Sustainable House Design in Sedona

Many people are experiencing the need to make dwellings more sustainable in order to increase the quality of life and preserve the planet's natural resources. In fact we are taking note of the techniques of our past that we may have forgotten, like the Pueblo dwellings build by our native predecessors. Here is a basic list of Green Building Services for modern day residential architecture, inspired by our ancestors as we have evolved with modern building sciences.

• Sustainable Building Sites: Site selection is the critical first step of planning a sustainable home. As you select the small piece of the planet where you plan to live, please give careful consideration to the orientation of the home to the patterns of the sun. Professional design services can incorporate
• Passive Solar design if the orientation of the lot is optimal: There is no extra cost to build a passive solar house if the lot lends to it. Ask your architect or green building design to help you select your lot.
• Compact Dwellings: The size of a sustainable home is important. Green building designers and architects will help to develop spaces that feel bigger than they are in actual size, in other words "smaller spaces the live big". A well design compact dwelling will cut down on materials, energy consumption and the human labor to maintain a home. For example, it is possible to design the very popular three bedroom, two bath home for under 1900 sf with creative space planning. Make sure your designer is a good space planner.
• Energy Efficient Homes: A typical home consumes energy to heat water, to heat and cool the interior, to run appliances and to light a home. Green building services guide you through the maze of decision about the building envelope design like choosing doors and windows, insulation packages, roofing systems, foundation types, and wall types. Professionals can guide you to pin down the building systems like HVAC equipment, hot water heating, water filtering, and air filtering. The technology today is vastly improving the ability to "get off the grid" and is more affordable today that ever before.
• Water Efficient Homes: Good water is a precious resource everywhere, not just in Northern Arizona, and green building science has help us improve how we use less water but feel the benefits indoor water use and landscape irrigation. This is a vast topic for a short blog, so do your homework and hire professionals who are up to speed on exciting new products and approaches to sustainable practices.
• Materials and Resource Use: Every piece of wood, brick and mortar has an impact on our planet, not to mention our budget! A look behind the scenes to see how and where a 2x4 is created, for example, will reveal how critical it is to source materials in a responsible manor to reduce waste, production costs. Again, there is too much to cover in this blog, but here is a list of some of the materials that can go into building a home: Concrete, lumber, steel, aluminum, glass, stone veneer, wood veneer, cabinetry, brick, pavers, rock, stucco, wood siding, roof systems, wood flooring, tile flooring, carpet, engineered plastics, sheet rock, paint and coatings. An experienced professional will shorten your learning curve and help you avoid mistakes as you make all these decisions.
• Indoor Environmental Air Quality: Living a healthy life in a home is a common goal for most people. Pollutants are difficult to avoid in today's world, so careful planning of interior spaces goes a long way to keep things like dust, carbon monoxide, and other volatile organic compounds (VOC's) away from us when we are indoors with our families and friends.Sustainable Sedona, new homes and remodels, specializes in the latest green and sustainable architecture.