Our Top Tips: How to GREEN-UP Your Home's Interior

Irwin Weiner ASID - There's little excuse ... well, maybe inertia ... for not jumping on the GREEN bandwagon with your home design and decor. If you want to think ahead and plan for your family and planet's overall health and wellness, GREEN is the answer. We've come up with a list of eleven tips on how to go more eco-friendly around the house.

• Engineered quartz countertops made with recycled materials are scratch resistant, stain resistant, scorch resistant, chemical resistant, mold and mildew resistant, and stronger than natural stone or other solid surface materials. Use them on countertops throughout the house, including kitchens, bathrooms, dining rooms, and mud rooms. 

• Always use highly rated Energy Star appliances to save energy.

• Air purifiers and humidifiers ensure optimal indoor air quality regardless of the weather. An ERV (energy recovery ventilator) works with the purifier and humidifier to make sure fresh outdoor air circulates year-round and indoor air is kept fresh and clean.

• Traditional vacuum cleaners actually pollute indoor air. A central vacuum system is 5 times more powerful than handhelds, eliminates 100% of the dirt it comes in contact with, and reduces allergy systems up to 60%.

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Hillside House Solves Eco and Sloping Lot Challenges

 

Irwin Weiner ASID - I admire new home design that solves multiple problems. The Hillside House designed by architect and homeowner Scott Lee solves the problem of siting a house on a small lot on an impossibly steep slope. It uses energy-efficient systems throughout - from solar-heated hot water to a home systems control panel that automates light controls and motorized/concealed window shades. Innovative Kohler fixtures reduce water usage in this California home to a bare minimum. Finally, most of the building materials are locally sourced or locally recycled. This home earned its LEED-certified Platinum home status without sacrificing beautiful contemporary design. Watch the following video from Kohler to learn more and tour Hillside House.

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Trendspotting: Homes of the Future

Irwin Weiner ASID - Hats off to the architects, contractors, and city planners who are forward thinking enough to encourage dramatic bursts of new home building that, shall we say, totally breaks the mold.

We're used to seeing the vernacular box house with pitched roof and porch and a yard with the usual outdoor rooms. But today's "homes of the future" are anything but traditional. 

Here are some trends worth noting:

1. Many new communities are being built with low or no carbon footprints. Rainwater gets recycled, sometimes dramatically so as in Meixi Lake, China - a high-rise eco city filters the water that goes into this planned community's lake (below, bottom photo).
2. Dynamic modern architecture from top residential designers (top photo, home designed by architect Mark Koehler and second photo, glass house on stilts designed by Benthem Crouwel) is showcased in planned cities of the future, like beautiful Almere, Netherlands.

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Make My Next House Out of Super-Mud Adobe

Irwin Weiner ASID - It's vital to think more in terms of using sustainable building materials when we're renovating or building homes. It's incredible to me that more building materials aren't locally sourced, avoiding a large shipping carbon footprint. Egyptian master architect Hassan Fathy taught the world that locally-sourced mud can make soaring, elegant, environmentally sensitive homes and villages. And in that same vein, we have to honor the Native Americans and their adobe structures.

Sandbags used to build super adobe homes.

The folks at Post Modern Times built a super adobe home using few tree-based products and locally-sourced earth and related materials in Brazil. It took a few people a short period of time to make something that I'd like to do on a larger family scale. The bottom photo shows the building process, using sandbags, with the finished product shown in the top photo. Watch today's featured video and see this fascinating building process in action.

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