| Oregon Green Construction Begins With A Steel Frame |
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Oregon green construction is truly the wave of the future. People want to be green, the government wants you to be green, and mother earth needs us to be green. But for green construction in Oregon to be truly effective it needs to make some drastic changes. A recent survey showed that the majority of people considered green construction green when it created a home that was energy efficient and used sustainable building material. The fact of the matter is that most homes pass this request with flying colors. Homes are more energy efficient than they have ever been and they are using sustainable building materials such as wood and bamboo which are replaced easily after harvesting. The sad thing is what passes for green construction in Oregon is no where as green as it should be. Wood framing, sheathing and insulation needs to be replaced with a better system and materials. A steel frame is the first step. By replacing wood framing with recycled steel you would have a massive impact on the environment. Harvesting wood for home building has seven times the impact on CO2 green house gas emissions when compared to recycling steel. Harvesting wood is responsible for 20% of green house gas emissions. In fact, Switching to steel in all new residential construction would have 2.9 times the positive impact on the US CO2 emissions over requiring every new car and light truck sold to be a hybrid or other technology that doubled gas mileage. How’s that for green construction Oregon? The second step is to replace fiberglass insulation in the walls and blown insulation in the attic with radiant barrier and continuous ridged exterior insulation. Radiant heat loss and air infiltration are the two main cause of energy inefficiency in a home. Conventional insulation only resists these two things. It does little to block them. On other words it only slows down heat loss and infiltration. On the other hand a radiant barrier system blocks the radiant heat. It blocks as much as 97% of radiant heat infiltrating the home during the summer and blocks as much as 85% of radiant heat loss during the summer. When you add the continuous ridged exterior insulation you create an air tight envelope around the home that stops and blocks air infiltration. Combing all these things together creates green construction in Oregon that is extremely energy efficient. On average a green in Oregon home built with this system can see utility costs reduced by as much as 60%. Add that together with the recycled steel and it’s benefits you have created a truly green home. |