Renovating Your Home for A Greener Future

Marta Layseca of EnviroHomeDesign, LLC spoke about environmentally-friendly home renovations at the Monday, April 4. With existing housing responsible for 20 percent or more of the country's carbon emissions and energy use, the home is a place where many people can reduce their bills and their environmental impact at the same time.

According to Layseca, most people who are looking to renovate their home have at least one major area that they want to change, often the small kitchen typically found in many older homes. Regardless of why a homeowner is looking to renovate, the renovation itself is an opportunity to re-engineer the home in many ways. For Layseca, the end goal for a renovated home is one that is beautiful, functional, healthy, and efficient; in short, a happy place to be.

Getting to that happy place requires a lot of work! Layseca sees a house as an integrated system, she looks at the existing conditions and works with the homeowner to develop a master plan for the new home. The homeowner needs to think about how they use each room now and how they want to use each room in the future. The final design should reflect the atmosphere that the homeowner wants to create.

Some renovations allow for the addition of an insulated exterior, which addresses many issues with existing homes that leak energy like a sieve through the walls and windows. Energy-efficient and insulated windows certainly help, and when combined with external insulation, can cut down greatly on energy bills. Layseca also looks to increase the use of natural light and natural airflow to create a more livable space. Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV) is used to bring in fresh air even with the windows closed but with minimal loss of heat in the winter or cool in the summer. Use of recycled materials and overall efficient use of materials during the renovation can help cut costs and waste.

Sally, a homeowner that Layseca had remodeled a home for, came to the presentation and gave some of her thoughts about the process and the results. Sally really liked how the “HRV system brought in fresh air year-round.” She felt that the radiant heat systems were good, although the weren't as flexible as the forced air systems found in most homes. Sally said that “water use has dropped by thousands of gallons” with new equipment as well as water-saving systems installed in the renovation.

Although her home did not receive a complete exterior insulated covering, she said “the insulation is amazing and the [energy] bills are very low."  Sally said that her family is paying lower energy bills now despite the fact that their home is now almost twice its previous size. Part of her renovation included a wood-burning fireplace from Kozyheat that she really likes.

For more information on EnviroHomeDesign, LLC see their website at:

http://www.envirohomedesign.com/

For more information on incentives for building green, see:

Owners of existing homes http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=tax_credits.tx_index

Commercial and multi-family projects in Arlington http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/EnvironmentalServices/epo/EnvironmentalServicesEpoIncentiveProgram.aspx