Green Remodeling: Using Natural Building Materials in Your Remodeling Projects

Remodeling is an inside or even an outside job. Whether one desires to make changes towards the interior of your respective home, or add charm to a walkway or patio, green remodeling is easily the most economic and eco-friendly strategy to use. Natural building materials may be anything from salvaged barn wood to pervious concrete.
The best advice to have an eco-friendly remodeling project would be to select natural materials which can be locally available. Building materials can result from all over the world to make it for 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 construct a countertop might sound appealing, but because this wood is only able to be found in West Africa, we're talking a lot of air miles. Finding building materials locally, eradicates those socially unconscious characteristics.
Visit locally-owned hardware stores, find woods which were harvested from inside the region, or visit salvage yards. Make the next remodeling project as green as possible. It will be a journey and an education. The U.S. Green Building Council is a wonderful resource for information regarding green building issues.
If planning an indoor remodel, consider green materials which can be not only earth-friendly, and can be completely different from the cookie-cutter box store materials that everybody uses. Natural materials which can be gaining popularity with eco-conscious remodelers are bamboo, cork and reclaimed wood.
Bamboo may be used for flooring, paneling and molding, to name but three options. The downside of bamboo, as green and sustainable because it is, is that it usually should be transported great distances. Cork can be used for flooring and can be made almost exclusively from post-industrialized waste.
Reclaimed wood is promising also. Raiding old buildings (with permission) for doors, paneling and flooring is a cost-effective and completely green way to recycle the existing into new. You can even repurpose items for example classic style doors from barn conversions to build a dinner table, as well as to 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 and its production involves high emission degrees of pollutants -- one tonne of cement produced means 2 tonnes of CO
2 released in to the atmosphere. Concrete also inhibits ground use of water. This makes concrete less environmentally-friendly than additional options. If you are set around the use of concrete though, make sure you aren't more likely to get rid of it any time soon. If you maintain it for years to come it could end up being a better long lasting solution. There are also a lot more green variations of concrete you can consider.
Walkways and patios could be paved with permeable concrete pavers. These solid pavers are installed over sand or cut stone. Water drains between your slabs, thereby increasing groundwater resources. Water that goes into the ground beneath permeable concrete pavers promotes cooler pavement.
hardwood Boston Pervious concrete, created from stones and cement, allows drainage as well and is EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recommended. Permeable concrete pavers and pervious concrete are simply two examples of green approaches to improve an outside area. Explore the options.
Find what suits specific needs and share the information with neighbors as well as the greater community. House-by-house, yard-by-yard, green remodeling makes a difference in the new world of global climate 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 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 proper and eco-conscious standard of life and gives 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