我们中的许多人被迫在家工作，这给我们的经济、我们的优先事项和我们的生活方式带来了许多变化。Not only is there a sudden interest inhow to set up a home office, but other green lifestyle choices are popping up; likegrowing food at home, and safe transportation in terms ofcommuting by E bikeas well as start-ups such asSem-B Mobility electric on-demand busesoffering more sustainable transit solutions.
Many of the workplace, transportation and lifestyle trends we are seeing are very encouraging, as we seem to have inadvertently transitioned to a low-carbon economy while we weren’t looking. And they said it couldn’t be done…
然而，有一种日益增长的生活方式和住房趋势，可能会给大型城市中心周围的绿地和小城镇带来沉重的负担，那就是那些为了追求移居乡村的梦想而在城市之外寻找住房的人。
Arecent BOXpoll™ studyPitney Bowes的调查显示，三分之一的美国人正考虑在未来的12到18个月搬到这里。顺便说一下，人们关注的不是市中心的公寓，而是他们在乡村的家园中寻找移动和呼吸的空间。在受访者中，17%的人完全打算搬家，15%的人说他们还没有决定现在的位置。
It’s no surprise of course that those most likely to be considering relocating are Generation Z young adults, Millennials, and residents of cities. The overall desire is to move outside urban cores to less densely populated areas.
This is a direct reflection of the changing dynamics in urban cores, as we see closed theatres and music venues, limited seating in restaurants, and a preponderance of people working from home. I think the question many people found themselves asking, is why am I living in a condo tower waiting for empty elevators so I can walk the deserted streets of my city?
House sales on the rise outside cities
You used to be able to count on your investment in a downtown property increasing in value, but that has ceased to be the case, at least for the moment.Homes for sale in rural areas are becoming harder to find, and prices are going up. And we all know that right on the heels of consumer demand, is always supply.
这意味着大块未开发的土地突然变得更有价值，而对许多土地所有者来说，开始开发闲置土地的利润动机太诱人了，让人难以拒绝。这就是城市扩张开始的地方。
The greenest home is in the city
First, just to clear up a likely misconception - most people would be surprised to hear that the most eco-friendly home you can buy is not an off-grid home out in the woods where you grow your own food, it’s a condo on a downtown bus route.
Shared services such as water, power, sewage, roads, parks and transportation have a much lower impact on the environment than each of us setting up our own private systems and farmsteads in what was previously undisturbed wilderness.
This is not to rip on rural living, it’s awesome, and we get it. Some of us even live it. The problem is that as rural living suddenly becomes more popular, it puts a heavy burden on lands and services (not to mention waterways), so it is best done with thoughtfulness and careful planning.
How to live green in the countryside
It is a reality that more people will want to live away from cities, so the key to that is creating well-designed communities with access to transportation and low carbon housing.
This of course begs the question,what is low carbon housing?Well…for new homes being built that would mean conducting afull carbon lifecycle analysis during home design, so that everything – and I mean everything – is on the table for design alterations to reduce the carbon foot print of homes. That means thesize and design of homes, the materials selected, and the energy performance.
What is a low carbon home?
Every building has its own ‘embodied energy’ or ‘embodied carbon’, and that refers to the carbon released during material extraction, manufacturing and shipping of building materialsin the beginning, as well as the energy required to heat and power it for the entirety of its functional life. An example of a carbon intensive home component would be a basement; the foundation for an average-sized house may require anywhere from 10 to 30 tons of concrete, releasing between 10 and 30 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
Yes, one ton of concrete results in one ton of green house gas emissions, and it is the most commonly used building material on the planet. So how do we reduce that? Easy – build smaller homes, and homes with less concrete. No matter the size of your home, one way to reduce concrete is bychoosing a slab on grade instead of a basementso that all you need is a concrete floor, and not 8-foot-high walls around the whole perimeter. On the bright side though, there are manylow carbon concrete solutionscoming to market, read more here.
All your other building material selections contribute to your personal carbon footprint as well, so choosing greener insulation such asdense-packed cellulose,hemp, or mineral wool, and selectingfoam insulation with lower emissionswill reduce carbon production.Choosing FSC certified sustainably harvested woodensures you are sourcing from well managed forests and protecting the lungs of the planet, our forests.
Energy efficient prefab modular kit houses.
Yes, this probably comes as a surprise to many as you ask yourself,are kit houses considered a green home?That depends on how well they are made and the materials used. You can build junk houses in a manufacturing plant just as easily as all the junk houses being built in urban subdivisions, and you can build high end ones as well.
It’s just a matter of choosing a quality build over mass produced low-quality homes that are built to minimum standards to maximize profits. Sorry to get on a rant there, but it’s the truth. The true intention of building code is to offer homebuyers the security of knowing that there is at least some oversight and at least a minimum level of performance.
Code-built homes are the more expensive long term housing solution as it has been well-established thatbetter insulated homes save money in the long run. But it's the homeowners that saves, and it does little for profits, so it's not often that developers choose the high performance route unless buyers demand it.
The houses being build today do not meet the challenges houses will face in the future, nor does the energy performance of code-built homes reflect our climate crisis and the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuel and a carbon-based economy.
In general, we are comfortable saying that in our experience as long time Eco Home builders , having been involved in the construction of countless high-performance site-built homes as well asLEED and Passive House-ready Prefab Kit homes, prefab houses can be more affordable and more energy efficient than site-built homes for a number of reasons.
First, building in the controlled atmosphere of a manufacturing facility speeds up work as you are not battling weather, you know where your tools are, materials are organized, dry and easy to find. Scaffolding rolls easily on a floor, making it safer and quicker to build homes than on uneven muddy ground exposed to the elements.
Quality of workmanship: along with sufficient and properly installed insulation, one of the most important features of a home in reducing energy consumption, is having aproperly installed and effective air barrier.
Air leakage can be responsible for as much as a third of energy losses from a home due to hot air escaping through the smallest of holes. Again, having a clean indoor facility can make it easier to accomplish any task effectively, including properly air sealing walls.
预制房屋比现场建造的房屋建造得更快。
我们以前说过，以后也会说，我们相信将木材、保温材料和石膏板等材料运到建筑工地并在那里组装的概念，将只是我们告诉我们孙子的民间传说。You don’t have the parts of a car delivered so they can sit in the rain waiting for you to assemble it in your laneway, so why would you do that with a house?
Whether that is a completed prefab home arriving on a truck, or premade prefab wall panels to be raised on site, prefabricated homes are taking a large chunk of the market, for good reason, and that is only poised to increase.
Now you know more about moving away from cities andhow to live a green lifestyle in the country. Find more pages aboutsustainable constructionand how toreduce carbon emissionson the pages below and in the EcoHomeGreen Building Guide pages.
Find more aboutgreen home constructionand reapthe benefits of a free Ecohome Network Membership here. |
The discussion of concrete here makes it sound like carbon dioxide is released from it. But the real carbon release comes from the processing of cement which requires very high heat, currently from coal. Cement makers are aware of this problem and some are looking for an alternative to coal to create the high temperatures required for production. We rely on cement for concrete production too much not to do something. At least we can use hemp for insulation because it absorbs carbon. We should also work on preventing whale slaughter. Whales produce phytoplankton which makes 70% of the world's oxygen in its respiration of carbon dioxide.