Green Buildings: Advantages and Disadvantages

What are green buildings?

They are the future of buildings and that is for sure. Green buildings are the ones who are good to the environment in addition to being resource efficient throughout their life cycle.

Most countries now are adopting the green building concepts and other countries are on their way to join the flock too. On a smaller scale, individuals and investors have been increasingly interested in self-sustaining homes and buildings.

But why countries all over the world are interested in these kind of buildings?

Advantages:

1- Cost:

The construction costs are the same as a standard building and sometime they cost a little bit more as they require special materials to be built. However, a regular building costs won’t stop after its construction since money will always be spent on maintenance, renovation, operation or even demolition.

This doesn’t mean that green buildings won’t need maintenance, renovation, operation or even demolition as well, but being built of natural resources all that re-doing stuff will take ages till done as they are not damaged that fast hence, investing in green building is 10 times more profitable than standard ones.

2- Efficiency:

This here is divided to the following:-

A- Water efficiency:

Green buildings don’t know the meaning of “wasted”, they recycle rain water and grey water and use them for toilet flushing for instance.

B- Energy Efficiency:

These buildings save energy more than those built out of bricks. They only depend on all renewable energy resources such solar power, hydro-power and wind power which are used for heat and electricity and help improve the indoor air quality.

C- Material Efficiency:

Green buildings are built from natural, non-toxic and recycled materials that don’t cost much and Eco-friendly such as bamboo, straw, recycled metal or concrete..etc.

 

3- Preserving infrastructure:

Being efficient in both energy and water supply, these buildings stretch the capacity of local infrastructure greatly.

4- High ROI rates:

Considering that these buildings are all natural, they have huge return on investment rates and properties in these buildings sell at high prices.

But as we all know nothing all sweet and perfect. Green buildings have their flaws too and to sum them up, they are as follows:-

Disadvantages:

1- Location:

Since these buildings depend on sun for energy, they need to be located in position that will have the best sun exposure which may demand placing them opposite to other neighborhood homes.

2- Availability:

The materials to build such buildings can be hard to find especially in urban areas where preserving the environment is not the people’s first option.

So shipping these materials can then cost a lot than a standard building.

3- No air cooling features:

These buildings run on heat to generate power, so they are not designed for hot areas as they do not have any ventilation systems, so air conditioners will be required which will make these buildings anything but Eco-friendly.