Design For Life Technologies and Features
Title: Texas Green Home Architects Houston, Austin | Houston Green Homes | Environment Associates
Description: Green home design in Texas by LaVerne Williams, Texas’s expert on sustainability and green homes
An Everyday Oasis
Environment Associates designs aesthetically pleasing safe havens for retreat and recovery from environmental stresses and toxins. (Click here [link to Healthful Homes] to learn more about our healthful homes.) Our homes have clean indoor air, very low energy demand, and are places where you can live in relative comfort without the need for power of any kind (very useful in the aftermath of hurricanes or other events). Because our homes are so energy efficient, they require a significantly smaller and less expensive renewable energy system (such as solar PV). Some clients even collect and store enough rainwater for all their personal and gardening needs.
Technologies:
• Design for the site’s microclimate, place, and ecology
• Natural finishes or no-VOC finishes
• Radiant heat barriers and heat-reflecting exterior materials and colors
• Advanced insulation methods and materials
• Harvesting naturally occurring renewable energy and onsite water resources
• Use of interior thermal storage walls to increase mean radiant temperature comfort and provide natural heating and cooling storage capacity
• Permaculture-based land planning and stewardship
• Low maintenance materials and detailing to provide long-term durability and ease of replacement
• Use of appropriate, cost-effective alternative construction technologies
• Appropriate use of onsite, local, and regional construction materials
• Satisfying aesthetics and functional efficiency are part of the basics
• Fully day‐lighted interiors
• Tightly air‐sealed building envelope
• Advanced natural ventilation methodologies
• Design for naturally cooled/heated exterior spaces to extend outdoor living
• Very high-energy performance design and detailing
• Cradle-to-Cradle concepts to reduce and eliminate toxic waste
• Smaller building footprints are strongly encouraged
• Beyond Net Zero Energy performance‐capable architecture to encourage income-producing renewable energy powered homes