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Whether you're building your first home, or the house you hope to retire in, the way a home is built and what it’s built from can make all the difference in the world—to your health and that of our planet's. At Dvele, we recognize this and employ sustainable construction methods that significantly lower a property's environmental footprint. Here are some of the areas we focus on:
The selection of construction materials by traditional builders is often based on price vs quality or availability vs sustainability. Due to added costs and the effort that’s needed to verify materials, it’s cheaper and more convenient to choose readily available construction materials. And most consumers don’t know enough about the space to ask for anything different. Unfortunately, the regulations that oversee the disclosure of sourcing and manufacturing processes, including the chemicals that are used to create materials, are not as widespread or as comprehensive as they should be to allow builders or consumers to make conscious material choices.
At Dvele, we make every effort to source materials from partners with a focus on sustainability, and from those who voluntarily disclose the materials and chemicals that are used to make their products. For example, our interior doors are made from FSC Certified wood materials. If suppliers do not provide this information, it is important to press them to share all product details and test materials to ensure that it is the most environmentally-friendly available option, and that it will not produce any harmful effects as the materials age. One environmentally-friendly material that is important in any home is mineral wool insulation. The insulation is created from recycled quarry rock that is crushed and liquefied along with recycled slag from metal smelting, which is then spun into fibers and formed into insulation blocks. Compared to fiberglass insulation, the mineral wool insulates from both temperature and sound, does not retain water, is more fire resistant, and healthier to work with.
A big advantage of constructing modular homes in a factory versus on-site is the ability to significantly reduce the amount of construction material waste and reuse excess materials by storing them at the facility, rather than throwing them away on-site. Most prefab home builders, like Dvele, will order materials pre-cut to the exact lengths needed for various uses throughout the home. This practice alone eliminates a lot of “odds and ends” waste and loss of materials through mis-measured cuts.
Across all industries, the demand for product transparency is on the rise. Home construction is no exception. Since modern human beings spend most of their time indoors, more homeowners than ever are concerned about the health of their home and how being inside it impacts their family's well-being. So, they want to know how the components of a building are sourced, whether extraction methods for raw materials are safe, where and how waste gets disposed of, and if the lifecycle of a product is human and earth-friendly—especially as it starts to degrade.
When a company practices transparency by disclosing all that's known about the products and services being used, they inspire trust in their customers and clients. It's interesting to note that the companies providing transparency often do so because they've already made certain values, like health and well-being, a priority. And, they want you to know so that you can feel confident that when it comes to saving the planet, you're both on the same page.
An energy efficient home doesn't just cut your costs to power the house, it produces fewer greenhouse gasses that get released into the environment—a sustainability measure that's critical for all buildings to achieve if we’re to have any impact on climate change. One of the best methods for increasing the energy efficiency of a house is to ensure that it utilizes any used energy with maximum efficiency, and, ideally, to be a net positive energy source through the use of solar power.
The key construction methods for maximum energy efficiency are using materials like mineral wool on all six sides of the home and within interior walls and creating an air-tight Energy Envelope which prevents the flow of exterior air into the home and the loss of temperature conditioned air from the home. By recirculating and purifying the current air within the home, the HVAC system can condition the air more efficiently, which uses less energy. When these two sustainable construction methods are employed, the addition of solar power with a backup battery storage easily allows the home to not only generate all of the energy needed to run the home, but it also ultimately produces more energy than it needs, allowing it to contribute energy back into the grid at a local level. That’s why at Dvele, we are committed to including solar panels with an optional backup battery system, as well as energy efficient appliances with each home.
Forward-thinking home-building organizations that implement sustainable construction methods don't expect you to take their word for it. If they're truly concerned about the environment, they won't even take their own word for it. That's precisely why groups like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) were established. It's one thing to intend to build a high-end, healthy home that minimizes its impact on the environment. It's quite another to voluntarily submit your home for evaluation to test and verify a home’s performance and to be recognized by green building certification programs with stringent requirements like LEED and PHIUS.
At Dvele, we’re committed to producing homes that are designed to be as sustainably and efficiently as possible and to make sure they will have a positive impact on not only the environment, but on the health and well-being of our clients.
We invite you to explore our homes, customize your own, and create a downloadable lookbook that includes an estimated budget. Contact Dvele to turn your idea for a dream home into a responsible, and luxurious, reality.
