A Green Home Is A Healthy Home

A Green Eco-Friendly Home has 3 major goals:

1. To be energy efficient
2. To conserve natural resources
3. To maintain air and water quality in the home

The foundation of any green building project is energy efficiency.

A well designed and eco-friendly home uses as little energy as possible and uses renewable energy when possible. There are many effective strategies for reducing the use of natural resources and energy use including green building products, green building methods, geothermal heating and cooling, water treatment and conservation and last but certainly not least air quality in the home.

Your home is only as healthy as the air quality in it

This is often the most over looked area of your personal health, but is the most important area to address.

This is the environment you spend the majority of your time in and the quality of air you breath is a major contributor to health issues. Mold and mildew are very common and are a result of leaks, not just water but air leaks as well, if air can move through a wall so does moisture.  Mold and mildew can cause a variety of health issues and a poorly designed, maintained or outdated building envelope can be a contributor to this problem. Another area of major concern are building materials themselves that off-gas hundreds if not thousands of VOC’s  many of which have been proven carcinogenic.

The most important aspect of our indoor health and building efficiency is many times the most overlooked……

…without this you can have the best of everything and it will still be like trying to condition the air in a sports stadium with a  single household unit, it simply will not work. Your home functions as a system and for any system to work it has to start from the ground up.

Your Crawl Space is Essential To Your Homes Health

We now know that venting a crawl space to the outside in a humid environment is just plain wrong, it would be no different than taking all the windows out of a basement and claiming that’s the proper way to ventilate your home. The fact is your crawl space should be treated no differently than you would a basement, it should be sealed and dehumidified.  To dry your crawl space of all moisture that causes mold and rot is impossible by open outside vents in a humid environment. If your home ever smells musty after being closed up you already have a mold problem, this leads to premature failure of the structure and health issues for its occupants, including but not limited to allergies and asthma.

• Did you know that up to 50% of the air on your first floor comes from the crawl space or basement?

• Did you know that by properly sealing and dehumidifying your crawl space will improve the energy efficiency by 15% to 30%?

• Did you know without a properly conditioned crawl space  any other improvement you do will not perform properly?
  

• Did you know Dust Mites and other parasites can thrive because of a humid crawl space?

This is one of the most Eco-friendly, Energy Saving Products I have seen and if I had to pick only one thing to do, if my home had a crawl space, this would be it.

The cost is negligible because this is a system that truly pays for itself in many ways.

If you have a crawl space you need this system

Call you local Dealer Today

Free Home Inspection & Moisture Analysis

Contact

David Braddy LEED Green Associate

david@LakeEcoGroup.com

or Call 573-216-0500

David is a former IL State Licensed Lead Abatement Supervisor and WQA Certified Water Specialist and has an extensive building and construction management background. He is currently the General Manager for Bolivar Insulation Solutions  and is an accredited “LEED Green Associate”

“The Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) administers credentialing programs that measure and improve the performance of buildings and communities as defined by industry systems such as the LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System™.”

“LEED Green Associate” and the LEED Green Associate logo are trademarks owned by the U.S. Green Building Council and are awarded to individuals under license by the Green Building Certification Institute.

A well designed HVAC system can also play a big role in your homes energy efficiency .

Recent Congressional legislation has improved the tax credit for the installation of residential geothermal heat pumps. With the new laws, a residential customer who installs a geothermal heat pump may be eligible for a tax credit of 30% of the installed cost of the system, with no limit in place. Geothermal heat pumps are a cost-effective solution to reducing a home’s reliance on fossil fuels by harnessing the natural power of the earth to both heat and cool one’s home all year long. The government strongly encourages homeowners to invest in renewable energy technology, and these incentives make owning your own geothermal heat pump system more affordable than ever.

Lake Eco Group is powered by Lake of the Ozarks area ecofriendly businesses and individuals who are concerned about quality of  life and preservation of our natural resources.

Call one of the above specialist and receive a Free energy saving consultation or estimate.

Give us a call or email to make your environment clean, green & healthy

Every year over 700 new chemicals are introduced into the environment while less than 1% are ever tested for the impact they have on the environment and the impact on personal health. Many of these end up in your home as a new and improved product. Building or retrofitting your home with ecofriendly products and systems does not have to be cost prohibitive. The life-cycle cost are far less expensive than conventional methods, especially today with the incentives that are available to you through the federal government and local co-ops.

Call us today and see how affordable an eco-friendly home can be, it may just  pay big dividends  to find out!