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not renovating is green building
IN PRAISE OF OLD UN-RENOVATED HOMES as green building
One of the greenest type of green building you can live in, in terms of its carbon footprint, is a very old home that you have
“done nothing to”.
“done nothing to”.
GREEN BUILDING CAN SOMETIMES MEAN NOT BUILDING AT ALL
All the materials you use for renovating the kitchen and bathroom, or for installing “built in cupboards” damage the environment in one way or another. Bear with me a moment. All these require enormous energy input, cement and its derivatives are produced at high temperatures, thousands of degrees, tiles are fired at similar temperatures, twice, wood requires felling of trees and plastic the utilization of irreplacable fossil fuels. And as for the stone in those counter tops, it has lain in the earth for millions of years and now it has to be polished, half of the material being rendered to dust, to produce a 'quality' building material ? The fact that granite tops are often very ugly, and usually a bit too showy, is only secondary to the enormous waste involved using up materials that cannot be replaced. So much more than heat exchange has to be considered.
THIS IS A DESPERATE PLEA WITH OWNERS OF OLD HOUSES: JUST LEAVE IT BE AND DON'T FIX WHAT ISN'T BROKEN
Another reason why NOT renovating is good I found during my research on the green building regulations in Europe. Each house is given an energy rating and old houses have a poor rating. Renovaters therefore add insulation, which closes off the breathing of the house, and the internally circulating moisture, especially when you add to the load by inhabiting spaces which were not designed or intended to be inhabited by humans who cook, shower, boil kettles etc. is that the beams rot at point of contact. Now these old oak beams have been perfectly fine and structurally sound for four hundred years sometimes. Making the structure in terms of its age have a very low carbon footprint. Burning wood in a wood stove was the old way of keeping the house warm and it also kept it dry, drawing moist air off by convection through all the pores, the leaky windows, up the chimney. But the creators of the DIN norms do not weigh the two types of energy consumption against each other.
The added value of not renovating is the preservation of history, and beauty, and that too has an ecology of its own, and should be included, like just-not-renovating, in the greening effort. For a lot more tips on living green, here is a link back to the home page of greenidiom.com, to the page on recycled building materials, and more.
site map
home page for inspirational links to ideas on green living and ecological issues
different ways of building green
greener homes
eco water
recycled building materials
recycling
Green Building Council of South Africa
The added value of not renovating is the preservation of history, and beauty, and that too has an ecology of its own, and should be included, like just-not-renovating, in the greening effort. For a lot more tips on living green, here is a link back to the home page of greenidiom.com, to the page on recycled building materials, and more.
site map
home page for inspirational links to ideas on green living and ecological issues
different ways of building green
greener homes
eco water
recycled building materials
recycling
Green Building Council of South Africa