Posts Tagged ‘Differs’

Four Ways a Leed Green Home Differs From Regular Construction

The LEED® for Homes program is the premier evaluators of green construction practices nationwide. A LEED certification is an important distinction for a green home to earn, but what are the real differences between a LEED certified green home and a home built with regular construction techniques? Here are the top 4:

1) Over-Kill – LEED is attempting to reduce and eliminate the amount of over-kill in home construction. Over kill is the utilization and installation of over-sized equipment in home construction such as heating and cooling equipment, over-sized lumber for rafters and floor joists. In the past, it was assumed that using bigger heating and cooling units than the minimum standards was a good rule of thumb. Those assumptions have been re-worked in LEED homes to provide the right size equipment for the home.

2) Lower Energy Consumption – LEED homes require far less energy to run and have dramatically lower energy costs. Sometimes getting those savings can present a challenge. State and local code have minimum BTU requirements based on square footage and cubic foot. These minimum requirements have not been updated in a while. There are now new technologies that can heat and cool the same space with less energy consumption. The problem lies in getting the code enforcement to allow the new equipment to be placed into use before the code is updated.

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