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If you are seriously interested in "green building" techniques—whether for new construction or rehab— there are four basic strategies to keep in mind. You should be searching for practitioners who can provide them in your project.

Optimum-value engineering:

While engineering principles have always been used in the design of housing, there has always been a tendency to overbuild and to not effectively use materials in many instances. For example, wood frame walls are built with studs as the vertical members and wooden plates on the top and bottom to hold the structure together. The current practice is to use two or more plates on the top. We now know, however, that if the floor-framing members can rest right where the studs are, it is not necessary to have more than one top plate. This change can save hundreds of feet of lumber and actually helps reduce heat loss through the walls. Thus, it is possible to design and engineer a solid house, while dramatically reducing the waste products produced.

Energy-efficient building:

You really can build a house that heats for $200 a year if you seal the building envelope (the exterior walls, ceilings and floors of the structure), insulate the building envelope so heat loss is reduced to a minimum, install ductwork that is not leaky, and effectively ventilate the structure so there are sufficient air changes for good health (without unnecessary air changes that lose the heat you paid to generate). In such a house you need a far smaller heating system, which requires much less fuel to achieve a desired level of comfort. And such a house is cheaper to cool as well. The technical know-how to produce such housing and retrofit existing housing is available right now.

Ecological building materials:

This involves choosing building materials that use the least energy to manufacture or produce, are most likely to be recyclable or are already recycled, and are produced from an easily renewable resource. Would you believe that the construction of homes using bales of hay to form the side walls is becoming a common construction practice? Hundreds of them are beginning to appear all over the country because hay is readily available in every part of the country. Moreover, hay is cheap to produce, the simple act of harvesting is the manufacturing process and there will always be a supply of hay. When covered with a wire mesh and coats of stucco, hay bales produce a house with insulation R-values in the walls as high as 50. The walls are also extremely durable. These days there are fewer and fewer big trees to provide lumber necessary to create beams, rafters and joists. So a growing amount of this kind of material is being made from ground-up wood fibers that, when bonded together, create an incredibly strong piece of wood. In addition, plastic bottles can be recycled and mixed with wood fibers to form a composition material that can be used for decks and other outdoor projects This material will never rot and can be reused or recycled endlessly over time.

Nontoxic materials and systems:

Green building also involves using building materials and systems that do not foul the environment or harm the health of inhabitants. Over the years, the chemical revolution helped us in many ways, but it also has produced chemicals that have been used in pesticides and building materials that have made people sick. The good news is that we have learned what many of these are and have developed safer products to replace them. We also have begun to reduce the number of unvented heating appliances we have in our homes, which have contributed to personal injury and sometimes death.

• We are choosing building materials that do not out-gas harmful chemicals when they are hot and/or wet.
• We are adopting strategies for controlling moisture and reducing mold and mildew growth and the deterioration of building materials due to these organisms.
• We are manufacturing products that will not present health hazards in the first place.