What are eco-friendly houses?
Nowadays it is necessary to pay attention to the different particularities that make up our daily lives in order to face the new climate challenges. Innovation in materials and processes allows our routine to adapt to the needs of our environment.
Our home should not be left behind in these challenges, so it is interesting to talk about ecological houses; environmentally friendly houses due to the materials and processes with which they are built. Ecological houses have greater benefits compared to traditional constructions, not only because of the materials used, but also because of the great energy savings they entail.
They offer optimal habitability because in addition to the higher quality of their materials, with previous bioclimatic studies, durability is superior.
Characteristics of eco-friendly houses
If you are looking for an efficient home or to completely renovate your current house and turn it into a sustainable house, we tell you about its main characteristics:
- Isolation. It is very important to provide the house with both thermal and humidity insulation. Good insulation provides an enveloping effect that allows the temperature to be kept constant and insulate the house from humidity, avoiding sudden changes in temperature and consequently, achieving greater energy savings.
- Passive heating. We take advantage of sunlight directly without transforming it, generating accumulated energy to keep the home at a comfortable temperature.
- Materials. The use of materials that help contribute to sustainability, such as rammed earth or bioplastics, are essential for your home to be sustainable.
Up to 90% energy savings
Through the correct use of insulating materials and their enveloping capacity, a sustainable home is capable of saving up to 90% in energy. We can say that it is the future of biohousing, and although other countries are ahead of us, in Spain we are beginning to become aware of the social and economic benefits of building ecological houses.
It is true that there are more than 28,000 properties around the world that have the passive housing certificate but they are not entirely homes (office buildings, schools…) although more and more people are proposing that their house be ecological.
In Spain, the first passive house was built in Granada in 2010, and today there are more than 120 certified projects with the ultimate goal of having a higher quality of life and contributing to the reduction of environmental impact.
Thanks to the materials with which they are built, the common areas of sustainable houses can maintain a constant temperature of 25°C for most of the year. In other words, we have a temperature-controlled home, without having to use external heating. This results in a total energy consumption of less than 120kWh per year.
Discover the 4 most unique eco-friendly houses
Aesthetics are not at odds with sustainability, and to prove this, we present 4 wonderful sustainable houses whose characteristics we detail below:
Pop Up House – France
This house built in 2014 in Aux-en-Provence, France is made of recyclable wood panels and insulation blocks. Its materials allow the house to be completely insulated and it would hardly need additional heating in winter, since the thermal loss is only 0.11W/m2K. This quirky project consists of 180m2 and includes two bathrooms, an office, a master bedroom and two small rooms. It is called Pop-Up because of the speed of its implementation, as it can take up to 2 months to be ready.
Geodesic Housing – Spain
This sustainable house of 85 m2 is located in Jumilla with two particular geodesic domes and consumes only 10% of energy since it does not have electricity or water supplies. It uses renewable energies to be totally self-sufficient.
The domed shape of the domes offers a spacious and enveloping interior space allowing sunlight to reach every corner of the house.
Héliodome – France
The house, located in Alsace, has a bioclimatic design with a south-facing glass façade to efficiently control the temperature and reduce energy consumption. The materials used were wood and glass and it has solar panels that self-supply energy a water heater.
This curious construction was designed thinking that it would be in the shape of a sundial, and its characteristics made it take the designer more than 10 years to carry it out. However, it was worth it, as it won the Lépine competition in 2003.
Ship Earth – Argentina
Moving to Argentina, we can discover the first self-sustainable house in Latin America, Nave Tierra. It is a unique biosustainable house made up of two cylindrical volumes and a glass frame that make it enjoy an enveloping effect and have an interior temperature between 18 and 22 degrees as it can be heated through photovoltaic and wind solar energy .
In addition, it has a rainwater collector and a wastewater treatment system!
What are the advantages of eco-friendly houses?
An eco-friendly home has many benefits, including a higher quality of life and increased savings.
- Saving. Energy savings increase by up to 90% in a sustainable house compared to a conventional one.
- Quality of life. Thanks to the recycled and recyclable materials that make up the house, we do not damage the environment.
- Durability. The materials that make it up are of superior quality, insulating from temperature and humidity, so the durability of the materials of ecological houses is greater.
To save energy, it is very important to take into account the location of the home, so that the windows are oriented towards the most illuminated areas, to take advantage of the natural energy source for as long as possible and reduce dependence on conventional energy sources.
In short, an ecological house has countless benefits for quality of life and the environment, with maximum energy efficiency and quality materials for durability and greater savings in all aspects.
Do you want to be part of the change? Calculate the cost of the complete renovation of your home with our free tool.
