Green building is something that more and more homeowners and home builders are looking to employ, and for good reason. Not only are more people aware of the need for sustainable living than ever before, but implementing green building practices will end up saving you money! Green building techniques are improving every day as well – just check out the innovation of self-repairing concrete.

Source: Trilogy Partners

According to the EPA, the use of bricks and insulation uses up a lot of resources. In fact, both residential and commercial building contributes upwards of 40 percent of landfill wastes, with roughly 40 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions being linked to the construction industry.

Thankfully, new technology such as self-repairing concrete could help cut down on those numbers. Self-repairing concrete is created with an engineered bacterial that releases a calcium carbonate when mixed into the concrete as part of its waste process. This material will then fill in cracks and holes within the concrete.

Self-repairing concrete is just one of many green building innovations. For more information about green building and how you can implement it into your home design, be sure to contact us at Trilogy Builds today.

Born of a collaboration between Bo Adamson and Wolfgang Feist, passive homes are built to host a comfortable living space maintained using the most efficient heating and cooling possible. One prominent characteristic of these homes is their minimized air leakage, so much so that certified homes can leak no more than 60 percent of their volume per hour. Other criteria impact all parts of the home, including but not limited to its ventilation, its heating and cooling, its insulation systems, and even its building materials.

Such homes are becoming more and more popular because the interest in efficient buildings is continuing to rise. More and more countries are rushing to cut their carbon emissions, which has enormous impact on building prices because buildings are responsible for 48 percent of said emissions.

Passive homes are predicted to increase in value because of both consumer interest and savings from efficient operation. Furthermore, there are other benefits to choosing such homes, ranging from the reduction of noise to tax benefits from using environmental methods and materials. Combined, these strengths suggest that passive homes will be the face of the future.

To capitalize on this trend, please contact us at Trilogy Partners.

After Kyle M, a successful Colorado direct marketing business man became a father his perspective changed. Watching his children grow older and seeing the environmental challenges they would face, he began to learn all he could to convert his Colorado home from an energy hog to an energy miser. Kyle succeeded. He hired a Denver solar engineering firm to install a 10 kW solar photovoltaic array which reduced his electric bill by 75 percent. He put in a solar greenhouse which brings heated air into the home and doubles as a cozy family room. He switched out his light bulbs to compact fluorescent (CFLs) which use about 1⁄4 the energy of incandescent light bulbs. Perhaps most importantly he used technology to assist him and his family to make significant lifestyle changes to conserve energy. He learned that by programming simple occupancy sensor devices to turn lights off in key rooms after two minutes of no activity, he could dramatically reduce his energy usage – without the constant reminders  his family “… please turn the lights off when you leave the room!” Kyle set an even higher goal when he decided to buy a lot on Timber Trail Road to build a ski in/ski out mountain home in Breckenridge. This luxury Summit County house would be a net zero energy home. The goal was to design and build an 8,000 sq. ft. highly attractive mountain home that fit seamlessly into the existing neighborhood and whose renewable energy systems were well integrated into the overall house design. Over the following months, a skilled and committed team of professionals was brought together to achieve these goals. This is the first time in Summit County that a team of this depth and experience in environmental building and renewable energy solutions has been assembled.