Eco-Friendly Home

There are a lot of ways to participate in the global move for environmental protection. And among the most effective ways is to build an eco-friendly house. Unlike a typical house, an eco-friendly house is specially structured to conserve energy, lower urban temperature and combat the heat island effect. The house structure is most likely the same, but design might be slightly different.

When applied to the design of a house, energy conservation has a myriad of applications. Among the energies that can be conserved is electricity, whose generation from major sources in the world contributes greatly to air pollution. The house can be designed with passive solar technology as an alternative energy that uses either light or heat in place of traditional sources. A house can be designed with well-opened spaces to receive more sunlight and replace electric lighting.

One example of a passive solar building design is skylight, which consists of glass windows installed either inclined along the attic roof or directly installed on the roofing. This minimizes the use of light bulbs to lighten dark areas in the house during daytime. In the absence of skylight, light bulbs can be reduced from traditional high wattage bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs that are more economical and consume lesser energy.

Do it yourself house building benefits to choosing a personal roofing design. Choosing a green roof as the design for the house’s roofing better promotes the environment than high solar reflectance roofing (which is also eco-friendly). Green roof is a kind of roof that is covered with vegetation that does not only reflect but converts sunlight to other useful energies.

Green roof is safe in that it can be designed with additional layers that insulate the main roofing system from permeation as the vegetation normally collects water from rain. Do it yourself house construction is a chance to adopt this naturally aesthetic roofing style. In matters of months, vegetation on the roof will already be able to reuse solar energy for transpiration and photosynthesis.

Installation of solar modules or panels can also be considered when planning do it yourself house building. Using solar energy as an alternative source of electricity is not only economical but also environment friendly. It discourages the use of petroleum in generation and supply of electricity.