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Benefits of a Built Green™ home

Home Buyers

Built Green™ is moving the home building industry forward in producing quality homes and enhancing healthy living. These benefits extend beyond the walls of your new home. Built Green™ is helping to ensure that these benefits are available to all homebuyers who purchase a home that meets Built Green™ standards. By choosing energy efficient options you'll be making a choice to help protect our environment for the future as well as make a difference to your bank account today.

Energy Efficiency

As energy costs take a noticeable chunk out of homeowner budgets, using energy wisely is being widely promoted. We also need to be aware of the source of our electricity. Next to a mortgage, energy costs are the most significant household expenditure. An energy efficient home offers lower energy costs.

It is widely known that energy costs are increasing. B.C. is now a net importer rather than exporter of energy, meaning resulting in an even more precarious reality for our energy generation sector. By planning ahead, and building your home wisely, Pacific Western can save you hundreds of dollars each year in energy costs.

Comfort

A less drafty home with improved ventilation increases the homeowners control of humidity and temperature.  Appropriate design and orientation can take advantage of the sun's warmth in the winter and reduce the sun’s impact in the summer.

While you may not see it, your home has hundreds of tiny penetrations in outside walls, which allow dirty air, insect and vermin, and other impurities into your home. The average home has the equivalent of a 20 square foot opening (a 5 x 4 foot window) open to the elements all year round. By minimzing this common problem, we can offer you reduced heating and cooling costs, as well as healthier indoor air for you and your family.

Water Efficiency

Given past drought conditions experienced almost everywhere in Canada, water is becoming a precious resource. Installing water efficient appliances such as low-flow fixtures or dual-flush toilets, Energy Star washing machines and dishwashers along with water aerators on the faucets and showers can significantly reduce the amount of water a household consumes. Planting a water-wise landscape also reduces the water demand and requires less maintenance while still adding beauty to your home.

Almost all new homes in the Lower Mainland require water meters to be installed to measure the water consumption of all new homes. Due to recent decreases in the prices and increases in the availability of water sensitive plumbing fixtures and household appliances, installation of such items can provide significant savings in a much shorter time frame than what was previously attainable. Installing irrigation systems, as well as water wise landscaping can provide you with a yard which is both easy to maintain and beautiful to look at.

Healthier Indoor Air

Tightening a home to make it more energy efficient without adequately addressing the ventilation can create health problems. Built Green™ encourages well-sealed duct systems, combustion appliances that are sealed and/or direct vented, controlled fresh air and uses interior building materials that reduce indoor air pollution.

It may sound silly, but many of today’s homes have duct leaks, dirty air filters, or poorly placed venting which results in deteriorating air quality for their residents. When planning and installing your new home mechanical system, Pacific Western will ensure maximum efficiency, proper sealing of all duct work, proper locating of vents, as well as s full system which will be easy to maintain, promoting the air quality for you and your family.

With the large number of families experiencing asthma, spending more time indoors, increasing polluting of our natural air quality, and the proliferation of the family pet, there has never been a more critical time to look at the quality of your indoor air.

Durability and Less Maintenance

Built Green™ encourages the use of building materials that are more durable both inside and outside the home. This reduces maintenance and replacement costs.

By planning the choice of materials for your new home, and working within your budget, we can offer you significant long term benefits such as lower maintenance costs involved in keeping your home in top shape.

Global Benefits

Building a Built Green™ home results in some direct benefits to the owners but there are also benefits to the community and the environment in general.  For example, the use of local materials is encouraged, thereby reducing transportation costs and stimulating the local economy. Also, focusing on choosing materials and products made from recycled content reduces the need and energy to extract new materials. They are resource efficient and produce less waste than typical products and usually have a long life-cycle, requiring less maintenance.

As the home of Greenpeace, a world leader in environmental protectionism, and one of the largest users of public transit in North America, the Lower Mainland is truly a environmentally conscious place. You can do your part to help this effort by choosing a Built Green™ home for you and your family. Let our team work with you to go over the many benefits that our homes have to offer, and show you how you can help push the building industry forward. Currently, the construction industry produces more than 25% of the total waste across Canada. Together, we can do our part to dramatically reduce that waste. In addition, a typical residential home can produce as much CO2 as a car that is driven 30,000 km each year! A Built Green™ home can do as much as cut that output in half!

Built Green™ homes just make sense. For the building industry to sustain itself, increasingly more efficient and creative ways to build homes without sacrificing the environment and quality of life must be achieved.

*all italicized text from www.builtgreencanada.ca