Building a green home is a great way to help protect the environment and reduce your carbon footprint. It can also save you money in the future by ensuring that your energy costs are much lower. There are a huge number of different factors you’ll need to focus on if you’re trying to earn a green home certification, and one of these factors is the type of garage door you choose. In this article, we’ll provide an overview of green home certifications, the role a garage door plays in energy efficiency and what factors to look for when choosing a garage door for a green home.
An Overview of Green Home Certifications and What They Mean
There are a variety of federal and nonprofit organizations that offer different green home certifications that are available when building a new home. Each organization and certification program has its own specific requirements that the building must meet to qualify. Most of the requirements are based around things like reducing energy and water usage, using sustainable materials and building practices and, in some cases, using only high-efficiency electric appliances like heat pumps and heat pump water heaters.
Two of the most common green home certifications are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and ENERGY STAR. LEED certifications were developed by the nonprofit US Green Building Council, and a new home construction project must be inspected and proven to meet certain criteria in six different categories to earn this certification. Earning an ENERGY STAR certification for a new home is a bit easier. In this case, the home must be independently proven to be at least 10% more energy efficient than other new homes that conform to building code requirements.
What Are the Benefits of a Green Home Certification?
Earning a green home certification requires quite a bit of planning to ensure that the house’s shell and all other aspects are designed and built in a way to achieve higher levels of energy efficiency. For the same reason, it also means placing a strong focus on what materials are used. The good news is that it is now entirely possible to achieve the necessary energy efficiency goals and build a truly green home for about the same cost as you would a normal house. While it does take a bit more work and planning, building a house with a green home certification will always provide major benefits.
One obvious benefit is that the improved efficiency means your energy costs will be lower than they would otherwise. Real estate statistics also show that houses with a green home certification almost always sell for quite a bit more than similar homes in the area that aren’t certified or as energy efficient. Certified homes typically sell extremely quickly as well since high energy efficiency is a huge selling point for prospective buyers.
How a Garage Door Impacts the Energy Efficiency of a Home
One thing that many people don’t realize is that the door on an attached garage is one of the biggest things that impacts how energy efficient any home is. The reason is simply that the garage door is the biggest opening in a house, which means that it can potentially let in a huge amount of heat and cold.
Although most garages aren’t conditioned, meaning they don’t have heating and air conditioning, they can still have a big impact on how quickly the home heats up during the summer and how fast it cools down during the winter. This obviously affects efficiency and energy consumption since it plays a direct role in how much the home’s air conditioning and heating have to run. Even if the wall between an attached garage and the main conditioned part of the house is properly insulated, the garage can still contribute to heat loss and heat gain.
What to Look for When Choosing a Garage Door for a Green Home
If you’re attempting to get a green certification for your new home, there are a variety of factors to look for when choosing which type, brand and model of garage door to use. Which factors are most important depends on which type of certification you’re trying to get.
If you want to earn an ENERGY STAR certification, the main things to focus on are insulation, air infiltration and the material the garage door is made of. Choosing an insulated door is always important in terms of energy efficiency since the insulation provides a thermal barrier that blocks out heat and cold. When looking at insulated garage doors, you want to focus on both R-value and U-factor. These metrics express a garage door’s level of thermal performance, i.e., how effective of a thermal barrier it creates. R-values just look at the level of insulation the garage door panels themselves provide. The higher a door’s R-value is, the better it is at insulating.
U-factor is generally considered a better metric for expressing the energy efficiency of a garage door since it takes into account the level of thermal performance the entire garage door assembly has. Not only does this include the door itself but also things like the perimeter sealing around the sides and top of the door frame, the weatherstripping at the bottom, etc. These additional parts of the assembly are important for lessening air infiltration, which is when hot or cold air can seep in around the garage door’s frame or underneath it. If you’re looking to install a door with windows in it, the U-factor will also take how well insulated and sealed the windows are into account.
One last thing to consider when choosing an insulated garage door is what it’s made of. While an insulated aluminum door will usually cost less, an insulated steel door will always provide much better performance. That’s because aluminum is a much better conductor of heat compared to steel.
If you’re attempting to get an LEED certification, there are some additional factors you’ll need to account for in terms of sustainability and materials. One of the categories in the LEED certification program is the use of regional materials. What this means is making sure that the door is produced locally in the United States and not imported into the country. LEED certification requirements mandate the use of sustainably sourced or recycled materials. For instance, wood garage doors should be made with leftover or unused wood so that no trees were directly cut down to make the door. In terms of steel doors, you want to look for something that is made using a fairly high percentage of post-consumer and post-industrial recycled materials and that has no hazardous substances in the paint, sealant, adhesives, insulation, etc.
If you need any service from an experienced, professional garage door company in Colleyville or the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Door Works Garage Doors is the one to turn to. We have over 30 years of expertise in the full range of garage door services including installation, maintenance and repairs. Whether you’re building a new home or you need to replace an existing garage door, we offer a range of high-quality steel, glass and insulated doors sure to match your taste and fit your specific needs. For more information on the garage doors we carry or to schedule a garage door maintenance or repair service, contact us today.
