Building Green
What is building green? To us, it is using natural materials, sustainable practices, creating low waste, and building to be energy efficient, so that it out lasts the time it took to create its materials. For example, if a tree took 150 years to grow, the structure from it should last well over 150 years. We use natural materials, like the use of local rot resistant White Oak, in place of pressure treated wood. I also like designing my buildings to use the sun and there environment for heating and cooling. Passive Solar orientation is a little-to-no cost way to make your building much more energy efficient.
Timber Framing, as a method of construction, is a vary environmentally stable way to build, here is why;
The Wood beams we use are natural, recyclable, renewable, and biodegradable. Wood is also a carbon-neutral material. and here in southern New England, it is sustainably harvested. Using heavy timber as apposed to conventional two by framing, also has advantages in reduced environmental impact. When I design a Timber Frame and place my order, the wood is selected, harvested, sawn and shipped directly to me. If I buy at 2x4 at a big box store, the wood goes from a logger, to a trucker, to a sawyer, to a trucker, to a warehouse, to a trucker, to a distribution center, to a trucker to a store, to a trucker and finally to you. See the waste?
The way we cut the frames is also Green. Our frames are largely hand cut, we use chisels, mallets and boring machines from the 1800s. Very little power equipment is used in the hand crafting of our joinery. By taking such care in crafting our Timber Frames, our buildings last for generations, hundreds of years, not tens of years. About two thirds of my frames have been hand raised, negating any large cranes or other equipment, not to mention bringing communities together. We often use trees from the sites were the buildings are going, adding to the character of the frame and reducing environment impact.
Our buildings can then enclosed by highly efficient structural insulated panels (SIPs), or for Extreme Green, we have done straw bail enclosures!
