What is "Building Green"?
Building green is a conscious effort to make use of designs and construction practices to ensure a reduced impact on the environment and those who inhabit it.
The end result is a building that not only performs exceptionally in categories such as energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality, but also improves the community that surrounds it.
Our buildings are environmentally friendly because they're built with wood, the earth's only naturally renewable building material! Wood is durable, cost efficient, readily available, easy to construct with, and is aesthetically pleasing. Wood requires less energy to manufacture, and when manufactured, produces less air and water pollution than any other building material. It takes 17 times more fossil fuels to produce one ton of steel than one ton of wood.
But what else makes our product "green"? Wood is a great insulator. Wood is a naturally superior insulator so our wood framed buildings hold more heat in the winter and stay cooler in the summer. We take advantage of that natural property of wood and specifically design our buildings to use wood's insulating benefits so you have reduced heating and cooling costs!
Simply put, there is no building material that is friendlier to the environment than wood itself. Wood stands alone as the eco-friendly choice.
A Building Envelope consists of the four walls, roof and foundation. The better the thermal envelope performs, the better the health and comfort of occupants and the lower their utility bills.
Wood siding, plywood and shingled roofs, etc. are some of the "greener" choices that are easy to use on Eagle buildings.
Fiberglass insulation is the lowest cost, per R value and is made out of sand and recycled materials. "Green" fiberglass insulations are made with recycled content materials and may have better indoor air quality properties than conventional fiberglass.
Owens Corning PINK FIBERGLASS and Rigid Foam Insulation products have 35% and 15% recycled content respectively and have earned the Energy Star ® label from the U.S. Government.
Wood products make up 47% of all industrial raw materials manufactured in the U.S., yet consume only 4% of the energy needed to manufacture these industrial materials.
The U.S. grows over 1/3 more wood than is used and lost to natural causes each year.
Interesting Facts
· Central Park, NY planted 5 million trees when originally built.
· Trees have long been viewed as symbols of life, strength, and continuity.
· According to research done by the USDA Forest Service, the value of trees goes beyond cleaning the air and beautifying our cities. Trees reduce stress and improve health.
· A wood church in Norway is over 800 years old and still used for weddings.
· The Empire State Building rests on "wood pilings" driven below the water table.
· The single oldest living tree in North America is a 4,700 year-old bristlecone pine tree in Nevada. It was growing when the Egyptians built the pyramids.