In our previous Digital Home post we discussed the fact that there are currently three distinct driving trends in Digital Home design:

1. Green
2. Personal
3. Smart

In this article we’ll look a little more in-depth into the “Greening” aspect of the Digital Home, focusing on the construction of new homes and buildings. In a future piece we’ll look at current technologies and practices in making existing homes more efficient.

The first and most fundamental trend of what new home design and construction is all about is energy-efficiency. It's easy to envision a factory spewing pollution or a bumper-to-bumper freeway burning billions of gallons of gasoline. But buildings are the largely unnoticed users of much of our energy, through electricity, heating, cooling and water consumption. The U.S. Energy Department estimates buildings are responsible for 39% of our energy consumption and a similar percentage of greenhouse-gas emissions.

The growing awareness of this fact helps explain why green building “self-sufficiency” – buildings that are capable of heating and cooling themselves and generating their own electricity – is one of the most pervasive trends in the construction industry.

In addition to energy self-sufficiency, the green building movement appears to be supporting and fostering three other major trends:

1.      Building as little as possible or necessary (i.e. space efficiency)

2.      Maximize resource efficiency in the building process (i.e. -understanding the supply-chain of where materials come from, what resources it takes to bring these materials to the buildsite, and what the energy trade-off is for this re-location of resources) 

3.      Demonstrate that ecological design can be beautiful and harmonizing with the local environment

Current examples of green building technologies includes:

• Low or No-VOC Paints, Finishes and Adhesives - While many paints contain high-levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that diminish air quality and may be detrimental to the health of those who breath them, alternatives are now available that release little or no VOC pollutants.
• Cement alternatives - According to Environmental Building News, the annual US production of cement creates as much greenhouse case as the operation of 22 million compact cars. But by-products of other energy processes exist that can be efficiently used to create environmentally friendly alternatives to cement.
• Improvements in solar energy (including dramatic lowerings of costs involved).

Other interesting  “green”  ideas for the near future (that currently have serious research and/or development underway) include:

• Cement that would absorb carbon dioxide as it cures, offsetting the heavy loads of energy used to make the material.
• Special surfaces on a house would capture condensation for water use, avoiding the need for wells or imported water sources.
• The frame of a new home would not be made of wood or metals. Instead, lightweight, "resource efficient" carbon tubes would be used.
• Self-cleaning glass which has a special coating that uses ultraviolet sunlight to break down organic dirt.
• “Pre-built” homes- The standardized construction of prefabricated homes reduces defects that can hamper energy conservation. And it's easier to ship prefabricated parts, as opposed to raw materials, which means reduced fuel use for deliveries. This category includes homes built from materials which had a previous life elsewhere (one example: homes built from old shipping containers).

As more homes become the workplace (as we've done at support.com where all of our Solutions Engineers work from home), the green home becomes even more important.