What are green buildings? A “Green Building” is determined by the design as well as the use of renewable energy, bio-resources, and recyclable/ renewable materials. At a base level, green buildings are the ones that are good for the environment in addition to being resource-efficient throughout their life cycle.
Green buildings have many benefits and have a great impact on the environment, economically, and socially.
The Advantages of green buildings
1. Cost:
The construction costs are the same as a standard building and sometimes a little bit more as they require special materials to be built. However, traditional building more money spent on maintenance, renovation, operation, or even demolition.
This doesn’t mean that green buildings won’t need maintenance, renovation, operation, or even demolition as well, but because "green buildings" are built of natural resources the harm caused by their footprint is less. Because of their minimized harm many green buildings are 10 times more profitable than standard ones.
2. Efficiency:
A- Water efficiency: Green buildings don’t waste water, they recycle rainwater and greywater and use them for toilet flushing for instance.
B- Energy Efficiency: These buildings save energy by depending on all renewable energy resources such as solar power, hydro-power, and wind power which are used for heat and electricity and help improve the indoor air quality.
C- Material Efficiency: Green buildings are built from natural, non-toxic, and recycled eco-friendly materials such as bamboo, straw, recycled metal or concrete..etc.
3. Preserving infrastructure:
Being efficient in both energy and water supply, these buildings stretch the capacity of local infrastructure greatly.
4. High ROI rates:
Considering that these buildings are all-natural, they have a huge return on investment rates and properties in these buildings sell at higher prices.
But as we know nothing is all-good. Green buildings have their flaws too:
Disadvantages of green buildings
1. Location:
Since these buildings depend on energy sources such as solar and thermal for energy, location is critical. Sometimes because of their energy needs, it may demand placing them opposite family neighborhoods.
2. Availability:
The materials to build such buildings can be hard to find especially in urban areas where preserving the environment is not the people’s first option. So shipping these materials add to the total cost of a build. For many developers, it’s a matter of investing a little upfront in order to get large returns on the back-end.
3. No air-cooling features:
Many thermal buildings run on heat to generate power, so they are not designed for extremely hot areas such as Dubai, Nevada, or Arizona. In extremely hot areas large air-conditioning systems are required to offset the thermal energy source.
4. A long time to construct:
Buildings require a longer time to be built and designed: Green building designs adopt a special “HITT” method that takes into account the surrounding environmental conditions.
5. The cost of construction:
This is because at the present time the construction of green buildings requires a greater cost than regular buildings because they depend on a lot of natural materials, which may not be available at all times and places.
So, is building green buildings worth it?
After clarifying the advantages and disadvantages of green buildings, we can now say that it is a practical idea that can be implemented in many places and countries, due to its many benefits, taking into account the shortcomings of its construction in terms of the availability of certain environmental conditions, building materials, etc.
Contact our team at www.BHIbuilds.com to help you build your next project.
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