How to build a Sustainable House - 21 Sustainable Home Ideas with Architect Jorge Fontan

hi everyone i'm george fontane and i'm an architect in new york today i want to talk about sustainable house design this is based on a blog post that i wrote about 21 ideas for building a sustainable house some of these ideas are going to be a little easier to implement than others and some are a little more complicated and uh not all will work for a renovation or an alteration of a house but they certainly all will apply for uh new house construction uh first thing for sustainability that you wanna think about is the location all right if you're in an urban area you want to be close to transportation you want to have the availability of infrastructure and you want to avoid sensitive sites now after super storm sandy in new york we rebuilt a bunch of houses in the flood stone that were destroyed by sandy okay so in that case these were people that had homes there already they didn't want to leave the the area they're in for a rockaway and breezy point all right so uh avoiding sensitive sites won't always be possible but if you can you're probably going to want to stay away from there and if you do build in a sensitive site you want to build knowing you're in a sensitive site okay and and build something to last all right like we built uh steel and concrete houses uh in in the flood zone all right the size of a house uh this is one that a lot of people aren't uh always gonna wanna uh deal with but the reality is a smaller house is more efficient i'm not telling you to build a small house i'm not saying you should but it just is a reality that if you have a smaller house it uses less material and of course it'll use less heating and air conditioning and heating and air conditioning is the greatest expense of energy in a home all right so smaller houses are always more efficient the orientation of a house is really important okay so i'm in new york we're here in the north we get a lot of sunlight coming from the south so you want to think about light and heat if you're if you're in the north and you want natural heat from the sun to have passive heating you're going to want a lot of glass facing the south this is also going to bring in light on the north side you can have windows and glass but that'll be more ambient light won't do much for heating but it'll help give a little bit of light but from the south is where the the light and heat will really be coming from the layout of the house a more compact square house is actually more efficient this is why igloos are actually a hemisphere okay because it keeps the heat within the shape right so a long thin house might be less efficient than a square house materials are going to be a huge factor when building a house so locally sourced materials will always be more sustainable to avoid shipping trucking uh you know bringing materials from overseas this is obviously not going to work for everybody depending where you are will affect what materials you have available for construction okay also the availability of local labor may work with certain types of materials recycled materials we always want to try to use recycled materials if possible you have lots of different options there there are you know countertops with recycled content there are wall panels that have some kind of recycled content there's lots of different materials you can look at but recycled materials is a great option you want to avoid vocs okay those are volatile organic compounds whether it's in your paints glues other types of materials in the house low vocs all right insulation this is really one of the most critical points in building a sustainable house okay you want to not only insulate the house well but you also want to do air sealing okay air sealing is the how air tight the house is today we build houses to be designed to be airtight in the envelope of the house and houses should breathe mechanically they should not be breathing through your walls so if people say things like you should have a perforated house wrap that is not a 21st century kind of house design that is an outdated way to build we're building airtight houses with a lot of insulation okay to keep the inside air warm and to prevent air from leaking through your walls okay so i mentioned we built these houses in far rockaway um when we did those houses we did blower door tests this is a test where they put a fan on a plastic sheet on a door they blow air into the house and it tests the pressure of the house how much air is leaking out of the house so when we built these concrete houses with closed cell spray insulation which is a insulation that will expand when you spray it it is uh airtight it's waterproof okay um the houses uh ranked off the charts with the blower door test so that's what you're gonna try to do okay we way exceeded the uh energy star requirements for uh for air sealing and that's your goal here okay um windows and doors your windows and doors should be rated for for high levels of air sealing and of course insulation value you can use triple pane windows that's not you know it's going to be more expensive but it's not necessarily going to be absolutely necessary you can use a high quality double pane windows the material should be thermally broken to prevent heat loss through the the window itself okay energy star this is a no-brainer and the easiest one you're going to do on the list buy energy star appliances any electronics that you're buying for the pr for the house you're heating and air conditioning systems your appliances make sure they're all energy star led lighting today enter led lighting is pretty standard all of my clients are pulling led lighting so using led lighting is a great option water conservation there are water fixtures that have low flow toilets that have dual flush this will reduce your water usage and then hvac all right that's your heating ventilation and air conditioning this is the biggest energy usage in a house okay so you want to use energy efficient systems today mini split systems are really popular these are electric units where you have a condenser outside and then a split unit inside every room some people don't like it because they have these wall mounted units but you can actually get units that go in the ceiling units that go sit on the floor units that go in the wall there's a lot of different options so you should be able to find something that works for you the condensers outside are a little loud but the ones on inside the house are actually really quiet okay um but all condensers make noise so uh mini splits one great advantage is that they're broken up into zones so every room can have the heating and air conditioning controlled separately so if nobody's home in one room no need to run the air conditioning okay also if one person likes it warm one person likes it a little cooler you can balance it out and then that way you're not heating the entire house uh one way you can break it up by by each space all right and then therm smart thermostats everybody's putting smart thermostats now uh they learn your patterns okay you start programming them they see how you're how you live all right and then they will optimize your settings for maximum efficiency this is a really great simple option for uh sustainability you can you know retrofit your home or or use this when you're doing a new home uh it's one of the really easy ones you can do all right we put ervs when we do a new house okay that stands for energy recovery ventilation now i mentioned that we build airtight houses so the problem with an airtight house is that the air doesn't uh leave the house you don't get fresh air so the erv handles that for you it'll have some exhaust that'll take the air out of the house whether it's just from the kitchen of the bathrooms or from the entire house okay and then it'll bring in fresh air from the outside now an erv itself is also very energy efficient because it takes the heat from the outgoing air and it pre-heats the incoming air it also uh will take the uh the cool air going out and pre uh pre-cool the incoming air in the summer so the erv is helping you when you have an airtight house circulate your air get fresh air but it's also high efficiency in the in the preheating and pre-cooling of the air coming in you can have rain water collection um you know this this may depend on on your on your climate if if this makes sense but that's that's one option for sustainability uh renewable energy this will obviously be a big one okay if you can put solar panels wind power or geothermal geothermal's not going to work everywhere solar is not going to work everywhere when may not but you got to take your particular site into consideration and look at the costs some of these may have a high upfront cost but your long-term costs will always pay off when you're doing renewable energies another pretty easy one is instant hot water we have water tanks right that water tank is sitting out all night long okay if you have instant hot water there's no tank takes up less space but the water just is heated on demand so you don't have to heat an entire tank just to have a small amount of hot water all right planting this is a big pet peeve of mine do not plant something at your house that does not belong in your climate it will require incredibly high amounts of maintenance it may require more water than you get in your climate plant native species or species that are known to flourish in your environment without needing sprinklers if you can uh just leave the plant on its own and you get enough rain to sustain it that's the best idea you can have a vegetable garden that's also a great simple way to be a little sustainable all right um the the last two are are things that i actually think are some of the most critical points of sustainability building to last okay so uh you know building a house that's not gonna last a hundred years is far less sustainable than building a house that does if i have to build a house twice okay uh that's not very sustainable okay so building a house that's gonna last uh every aspect the the exterior the shell the structure of the house but also all the interiors something that's gonna last that you're not gonna have to be renovating and fixing uh you know in the in the near future would be great build a house that you're gonna leave to your grandchildren okay that's actually very sustainable as opposed to having to tear down in uh you know 30 40 50 years and rebuilding okay and then um finally building something that you love is really the most sustainable thing that you can do because you're gonna take care of it and it's gonna last okay when you see some great old buildings you know uh these these buildings are taken care of they're not just in good shape because because they were built so great but because they've been loved over time and people have taken care of them and this will really be a key issue so you don't want to design something that you're thinking well we'll just redo it in five years that's not really a very sustainable way to live building something that you're going to love you're going to keep that's the the best way to go okay that's 21 ideas for sustainable house design thank you for listening please leave comments below subscribe thanks a lot

Channel: Jorge Fontan

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Keywords: sustainable house design, sustainable house building, sustainable house materials, sustainable house renovation, sustainable homes, sustainable home design, sustainable home building, green building, sustainable home, sustainable architecture design, sustainable home ideas, green building design, green building materials, green building concept, passive house, sustainable architecture house, sustainable architecture lecture, sustainable house design ideas

Id: qcNX8evbN-E

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020