Basics of Green Homes and the Future of 3D Technology

Basics of Green Homes and the Future of 3D Technology

The basics of green homes and the future of 3D technology lays out the fundamentals to introduce sustainable options for your home in the near future. Today more and more home improvements are being made with the aim to make our homes sustainable. When green remodeling is our goal, we strive for a healthy living environment and sustainability. Eco-friendly homes and upgrades may be costly, but they are considered good investments that pay for themselves in the end.

Example of Green Home (Image courtesy of Ranger Roofing of Oklahoma)

Basics of Green Homes
Homes can be remodeled into green homes by using specific floors, roofs or window installations and focus on insulation and energy-efficient technology.

  1. Floors: When it comes to laying down the floor in your home, the best sustainable option is to install wood floors, since wood flooring helps with insulation. Not all wood is a great “green” choice, as cutting down trees unnecessarily defeats the purpose of going green. Therefore, instead of choosing oak and maple, homeowners can opt for wood like bamboo or reclaimed wood. Cork flooring is another great green option and they cost remarkably less than reclaimed wood. While choosing the underlayment, the best option is plywood which is soy-based adhesives.
  2. Roofs: There is more than one way to make you roof eco-friendly, the choice comes down to the homeowners budget, taste and roof shape. One important factor to keep in mind is that the darker the roof is the more sun it attracts and the lighter, the less it attracts heat to your home.
    The obvious choice that will make a roof greener is to invest in solar panels or solar shingles. This is a smart investment as they provide your home with solar energy, cutting out the use of conventional electricity most of the time. On the other hand, if you have the right shaped roof for a green living roof, this is a great investment to make. These roofs may be a bit more expensive, but they can last up to 30 to 50 years.
  3. Windows and frames: If you have windows that are leaking or that are single glazed, then chances are you are losing a lot of energy in your house. Making sure the windows are air tight (as well as doors) and installing double glazed window will keep the heat in during the winter and summer heat out in the summer, cutting the energy bills when less AC is being used. Another place where wood offers great insulation is when they are being used as window frames. Wooden window frames are greener and cheaper that PVC or metal frames.
  4. Insulation: The focus on turning a home green is on how to keep the energy inside the home. The most obvious way to do this is to use appropriate insulation. Insulating your walls, roof and floors will help you keep cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter making you need the AC system less, which lessens the electricity count. To avoid chemical insulation, you can choose the soy foam that acts the same as conventional insulation.

Turning a home green is an ongoing process as technology and innovative developments are changing for the better every day, providing you with better greener options to apply to your home.

3D Printed Home (Image courtesy of Ranger Roofing of Oklahoma)

Examples of Green Homes

  1. Tiny Homes: A tiny home is just that, tiny! Between 100 and 400 square feet, they can make a perfect little mobile home, ready for any site. They are built with eco-friendly material and designed to be a comfortable, little modern space. Living in a smaller home uses less energy, materials, and land than the average home.
  2. Prefabricated homes: These homes are partly made in the factory. Part of the home is manufactured which gets shipped and put together on the site. There is a very particular building process the factory follows which assures for less waste and the design is made to be sustainable and energy-efficient.
  3. Shipping container homes: This is a home that is basically a modified, cargo steel container. Shipping containers come in one size, therefore if a larger home is needed, they are put together to create a larger space. Even though they have an industrial look to them, they are modified in different ways to look more appealing. This is a great way to upcycle, turning steel that is no longer being used into durable homes. The little labor that goes into creating a container home makes them very affordable.

Is 3D Printing Homes the Future of Green Building?
Something relatively new is the development of the 3D printing homes. Basically, this is a form of smart technology – the specific type of technology that creates parts of the home with a 3D printer. The printer can print out the house’s concrete walls, partitions, and building envelopes. All that is left for the builder to do is to paint the home and install the wiring, add the roof and insulation. This building process is very fast and high quality, and homes created by smart machines are not that expensive. Houses that will be 3D printed in the future will be able to last up to 175 years.

The main focus of the 3D printing robots is the speed. If the house does not require a beautiful architectural design then it will be just a matter of time before 3D printing is feasible. 3D printing that is power based is well advance in the manufacturing industry but the 3D construction industry is still at an infant stage.

The potential benefits that 3D printing might bring to the construction industry are speed, cheaper labor, maximum accuracy, better integration of functions and minimum waste during development. Having robots build our homes at a great speed can help with the lack of housing around the world. Imagine replacing slums with natural houses that do not become a pile of waste when abandoned. Below is a quick demonstration of how a 3D house can be printed in only 24 hours.

Two things our world desperately needs are housing for its growing population and protection of its resource. By fulfilling the one need we work against the other one, therefore green building has been proven to be the only building alternative that can be used that will help ensure a better future for our planet. It is exciting to see how innovative creators are finding better resources, methods and are creating better technology to help us meet the needs of our planet.

This was a guest post written by Matt Jambrovic, smart technology and green building writer and editor for roofing contractors in Oklahoma, Ranger Roofing of Oklahoma.