The 5 Elements That Make A Home Green

April 24th, 2008 categories: Real Estate News

With all the buzz about Green Living, it is important to understand the elements of building a Green Home. The 5 elements of Green Building are Energy Efficiency, Water Savings, Sustainable Site Development, Materials Selection and Indoor Environmental Quality.

A home may be “Green” by incorporating one or all of these elements, so one must have an understanding of all the elements so as not to be mislead as to whether a home is “Totally Green” or just have some elements, like Energy Efficiency.

The Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is third party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. A home or project with a LEED certification means that they have meant the required criteria on this rating system to achieve the LEED Certification. It also means the home has been inspected, performance test and certified as truly green.

While buying a LEED certified home would be considered by a “truly green” home, that does not mean that a home without the certification cannot perform well in some of the areas; say water savings and energy efficiency. It is just important to understand all the elements, especially if you are in the market to make your next home purchase a Green One!

You can read more about the LEED Certification here at USGBC.org

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Real Estate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.