According to various definitions, green building primarily refers to the process of creating houses that efficiently use electricity and water. Besides, such houses should have good indoor air quality, light quality and the materials used should be eco-friendly and self-sustainable in nature. There are various ways of implementing green building principles. There are different challenges in building green houses and carrying out green construction. For instance, the problems faced by engineers in converting a normal house to a more eco-friendly house are greater than building a new house (which is supposed to adhere to the principles of green building) from scratch. Efficiently built green houses would not only help you live in a healthier environment, but would also be instrumental in cutting down energy prices for you and your family, drastically.

All through the remainder of this write up, we will try to unearth some of the most common practices that one can adopt and transit from a normal life to the green life, without making drastic changes to you house's existing infrastructure.

The interface of your house (the outer walls, in simpler words) is the place where you have the maximum scope of improvement when it comes to energy conservation. Try and locate all the caps, fissure and cracks that you might encounter in the walls, ceilings, windows and doors. Expandable foam fillers and white cement can be used to fill these gaps. Doing this would help you save the conditioned air within your house- thus reducing the need of an air-conditioner to do so. There are some products that have been designed specifically to keep the hot air out and cold air inside the house during the summers and vice versa in winters. Radiant barriers, which can be installed at various places on the outer surface of the wall, fall into this category of products. Using properly insulated sheets (envelopes) within outer walls and using waterproof envelopes in the basement and within the ceiling can prevent moisture from seeping in- enabling the air to remain fresh for a longer period of time. Proper cross-ventilation and high-ceiling windows should be an integral part of an ideally built green house.

 Besides following these simple steps, you can visit the websites of numerous agencies (EPA, for example), which are promoting green building and list down the techniques that can be followed on your part in order to make your building more sustainable and self-sufficient in terms of energy generation and preservation. This should not only give the environment the much needed support, but might also save you up to 50% of the costs you would otherwise have spent on energy!