Green Tips for Renovating Your Home

Renovating your home sounds like a great choice for when you need to make your home more functional, comfortable, spacious, and efficient. What is even greater is taking the step to renovating your house with a green viewpoint. This kind of perspective can help your house become more sustainable and also reduce the negative impact on the environment. Here are some tips for a green home renovation: 1. Maximize Your House’s Efficiency First of all, if you need your house design to be more sustainable, then you must start increasing its efficiency. You can start by inspecting the appliances in … Continue reading

Sustainability and Energy Efficiency: Key to Affordable Housing

To be affordable, houses must be designed and built embracing strong principles of sustainability. Ensuring houses are energy-efficient may increase up-front construction costs a bit, including the costs of superior tools and equipment and professional architectural and mechanical engineers services, but the long-term benefits and future cost-efficiency are what matters. Non-believers think that it is an oxymoron to combine the idea of sustainability and affordability. But, the fact is that when homeowners are able to spend less on their energy bills they can budget better for repairs and maintenance, which intrinsically improves the durability and longevity of their houses. In … Continue reading

Energy-efficient Building Envelopes in Oman – A Study

In Oman, extreme hot weather conditions and thermally inefficient building envelopes have led to high cooling loads in residential units. Residential buildings serve a smaller number of occupants per unit, when compared to other sectors in the building industry. Also, mechanical, electrical and other energy-intensive equipment are relatively lesser in quantity and complexity. Yet, as per statistics, the residential sector is the largest consumer of electricity in the industry. In Oman, the residential sector consumes most of the electricity produced, with over 70 % of the load contributed by cooling using air conditioners (Zurigat et al., 2003). A major reason … Continue reading

Green Buildings Certification in MENA – Issues and Challenges

Green building rating systems are increasingly gaining attention in the building industry in the MENA region. During the last 15 years, there has been a regional trend in developing and applying green building ratings systems. In several countries such systems have been developed in an attempt to follow the international green movement. For example, the Pearl Building Rating System (PBRS) was founded in UAE in 2007, the Green Pyramid (GPRS) and ARZ Building Rating System in Egypt and Lebanon respectively were founded in 2008, the Edama was proposed in Jordan in 2009 and Qatar Sustainability Assessment System (QSAS) was founded in 2010.  … Continue reading

Energy Conservation in Mosques: A Guide

A mosque (or masjid) is a place where Muslims worship and offer prayers round the year. In addition, a mosque plays a pivotal role in Islamic communities worldwide. Mosques have a unique operating schedule and are occupied five different times daily for a period of around 30 – 60 minutes for each prayer (this may differ from one mosque to another). For special occasions like Friday Prayers, Eid Prayers and Ramadan nights, people may stay for longer periods in mosques. In recent years, mosques have become big consumers of electricity due to widespread use of air conditioning, hot water systems, … Continue reading

Green Home Improvements That Increase the Value of Your Home

One of the smartest investments any homeowner can make is to upgrade their home with green improvements. Not only does this reduce energy costs and decrease your carbon footprint, but it also increases the value of your property! It’s no wonder that more and more people are looking for sustainable solutions when renovating their homes. Green home improvements range from low-cost changes, such as using LED lightbulbs and water-efficient appliances, to larger projects, like investing in energy-efficient windows or replacing an aging HVAC system with a solar-powered one. Estate agents, such as Jerry Pinkas Real Estate, tell us that along … Continue reading

Best Green Ways to Increase Your Property’s Value

Increasing a property’s value is something that everyone hopes to accomplish during their lifetime. The place in which one owns is usually the biggest asset of a person’s life. Therefore, one should treat it dearly by taking steps to improve its condition over the years. Over the past decade, there has been a huge drive towards achieving sustainability in all facets of our lives. Simply put to be sustainable or “green” means to satisfy your present needs in a way that does not compromise the needs or resources of future generations. More importantly to put this into the context of … Continue reading

Tips for Choosing Eco Friendly Window Blinds

Eco friendly window blinds are a great way to add style and beauty to your home while also being environmentally conscious. For the best price and quality, you need to follow some quick tips for choosing eco friendly window blinds. Read on to find out the way to get the best window treatments: Key Points There are many benefits of eco friendly window blinds, including the fact that they can help you save money on your energy bills. Additionally, eco friendly window blinds can also improve the quality of your indoor air and help to reduce the amount of noise … Continue reading

All About Building a Net Zero Home

It doesn’t matter where in the world you live, the time has come to realize the importance of building homes that use zero energy. You don’t even have to believe in catastrophic global warming to realize the financial, comfort, and environmental benefits of net-zero homes. But first, you need to have an understanding of net-zero and zero-carbon buildings and their implications for us all, as well as the elements and features that need to be incorporated into a net-zero home. Net-Zero Homes and Energy Efficiency You could say that a net-zero or zero-energy home represents the best in energy efficiency. … Continue reading

Reasons To Choose An Energy Efficient Temperature Sensor

Energy efficiency is a buzzword for appliances and home devices these days. Everyone wants to do their part to save the Earth and cut down their utility bills at the same time. Saving energy in your home or office is as easy as swapping some of the current products you’re using with more efficient ones. One slight but significant change you can do is to get energy efficient thermal imaging devices. Here are the reasons why you should choose these temperature sensors: 1. Save Energy The primary advantage that this energy-efficient product has over other similar items is that it … Continue reading

Green Building Sector in the Middle East: Sustainability Perspectives

Green buildings are no longer a marginal concept but are becoming the standard for sustainable building construction and modernization in the Middle East. Forward thinking organizations can realize the benefits of being environmentally aware of the impact of each and every action undertaken in the present world of development. It is no longer about the financial bottom line and whether we are eco-friendly, it is a fundamental component of sustainability. Institutes and organizations in the Middle East can embrace green building initiatives as a mandate, while educational institutes can embrace it as a good citizen initiative developing the minds of … Continue reading

مقدمة عن زراعه الاسطح الخضراء

تعتبر زراعه الاسطح من التكنولوجيا التي توفر مجموعة كبيرة من الفوائد الملموسه وغير الملموسه للمجتمعات المهتمة بتحسين وتعزيز بيئة جيدة.للأسقف الخضراء فوائد عديدة فهي تعمل على تنظيم حرارة المبنى ,فتقوم بتدفئته خلال الشتاء و تبريده خلال الصيف كما تساهم فى تقليل مياه الامطار المتسربة من الاسطح، ذلك لأنها تعمل كإسفنجة ماصة للمياه و في الوقت نفسه تستفيد النباتات من هذه المياه.  كما تقوم الأسقف الخضراء على تقليل التلوث حيث تعمل كفلتر لتنقية الهواء. ومن فوائد الأسقف الخضراء قيامها  بدور هام فى تقليل الضوضاء و التى تعتبر من مشاكل العصر الحديث خاصة فى المدن. كما يجب ان لا  ننسى أن للأسقف … Continue reading