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| Climate Design Basics |
| Functional, Accessible & Adaptable |
| Healthy & Eco-Friendly |
| Practical & Convenient |
Use this checklist to explore and select features and components of an eco-friendly house in Louisiana.
Use this checklist to explore and select features and components of a house in Louisiana with healthy indoor air.
Low maintenance surfaces and products can enhance and add value to your home.
Use of renewable fuels, fuel cells, and photovoltaics can help homeowners achieve energy efficiency.
Your goal for home design and construction is to create a house that meets your immediate and long-term needs for space, function and aesthetics; keeps you comforable and safe by managing heat and humidity; drains and dries when water gets in; and resists damage from floods, high winds, freezing conditions, flying debris and termites. Your home will be more marketable if it ahcieves these goals while being practical and convenient. Includes links to checklists
Universal design is design for life. The goal is safe and independent living for just about anyone, any age, any size and any ability. With thoughtful planning and product choices for a new home, universal design can be achieved at little or no extra cost.
Information in this section will help you maintain good indoor air quality in your Louisiana house by minimizing health hazards such as mold, dust mites, combustion pollutants and other common indoor air contaminants.
Plan your home with dual purpose rooms and ample storage, room to maneuver, designed to grow with your family.
Use this list of guidelines to develop a convenient (family friendly and functional) kitchen plan.
More does not always mean better. Learn the importance of building a house that is marketable, cost-efficient, and will keep its value for years to come.
Structured wiring, upgradeable packages and accessible installations can make a home adaptable to advances in telecommunications and automation without major renovation. Special baseboard and crown moldings designed to route cabling behind it are available. Plan ahead!
The healthy and eco-friendly home is designed and built to protect both the indoor environment and the outdoor environment, by reducing indoor pollutants, conservation natural resources, managing waste and waste-water and using materials that reduce pollution in their fabrication and transportation to the site.
Your ideal house will remain only a dream if it is not practical, cost-effective and reasonably easy to maintain. Build with locally available materials using labor-saving methods. Consider not just the purchase and installation cost of materials and systems, but also their life-cycle costs; lower operating costs off-set higher initial investments. Consider also the future marketability of your ideal home.
A functional, accessible and adaptable home will give you and your family room to breathe, room to work, room to play and the potential to expand. It will have adaptable spaces and systems for your changing needs, including advanced wiring so you can take advantage of today's technologies. If you employ universal design techniques, your home will be more visitable - perhaps fully accessible - by family and friends who have impaired mobility.
Seek out incentive programs that could help you create a high performance home. When you “build green,” you not only get a home that is earth friendly and healthy, you are doing your part to help our nation and preserve our way of life for the coming generations.
Geographic Basics in Louisiana include Climate, Flood, Wind and Termites. Read about the climate, wind and flood hazards, and termites in Louisiana.
