Building: Energy & water conservation

Water and energy conservation are fast becoming among the most important things that you can do to protect our environment and resources. When you build a new home you are in a unique position to create a house which uses some quite simple features to keep water and energy use to a minimum, while being a pleasure to live in.

Energy and water conservation

The best way to conserve energy is simply this; use less! Everything that is manufactured, transported, heated or cooled, packaged, burned and disposed of uses energy to do those things, so when building a new home keep the design as small as is practical and comfortable for your needs. Don't add any more home appliances, objects or space than you really require.

Water saving follows the same principal; set your new home up to use as little as possible, in washing, in the garden, and other applications.

Energy and water conservation in your new home

There are a lot of ways in which you can set up your home, or any new building, to use minimal energy and water.

• Insulation is vital. This can come from the building materials you use as well as from added insulation. Mud brick, compacted earth and strawbale buildings are all naturally extremely well insulated and need little heating and cooling
• Design your building to be energy wise. Have high use areas that can be separated from low use ones to avoid heating or cooling the whole building, and think about heat airflow
• Use smaller windows and consider double glazing
• Orient the building with the main doors and windows facing north for maximum sun in winter and minimum in summer
• Install solar hot water, and consider solar electricity as a secondary or main source of power. You can even make money selling electricity back into the grid. There are many options for doing this.
• Include simple water saving measures like low use shower heads and taps. Some showers filter and reuse water
• Use instantaneous gas hot water if not solar. This uses a small amount of gas to heat water as it passes through the pipe, and avoids storage waste of water and energy
• Install an native beautiful, low water use garden
• Install a grey water reticulation system for your garden. Some systems even filter and reuse water

Building to save energy and water

Using less energy and water in your building project simply requires a small amount of planning. There are a plethora of ways of using less and achieving a satisfactory result; a home that you can enjoy living in comfortably knowing that it doesn't, as they say, cost the earth to do so.