Going green is all the rage now, and designing environmentally optimal buildings has never been more important. If you’re building, rebuilding, or upgrading a larger building, take a moment to ask yourself how the new place will benefit not only you and your tenants but also the community and environment. With a few simple additions and adjustments, any building can leave a smaller carbon footprint on the world while providing its residents with quality service. Before you begin, here’s how to optimize a building site’s sustainable potential.
Plan It Out
Before you start building, fixing, or rehabbing anything, look at the place (or, at least, its plans) to determine how you might make it a greener building. The immediate surroundings and climate should help you figure out the best approach. Building design optimization should consider weather, including rainfall, temperatures, and exposure to sunlight. Judge your proximity to natural resources and how you can build and coexist with the least impact on flora and fauna of those areas. See how you can build while drawing the least amount of energy from the grid and still providing adequate and uninterrupted service. When you build smartly, you can reap the benefits and savings of going green almost immediately.
Deal With Local Contractors, Vendors, and Suppliers
When you arrange to have contractors, vendors, and suppliers in your area work on your building, you contribute to your community’s economic health and growth, of course, but you help in other ways too. Keeping things local means that heavy equipment and supplies have shorter distances to travel, which expends less fuel. It also keeps the roads clearer and traffic moving, which means traveling vehicles use less fuel, rubber, and asphalt. It all adds up, and keeping your crews close by makes it easier on everyone as well as local infrastructure.
Keep Cars in Mind
Parking is a fact of life, and local and state laws will dictate how much space you can allot for cars. They’ll also have any number of codes regarding parking, traffic flow and patterns, emission reduction, and the like. If you’re making plans for parking, did you know that parking lift systems are often more economical, efficient, and eco-friendly than parking lots? As self-contained systems, semi-automated and fully automated lifts take up less space, are safer, use less fuel, and produce fewer carbon monoxide emissions than parking lots. They’re also less likely to contribute to asphalt heat islands or allow foul auto waste run-off into the local water table the way parking lots do. Build an automated parking system for greater sustainability than you’d ever get with a lot or garage.
Less Waste, More Reuse
Waste generation is inevitable with any office or living space, but it’s what you do with the waste that makes the difference. How will your site handle trash disposal? More to the point, how can your site turn trash into treasure? A recycling system should be a given, allowing tenants to easily separate recyclables like metals, plastic, glass, paper, and electronic devices and submit them for reuse or even resale. Everything has a little more life left in it, so ensure you’re finding the best way to reduce waste. And keep that in mind during actual construction. You may be able to recoup some of your expenses through recycling, buy-backs for used equipment, and other reuse tactics.
Choose Sustainable Building Materials
When you’re picking out the materials for your construction project, keep sustainability in mind. Choose materials that either come from renewable sources or enable your systems (HVAC, plumbing, and the like) to use resources in a better way. Wood, of course, is a replaceable material, but make sure you work with lumber providers that use wood from forests specifically grown for construction and immediately replace the trees they cut down with new ones. Bamboo and reclaimed wood are also terrific resources that put less strain on the forests and provide their own unique look. Precast concrete is another great material that requires less material and power to create, unlike old-school concrete.
Sun and Wind
You’ll need to tap into the local power supply at some point, but explore options that can cut your electricity usage by a significant percentage. Solar cells can’t provide all your power, but they go a long way toward recharging your supply or taking a load off the system already in place. Setting up a windmill or similar breeze-gathering system is another way to offset energy costs. Look into local, state, and federal programs that reward the implementation of solar power, wind power, and other alternative energy sources. You may be due a tax credit!
Go Extra Green
Take a look at the landscaping. While beautification is important, consider this: Are the plants just there to look pretty, or are they performing a practical purpose? Trees, of course, can provide shade and keep the sunlight from overheating certain areas, keeping air conditioning bills down. Indigenous plants are good for controlling the amount of water in the area without negatively impacting the nearby natural foliage or local animals. You can even aid bees and other pollinating insects by using plants attractive to them, strengthening the local hives. Finally, green roofs are a popular addition to any building or parking lift system, keeping things cooler inside while providing lots of healthy oxygen.
Water, Water, Everywhere
Here’s one more tip on how to optimize a building site’s sustainable potential: ponder the water situation. Low-flush toilets and faucets that turn on and off automatically can keep the water bills low. Also, creating a rain collection system, especially with parking lift systems, can help you save water for a non-rainy day, enabling you to supply your landscaping with hydration without putting a strain on the local supply. And as mentioned above, your architect will doubtless address the effect your building’s physical form will have on water flow when it rains. Talk with them about how you can divert that water to better uses rather than allowing it to run off and pool elsewhere on the property. Make every drop count!
