Designing a green home, or remodeling your existing home to be more 'green', is a daunting task for those who are neither architects nor builders. It is not a project to be taken lightly, since you must live in the resulting home, hopefully for a very long time.  But since your home is such a personal place, where you spend so much of your life, it is important that you have input into it's design and construction, for its character and values should reflect your own.

Home Sweet Green Home                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Your home is much more than a building. It is full of fond memories and sad moments, milestones and mishaps, angry separations and loving interludes, in other words, your life.

 And now you are considering the venture of building or remodeling your own green home, or even just fantasizing about it (the true first step), and so these ideas will be added to your visions of the future.

What is Green?

    The concept of 'green' involves living in harmony with the natural world. Back in the days of the cavepeople and for centuries after, we lived very much in harmony with nature, but we were also much, much less comfortable. Jumping ahead, through the Industrial Revolution, two World Wars and a Depression, to the U.S. parents of the 1940's and '50's wanting more financial security and material comforts for themselves, and their children. They succeeded, but we paid a price for the luxuries. The air became smogged and the water poisoned, and it grew increasingly apparent, as we entered the second millennium, that we had overdone it, and  were now in danger of passing on a much worse world, if any at all, to future generations.  But humanity does seem to have a way of standing on the brink of the cliff, without falling off, so at least to this point, we haven't destroyed the earth with nuclear bombs, or poisoned it into oblivion. It is a sobering fact however, that right now, if all of the people in the world lived as do the inhabitants of the U.S., and most are working hard to get to that to that level of existence, it would take four Earths to sustain us.

    'Green' involves the concept of 'sustainability' and winds through the history of the environmental movement. The definition of sustainability involves finding the right balance of living comfortably while conserving necessary resources for future generations. The challenge of creating a sustainable world is one of the great projects of the 21st century.

Your Green Home

Here at the Your Green Home website, you will learn about the latest and best hi-tech, eco-friendly  building products and sustainable designs, including a section on health hazards in the green flooring section. You can discover how to find green builders and contractors in your area on  the Energy Star Products page. For background there is a short section on the history of sustainable architecture.  Green home remodeling is the best option for many, and will be discussed, as will innovative pre-fabricated or modular homes. The garden, an essential part of 'home' for many, has it's own sustainable practices. And, last but not least, you will find green products for inside your home and for its inhabitants.