosphere. Concrete also inhibits ground use of water. This makes concrete less environmentally-friendly than other options. If you are set around the use of concrete though, be sure to aren't more likely to get rid of it any time soon. If you ensure that it stays for years to come that could end up like a better lasting solution. There are also a lot 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 involving the slabs, thereby preparing groundwater resources. Water that goes in the ground beneath permeable concrete pavers promotes cooler pavement.
Pervious concrete, made of stones and cement, allows drainage too and is EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recommended. Permeable concrete pavers and pervious concrete are only two examples of green approaches to improve an outdoors area. Explore the options.
Find what suits specific needs and share the info with neighbors and also the greater community. House-by-house, yard-by-yard, green remodeling makes a difference inside 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 from expensive fossil fuel consumption. In some cases, you can find 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