Castalia Homes: LEED certificated green homes

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system is a rating green building certification system.  This system is provided by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC;) a Washington-based non-profit organization that stands for prosperous and sustainable future for the nation trough cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings.

The LEED program covers over 4.5 billion square feet of construction space in the United States and other 91 countries.  The current number of participating projects reaches 35,000.

LEED for homes is the part of program (and the nationally accepted benchmark) for the design and construction of high-quality green homes. LEED certification, developed in 2000, offers tree-stage rating system that measures a homes performance on eight categories: site selection, water efficiency, materials, & resources, energy & atmosphere, indoor environmental quality, location & linkages, awareness & education, and innovation.

Each LEED-certified home passes inspections and testing individually to ensure its high performance.  After all inspections are made it gets one of these tree rated stages: silver, gold or platinum.

Castalia Homes is a green building company that uses USGBC LEED certification for the every home they build.  Castalia Homes just certified another LEED for homes house and now has the most certified green, highest performing homes in the State of Indiana!!!

Castalia homes: the main principles of green design

Green, or sustainable design is an important part of the green building process.  To create a green design for your home you should follow its principles.  While there’s a variety of a practical applications, the principles of green design are mostly similar to green building fundamentals.

First, when choosing an interior, use low-impact materials.  The perfect materials for green design are non-toxic, sustainably produced or recycled.  Local or bio-regional materials managed from renewable sources are usually preferred.

The next important feature is quality and durability.  Always choose longer-lasting, and better-functioning products that need replaced less frequently.

Sustainable design is also associated with a design for reuse and recycling.  Some parts of the interior can be made from products that are reused and will have their “afterlife.”

Second, sustainable design should support the energy efficiency of your home.  The general plan of the interior should include manufacturing processes which require less energy.

Waste prevention plays a great role in green building, so it should also be continued in green design.

In conclusion, based on the main principles of green building, green design should be natural, efficient, durable, and of a high quality.  If you turn on your imagination and use these principles as a guide, your home will not just be “green,” but it will look amazing as well!

Green Design: Common Intentions and Applications

Design always plays a great role in building because it effects how convenient and spectacular your home will be.  When building green, design is not less important.  In green building there are some principles that should be extended in design too.  As a result a new kind of design appeared, green design that is also called sustainable design or ecological design.

The main intention of sustainable design, as it was said exactly in “The Philosophy of Sustainable Design” by J. F. McLennan, is to to "eliminate negative environmental impact completely through skillful, sensitive design."  The principles to use no non-renewable resources, to impact the environment minimally, and relate people with natural environment are used during design, the same as during green building.

All the details of ecological design provide not just things for life but also a special behavior and relations between user and object or service.  This relationship should be long-term, respectful and mindful.

Sustainable design may be considered a philosophy that can range from microcosm (small things for everyday use) to macrocosm (buildings, cities, etc.)  This philosophy can be applied in the fields of architecture, interior design and landscape design.

A main factor in ecological design is reducing.  By choosing green building technologies, and green design for our homes we reduce the impact of building and of our everyday home life on the natural environment.