Green Remodeling: Using Natural Building Materials in Your Remodeling Projects

Remodeling is usually an inside or even an outside job. Whether one would like to make changes to the interior of one's home, or liven up a walkway or patio, green remodeling is the most economic and eco-friendly way to go. Natural building materials could be anything from salvaged barn wood to pervious concrete.
The best advice on an eco-friendly remodeling project is always to select natural materials that are locally available. Building materials can result from all over the world to make it on the local diy box store. That means extreme fossil fuel usage, associated pollution, lack of regard for local businesses, and frequently abusive labor practices. Using a beautiful dark wood like wenge to create a countertop might sound appealing, but as this wood are only able to be found in West Africa, we are talking lots of air miles. Finding building materials locally, eradicates those socially unconscious characteristics.
Visit locally-owned hardware stores, find woods that were harvested from the inside the region, or visit salvage yards. Make the next remodeling project as green as you possibly can. It will be an outing and an education. The U.S. Green Building Council is a great resource for details about green building issues.
If planning an interior remodel, consider green materials which are not only earth-friendly, and often will be totally different from the cookie-cutter box store materials that uses. Natural materials that are gaining popularity with eco-conscious remodelers are bamboo, cork and reclaimed wood.
Bamboo might be used for flooring, paneling and molding, to call but three options. The downside of bamboo, as green and sustainable because it is, is that it usually must be transported great distances. Cork is used for flooring and could 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 method to recycle the old into new. You can even repurpose items like classic style doors from barn conversions to construct a dining room table, or make into some wall paneling -- a really unique wainscoting design.
Concrete is usually used for outdoor projects like patios, walkways as well as for other pavement projects. While concrete is really a durable material, its production is energy-intensive and its production involves high emission amounts of pollutants -- one tonne of cement hardwood Boston MA produced means 2 tonnes of CO
2 released in the atmosphere. Concrete also inhibits ground access to water. This makes concrete less environmentally-friendly than other options. If you are set on the use of concrete though, make sure you aren't more likely to get rid of it any time soon. If you ensure that is stays for years to come then it could end up as being a better long term solution. There are also a lot more green variations of concrete you can think about.
Walkways and patios could be paved with permeable concrete pavers. These solid pavers are installed over sand or cut stone. Water drains between the slabs, thereby preparing groundwater resources. Water that goes into the ground beneath permeable concrete pavers promotes cooler pavement.
Pervious concrete, made of stones and cement, allows drainage as well and is EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recommended. Permeable concrete pavers and pervious concrete are merely two examples of green solutions to improve an outside area. Explore the possibilities.
Find what suits specific needs and share the info with neighbors as well as the greater community. House-by-house, yard-by-yard, green remodeling makes a difference within 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 of expensive fossil fuel consumption. In some cases, you can find federal and local tax benefits of making green improvements. At the community level, remodeling the green way promotes a normal and eco-conscious standard of life and offers 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