When you’re an owner builder, building your own home is a huge challenge. However, there are a lot of benefits. The best thing about being an owner builder is that you can customize your home. This provides you with a great opportunity to make your home more eco-friendly. So how can you incorporate eco-friendly credentials in your new build?

A lot of people are focused on energy efficiency when building their own home. Their impact on the environment can be minimised and running costs drastically reduced. So, when you’re an owner builder, you can plan these savings from the very beginning.

However, building an eco-friendly home isn’t as simple as putting some solar panels on the roof, although that is a good addition. There is a lot more to sustainable building than that.

So here are three of the most important things to remember if you are trying to build an eco-friendly home as an owner builder.

Find A Construction Team That Will Work With You 

Making a home eco-friendly often requires a bit of clever problem solving. In some cases, you will have to compromise on your original plans to make the house more energy efficient.

If you are going to find all of these great environmentally friendly solutions when building a home, you need to find a construction team that will work with you.

When you’re looking for a custom home builder and trying to decide which company to go with, you should ask them about energy efficiency. You want somebody that will sit down with you and come up with innovative ideas and tweak designs to make your home more energy efficient, rather than just building the original design.

Experience and expertise are key here. As an owner builder you may not know the best way to make your home more eco-friendly, so you need to find a builder that does.

Harness Natural Light 

A dark home is not an energy efficient one because you will have to use electric lighting all of the time. So it’s important that you harness natural light as much as possible.

Prioritize this in the design and make good use of windows and skylights to create a flow of natural light throughout the home. The more light you can get in through the windows, the less energy you will have to use.

However, you need to ensure that you are using energy efficient windows, otherwise, you will lose a lot of heat. 

Generate Your Own Power 

The best way to reduce your impact on the environment and save yourself a lot of money is to generate your own power. If you plan carefully, you may be able to make the house entirely self sufficient so you don’t have to pay any energy bills at all.

Make sure to invest a portion of your budget in solar panels on the roof and any other available surface and if you have the outdoor space, a wind turbine.

If the house is well designed and doesn’t use too much power, you should be able to generate everything that you need. 

As long as you prioritize energy efficiency when designing the house and follow eco-friendly interior design principles, you should be able to create the perfect eco-friendly home.