What is your opinion about green building?

A little more detail would be helpful. Do you mean Leed certification? We looked into it when we built our new hospital, but the process was rather ridiculous (and expensive). Instead, we made the changes that we could justify to make it energy efficient and minimize our carbon footprint as much as possible.

Personally, I think we should stop subsidizing oil companies and spend the exact same money on putting solar panels on every new home built.

I happen to really like Adobe and rice bale houses. Excellent green and conservation minded building materials.
There is an amazing rice bale house in my area…it was for sale a few years ago but out of my price range between the cool architecture and sitting on a large piece of property.

No, I mean about green building, in general, in the broadest sense possible.

Oh, then I’m totally against them. Terribly gaudy.

@syz Hey..I kinda like that house, needs more landscaping though. haha

Love it! As long as it is convenient and financially logical.

I am about to build a house and am looking into capturing the rainwater from my roof gutters to water my lawn. Parts of my county you can hook into the reclaimed water municipal system. Which is awesome, but I won’t have that opportunity. I plan to get solar heat for my pool. I looked into solar electricity hooked into the grid for my house, but not sure I want to outlay the money and there will be a lot of panels.

I will have one hot water heater that is instant coil on electricity; and one, a small one, that is a traditional gas hot water heater. The coil is more expensive, and I have a hard time believing it is justified to charge more based on materials. I would love to know the real answer to that.

I have a front load washing machine that is supposed to save water and electricity and for the most part I hate it. It is good only for one purpose, delicate clothing. I am putting an extra washing maching hook up in a closet for an inexpensive traditional top load washer for work out clothing and towels.

It is very frustrating that builders are not all up on green building to help more with the process. I know many of the newer graduates from universities do take classes on the topic and some universities have degrees in green building.

Every little bit helps.

It’s the fad movement of the year. Next year someone will devise some other new fad to make money while theoretically “doing good”.

Every little step towards decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels helps.
I’m completely off grid but I heat my home with a central boiler which is wood fired and my water is heated with propane. I also have a propane generator back up if its cloudy and cook with propane.
I could be greener.
My home is much greener than my lifestyle. I would love to be earth mama enough to make iced tea and put it in reusable bottles instead of drinking my diet soda.
I don’t recycle near as much as I could.
Baby steps.

I think it’s pretty much a waste of time, money and effort, since it does little to help the environment. It does work towards educating people of the needs.

I especially hate the idea of footprint offsets, where companies pay other people to reduce their pollution, and the company then uses that to avoid reducing their own pollution.

In our area, the waste management company started out with large plastic bins to separate the different kinds of trash, then they went to an entirely new method, and TRASHED (or maybe recycled) the bins. I still have my bins, because they are very useful around the house.

The new method involves huge plastic cans with wheels. They break after couple of years and have to be TRASHED or perhaps they are recycled. Can you imagine the pollution that is created in the manufacturing plant? They are probably made in China, where pollution causing people to drop dead in the street.

It’s something I would consider if we were in the market for building a new home. We spend quite a bit of money to heat our country home with propane, so an alternative would be nice. There is earth sheltered housing in our area that looks appealing.

I think it was a good idea that has, like the organic food market, been reduced to a meaningless catchphrase for the most part by large corporations and their legal teams. Just as nowadays “organic” can have additives and modifications that in reality render the term meaningless, “green building” means whatever you want it to mean. You can claim to be building green because you use wood studs and wood is a renewable resource. Doesn’t mean you are doing anything different than you used to, just that you have a new marketing tool.

When applied intelligently to a building design or renovation, green architectural concepts can save a lot of money, and energy. You can accomplish a lot just considering the placement of the building on the lot, and sun angles, and that’s free. Picking materials that will get the job done structurally and either take a lot less energy to make or provide superior insulation save money.

Doing everything possible can get really expensive but a well-informed architect can incorporate ‘green’ elements that cost the same or less and either have a smaller energy footprint to make initially or save energy over the life of the building, or both.

Designing green systems in large buildings can be simple and save a lot of money in the long haul and not cost much to build in—e.g. the cooling system of the new’ish BankOfAmerica headquarters in NYC makes ice at night when electricity is cheap and power grid generators are lightly loaded then blows ventilation air over the ice during the day to cool it.

Our only way to survive on this planet the next 60 years.