Aspen Green Homes
The Finest Green Living In Aspen & Snowmass Dear Prospective Aspen Green Home
owner,
More and more these days, people in Aspen are talking about the importance of living "green", living more lightly on the land in "sustainable"
communities.
Living green in Aspen Colorado means living richer and better lives by making better choices.
It means living and building in ways that enhance our lives while not limiting future generations from being able to do the same.
People thrive in Aspen green homes and communities sustained by a healthy connection to the land: a connection between the
natural and built environments.
By making better choices, our lives can become richer.
With this in mind, we are offering Aspen green homes throughout the Roaring
Fork Valley.
The environment in which these Aspen green homes are built incorporate many elements of green construction as measured by the
US Green Building Council (USGBC) in pursuit of the USGBC's LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) certification.
Aspen green homeowners will experience reduced operating costs, improved indoor air quality, more comfortable and effective heating and
cooling systems and reduced water usage - all without sacrificing any comfort.
The systems in these Aspen residences have been designed to optimize life-cycle economic performance, which means each home has been
designed to maintain and hopefully increase in value for years to come.
The Aspen green homes are also designed with the notion of "bringing the outdoors in": bringing natural light into all residences without
increased glare.
There are benefits to sustainable living on many levels.
Some of the environmental benefits are improved air and water quality and reduced waste production while conserving natural resources and
maintaining biodiversity and natural ecosystems.
A green development minimizes demands on local infrastructure, helping conserve the resources of the greater community.
These Aspen green houses have been designed with all these benefits in mind.
The special design approach and sustainable features serve to improve overall quality of life by enhancing the comfort and health of all its
residents.
Sustainable counstruction is not some exotic new way of building, but rather a more conscious and holistic method of thinking through the
building process, making all the elements of each home work efficient together to create a better "high performance" building and a better living
experience.
- The homes are equipped with properly-sized and highly-efficient furnaces, air-conditioners, and water heaters which will
save money every month on utilities. With natural gas and water prices on the rise, this is a long-term money saver. This
equipment will also require less maintenance than standard units.
- Each residence is equipped with select Energy Star® appliances which use significantly less electricity and water than
average appliances, which reduces utility bills while conserving our natural resources. An average home can reduce energy
costs by $80/year (or 4.2%) by replacing standard appliances with Energy Star® (data from Energy Star®).
- Well-insulated walls (R-value 25) and roofs (R-value 44) are designed in as an integral part of an energy-efficient and
comfortable home enclosure. This ensures that no energy is wasted in heating and cooling.
- All windows are draft-free, well-insulated units with low-emissivity (Low-e) glass, which make a significant contribution
to the overall performance of the building envelope. Since they resist the transfer of cold air, they expand the area of
useable, comfortable space in a room.
- "Low-flow" faucets, showrheads, and toilets perform as well or better than their water-wasting counterparts, and markedly
cut back on the household's increasingly-expensive water budget.
- High construction quality will insure expert installation of well- detailed moisture protection within the wall system.
This high performance envelope will resist the degrading effects of air and water transmission that can plague
lower-performing walls, causing deterioration and inviting mold.
- Roofs will be protected with 30-year-rated Prestique, asphalt shingles.
- Even simple items like downspout discharge is being captured and directed to a system of drywells located around the
project in order to provide an effective means of keeping water away from foundations and basement walls, and to prevent mold
formation (indoor air quality) and to keep water from freezing against the foundations (heat transfer).
- Shaded, high performance windows throughout the home contribute to not only increased energy efficiency, but also to
protection from overheating, glare, and damage to furnishings from excessive solar radiation.
- Carpets made from natural wool look great, wear well, and improve the quality of the air you breathe every day, by not
releasing toxic chemicals.
- Cabinets made with low volatile organic compound (VOC) materials are a stylish assurance that the air in your home is as
free from potential chemicals as possible, protecting the health of you and your family.
- Indoor air quality will also be enhanced by the selection of paints, adhesives and sealants that have no hydro
fluorocarbon or other toxic fumes.
As part of our holistic approach, we will also respect the natural environment and further work towards connecting the natural
and built environments via the following approaches:
- In the common areas of nature trails and outdoor planting, creative landscape design will combine the goal of conserving
water with the inclusion of hearty native plant selections, to insure drought-tolerance and environmental adaptation.
- Advanced irrigation practices will significantly reduce water needed for landscaping maintenance. Efficient use of water
allows recharging aquifers, instead of continued extraction.
- Landscape maintenance will be performed with sustainable practices and natural materials to prevent the presence of
harmful chemicals in the public areas, or flowing into local aquifers.
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