Last January, we announced the Dwell Home II Design Invitational with the aim of establishing a model for sustainable home building in the 21st century. Los Angeles residents Glenn Martin and Claudia Plasencia offered up their plot of land in Topanga Canyon as the testing ground. Escher GuneWardena Architecture was selected from a group of five architects to build the winning design: a 2,000-square-foot home with a budget of approximately $500,000 exclusive of land costs.

The architects’ current plan for the Dwell Home II calls for the use of many simple green design approaches to building, such as using locally manufactured materials to cut down energy costs associated with the long-distance shipping of goods. As you might
expect, the Dwell Home II also specifies many green materials but we were curious
to find out more about their environmental impact and how they compare to standard American building materials.

For instance, what are the long-term environmental benefits of a green roof? Do the eventual savings in operating costs justify a sustainable product’s greater initial installation expense? For example, the yearly operating costs in electric consumption for an 80-gallon electric boiler suitable for a three-to-four-person household can range between $350 and $450, while the yearly operating cost of a solar hot water system can range between $15 and $170.

The following chart attempts to put these questions in perspective using a simplified version of Life Cycle Analysis, an exhaustive analysis of the environmental impacts throughout the product’s entire life cycle. Our life-cycle-thinking approach was inspired by the Minnesota Building Materials Database and compiled by Chris Hammer.