GREEN BUILDINGS - Fairly New Concept to India.

Dear Friends,

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Here I would like to share few details regarding the concept of Green Buildings with you and would love to hear from others, if anybody have implemented such practices in their homes / work areas / projects.

"A GREEN HOME" - is a home where we focus on efficient usage of Energy, water & even with Building materials at the time of construction of the building itself.

Generally we come across the energy / water conservation methods while we are residing in a particualr house. But even at the time of construction by using simple methods and by a slight change in Building materials we can build a home (Green home) which can be energy efficient.

The green building movement has began in 1970, but the formation of codes and legalisation of certain laws and provision of loans has started only from 2006.

There is U.S. Green Building Council, which gives out Green building certification to the newly constructed buildings. There is also an "International Code council" which specifies the codes and practices for such constructions.

I think it's been Technical Info till now. I just wanted to provide a back ground before proceeding further.

Coming to Indian Scenario - We have INDIAN GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL - IGBC - ITS MISSION IS TO EMERGE AS ONE OF THE WORLD LEADERS IN GREEN BUILDINGS BY 2015.

The IGBC gives out the Rating System for the buildings in terms of their energy efficiency and Water savings.

Even individual houses can also apply and get the ratings.

Presently, most of the MNC's offices & corporate buildings are eyeing for the certification & emploring the measures to get the ratings. And CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) gave out Codal provisions for Green Buildings.

From the next post, the generic and useful information apart from the above techinicalities will be presented.
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The above Photograph is of the building of CII (Confederation of India Industry) in Hyderabad. One can see the planation on the roof side of the building which provides certain kind of fresh air to the surrondings and also prevents / reduces the effect of heat inside the building. This will definetly leads to reduced usage of Fans & Air conditioning systems. This Building has got LEED certification (This is 1st building in India to get Green Building certification)
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source of Photograph: Google

 

Thank you mums for adding this to your likes.

 

The reasons for Following Green Building concept are as below:

• Reduced Energy usage & lower maintenance
• It improves indoor air quality

and on a broader perspective - Reduces Green house gases emission and Reduces waste

 

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The Transparent tiles shown in the picture are Solar tiles. The Roof tiles which are generally made of concrete / clay mainly stands there as an outershell abosorbing the heat and as a result that results in indoor temperatures.

The provision of Solar tiles over and above the roof tiles, reduces the impact of heat on the tiles and there by the indoor temperatures also will be lesser

 

Upon thorough study & research USGBC (United States Green Building Council) has published the following:

Green buildings results in

30% of Energy savings
35% of Carbon savings
30 - 50% of savings in water usage
50 - 90% of savings in water cost

 

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The image is shown of Sustainable concrete. The sustainable concrete means using flyash / slag (by-products of cement & steel manufacturing), Crushed glass (reducing % of aggregate) / using wood chips will reduce the carbon emission from concrete.

Although it may not greatly reduce the carbon / heat emission from the concrete, the products which are treated as a waste can be made useful and thereby the waste can be reduced.

 

Do you know??

That the air in newly built houses can be upto 10times more polluted than the air outside. That is due to the Paints we use.

One can use Non-Toxic Paints - Environmental Friendly & Organic paints to avoid this pollution.

We spending more than 85% of time in our homes, is n't it worth to go for healthy paints rather even a bit expensive rather than choosing unhelathy paints which may create illness.

 

Before proceeding with the painting for homes, one should know the VOC component of the paint...

VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound. VOC is the key component of the composition of Oil based paints and also in Latex based paints.

The higher exposure to VOC in paints may cause asthma attackes, eye irritation & even respiratory problems.

Hence, instead of higher VOC componet based paints.. we can opt for

Low odour / Low VOC paints
Zero VOC paints
Non-Toxic / Natural Paints



has been a key component of the composition of oil based paint and can be a problem even in traditional latex based paints

 

Again coming back to the construction aspect:

While construction of building taking place, one must ensure the tight building envelope. It means, The outer structure of the building should be properly sealed.. The gaps between walls and interconnection shall be properly and tightly sealed.

1. Proper Caulking around doors & windows
2. Using Foam / Filler at through-wall penetrations