Recommendations for Building an Eco-Friendly Home

When a new client contacts us to build an eco-friendly home, we propose meeting to explain what building an eco-friendly and healthy home entails.

In reality, meeting before we begin serves to help us get to know the client and for them to get to know us. Generally, the person who wants to build an eco-friendly home is a conscious individual with a high cultural level who seeks a reliable professional who can advise them throughout the entire process with experience and mutual trust.

In fact, at the studio, we believe that personal interaction and constant communication are the key factors for success in building an eco-friendly home, since it is a long-term project that requires significant involvement from the client in making decisions about how they will live and commits a lifetime financial investment, making our responsibility as professionals crucial.

While each eco-friendly home project is different and responds to very specific needs of each site and each family, there are a series of recommendations for building an eco-friendly home that are common in all cases, and we have decided to compile them in this post for those of you planning to get started.

Opt for a Custom Design

Hiring an architect almost always implies a custom design for the dwelling. However, there are people who start by looking for base designs obtained from catalogs of prefabricated home builders.

A custom design by an architect will take into account our requirements and those of the location where the home is situated, something essential when we are building an eco-friendly home.

It is true that there are people who prefer to have a fixed price before starting the project, and in this case, at Slow Studio, for example, we offer the possibility of starting from our eco-friendly base dwelling to adapt it to the site, which allows us to offer a fixed price with the advantage that the home is subsequently adapted.

In any case, the key points of a custom design are the adaptation of the home’s design to the person and to the location.

Let us see what this means:

The Home Must Be Adapted to the Location

Adapting the home to the location is one of the most important recommendations for building an eco-friendly home, since taking advantage of the situation and climate is a key point in ecological architecture.

The proper arrangement of facade openings and the effective use of architectural elements to capture sunlight in winter and protect us through porches or pergolas in summer are some of the key design factors that allow reducing a dwelling’s energy consumption.

Orientation must not be forgotten either, as the possibility of sun exposure is of great importance for illuminating and heating interior spaces.

Adaptation to the Client and Family

Just as a dwelling adapts to the site where it is located, it must also adapt to the family that will inhabit it.

A family of 2 people who spend a large part of the day at home is not the same as a family of 5 people whose members spend most of their time at work or school.

At Slow Studio, in fact, we spend many hours at the beginning of each project trying to understand the specific needs of each person and each family. This way we achieve an exclusive and unique home for each client.

Prioritize Energy Consumption Reduction Strategies

As we can see, among the recommendations for building an eco-friendly home, adaptation to the location and to the client are essential in the design phase.

But what happens once we build the home? An eco-friendly home must be efficient and healthy, and for this it is necessary that a series of passive energy consumption reduction strategies have been incorporated in the design phase. Let us look at some of them.

Solar Radiation Capture

Solar radiation is an inexhaustible source of heat that we can take advantage of without economic or ecological consequences.

Taking advantage of the sun’s rays to heat a dwelling is something basic but sometimes overlooked.

Well, an eco-friendly home cannot help but insist on this aspect. The home must be oriented to the south, where at our latitude we have greater solar incidence. To the south, we will place the largest openings; between 50% and 70% of the surface should be glazed provided we have good sun exposure.

In addition to capturing solar radiation through windows, it is also important to retain this heat in interior spaces. One method to achieve this is to place materials with high thermal mass, that is, with great mass, that receive the sun’s radiation. These elements will heat up while the sun reaches them and after a few hours will begin to release the heat to the dwelling.

Use an Adequate Insulation Thickness

Another method to maintain a thermally comfortable space is to use an adequate insulation thickness. Insufficient insulation thickness means excessively high heat transmission; this will cause the heat we gain in winter to be lost, and in summer the external heat we want to avoid to enter the home.

Use Ecological Materials

Another of the recommendations for building an eco-friendly home is the use of ecological and natural materials.

Wood and brick are ecological and natural materials that not only come from extraction and transformation processes with a low ecological footprint but once in the home are an excellent regulator of interior ambient humidity.

In fact, wood is a material that absorbs more CO₂ than it emits throughout its entire process of growth, felling, factory processing, and installation on site.

Of course, our home will have more materials both in the structure and in the interior, and for this reason, perhaps one of the main recommendations to keep in mind is to work with the fewest possible materials. Connections, joints, and material changes are sources of problems; working with few materials is a guarantee of good execution.

Natural materials in themselves imply a minimally processed material that arrives at the home just as nature has produced it. Some examples of natural materials would be stone or untreated wood; using natural materials is a guarantee of the absence of toxins.

Breathable materials are those that have a certain natural porosity that allows them to absorb and release ambient humidity, improving the interior climate of the dwelling.

Let us not forget that the recommended relative humidity is around 50%, a percentage that allows our body to regulate itself properly. Below this, the environment is too dry, generating suspended dust with the dreaded mites and other microbes that weaken our defenses. Above 50 or 60%, the environment is too humid and promotes the appearance of condensation and mold.

Finally, toxin-free materials are those that do not contain dangerous ingredients in their composition.

For example, rock wool contains a binder to keep the fibers together based on formaldehyde, which is a proven toxic and carcinogenic component. Although formaldehyde emissions are small, they are present in our home for many years and accumulate in our respiratory tract.

Finally, the use of local materials should be prioritized, materials from the nearby area where construction will take place. This reduces both transportation costs and environmental pollution, in addition to promoting the local economy, so important after the global economic crisis.

Stay Informed About the Building Systems and Installations of Our Home

It is important that the team of architects hold meetings at each design phase to keep us informed of each decision and allow us to participate in the process.

Our lifestyle has much to do with the design of our home; it is not the same for a family in which one of the members works from home and can therefore be attentive to the daily maintenance of blinds, awnings, and other passive architecture systems to improve the natural climate functioning of the dwelling as for a home in which all members spend the day away, in which case the climate control strategies will be automated.

Similarly, the layout and orientation of spaces as well as the way of heating and cooling the home will have much to do with the use we are going to make of it.

It is also advisable to visit the construction site with our architect to supervise the entire process and understand how it is built and how the climate control installations work.

Conduct a Builder Competition

Perhaps one of the most important among the recommendations for building an eco-friendly home is to conduct a builder competition supervised by our architect.

Before starting construction, you must decide which construction company will be in charge of carrying out the work. This is a very important decision since the company may propose modifications to the materials or the building system we have decided on.

For this reason, at Slow Studio we send the breakdown of work items to three local construction companies selected by us and by the client so they can send us a budget for the work.

When choosing, we will not go directly to the most economical option, but we also consider the commitment, seriousness, and capacity of each construction company’s team.

Maintaining an Eco-Friendly Home

The last of the recommendations for building an eco-friendly home will always be the maintenance of the dwelling.

Maintenance focused not so much on the materials themselves, but on the well-being and conditions of the spaces.

An eco-friendly home is designed to require minimum energy consumption, in addition to being respectful of the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out the basic strategies for climate control in an eco-friendly dwelling.

For example, it is necessary to provide the necessary ventilation to renew the interior air and to avoid condensation and humidity. In summer, windows are usually open, but in winter it will also be necessary to ensure minimum ventilation at certain times of the day.