Green Homes

Commercial innovations lead way for green homes

Green building practices are not only paying off more quickly as costs decline with demand, but home buyers also are seeking out greener developments over ones without green features ... if they aren't too pricey.

Permalink to GreenBuild Blog 3- How LEED Certified Homes Impact Homeowners

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to help identify and implement practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

US builds one million Energy Star green homes

Houston, Dallas and Las Vegas are the top three cities with the most qualified green homes, followed by Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York, Tucson, San Antonio, Sacramento, San Diego, Columbus, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Austin, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Orlando and Oklahoma City.

Green Flooring

How to Choose Green Flooring
Two of the most common flooring materials -- carpet and vinyl -- pose risks to ­the health of the environment and your home.

Bamboo flooring: Looking good for the environment
Bamboo flooring has come a long way in a short time. Once only available in lighter natural shades and hard to come by, it is now a hot new choice for flooring in new homes and remodels.

A House for the Future, Now
Camela and Wes Speer’s new house in Lorton will be environmentally friendly, energy efficient and unlike anything else around. It will also be one of the most carbon-neutral homes in Virginia.

Local Green News And Events

Upcoming Events - Piedmont Environmental Council

Keep Loudoun Beautiful To Host Canoe Cleanup Project, Volunteers Needed
In an enduring effort to preserve Loudoun County's environment, Keep Loudoun Beautiful is hosting its annual canoe cleanup project Saturday, Aug. 8. The outing is focused on the Potomac River and the litter that has collected in its waters. In past years, volunteers have filled garbage bags with tires, bikes and other sorts of random trash.

New Loudoun Homeless Shelter Receives Green Building Award
From more than 2,500 nominated projects, the new Loudoun County Homeless Shelter has been selected as a Green Building of America Award-winning project and will be featured in the magazine Real Estate and Construction Review - Green Success Stories Edition.

State, Local Governments Will Help Save Planet...
Like many states, Virginia confronts its share of challenges with energy and climate. Under current business-as-usual emissions projections, Virginia's greenhouse gas emissions are projected to rise about 1 percent per year by 2025. Moreover, Virginia imports approximately 20 percent of its energy, and as the state's population grows - over the next 10 years, 500,000 people are expected to move into Northern Virginia alone - Virginia will be severely challenged to stabilize, much less curb, greenhouse gas emissions.

Groundbreaking held for emergency operations center
He added the facility would also be certified as a green building with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver status.

Passively Green

This green home will heat itself
"The Passive House approach is very techie, which I think is its Achilles Heel--it appeals to geeks but not the layman, the lay builder," Hare said standing in the half-finished home last month. "We can prove we can do this without hiring consultants and using software to do the energy modeling. We'll just use precedent and established rules of thumb."

Passive House
By achieving the Passivhaus standards, qualified buildings are able to dispense with conventional heating systems. While this is an underlying objective of the Passivhaus standard, some type of heating will still be required and most Passivhaus buildings do include a system to provide supplemental space heating. This is normally distributed through the low-volume heat recovery ventilation system that is required to maintain air quality, rather than by a conventional hydronic or high-volume forced-air heating system, as described in the space heating section below.

Passive Solar House Designs - Pictures
A collection of images of Passive Houses.

Green Jobs

greenjobs
Bringing recruiters and job seekers together in the renewable engery industries

What is a green job? And how do I get one?
Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (DLLR) defines green jobs as, “those that will support Maryland's growing green economy.” That isn’t especially helpful. You have to push a bit further to learn that green jobs are found in organizations focused on energy efficiency and conservation, alternative and renewable energy production, waste management administration, and environmental stewardship and service.

White House Projects Gains in Health, 'Green' Jobs
President Obama's economic team released an upbeat employment forecast yesterday that predicted robust jobs growth in the health-care and clean-energy sectors, and a recovery in manufacturing positions over the next decade.

Green Construction

Green Cityscapes

Iconic skyscrapers find new luster in green tech
Buildings that define city skylines across the country, some national icons, are catching up to the sleek, new structures designed with efficiency in mind, as property owners and managers become convinced that a greener building now makes financial sense.

Uber-Eco-Towers: The Top Ten Green Skyscrapers
Green skyscrapers offer so much for the average EcoGeek to drool over. Each one can contain hundreds of innovations that make the world a cleaner place, they build up, rather than out, and many of them are frikkin gorgeous.

5 Amazing Green Cities
In the 1990s, industrialized countries around the world joined together to make progress against global warming and climate change. Together they drafted and approved the Kyoto Protocol. The agreement aims to reduce the effects of climate change through the reduction of six recognized greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.