Sustainability of a Yankee Barn Home
A Yankee Barn home is a good fit for those who seek an energy efficient building with a small environmental footprint. A Yankee Barn home is an efficient structure that affords significant reduction in energy usage.
This home building system includes high R-value insulation, trademarked roof systems, and pre-installed Zip System® sheathing for superior air protection. Yankee Barn Homes can design to maximize use of natural light including solar panel placement for generating electricity.
Yankee Barn Homes can construct energy efficient homes that are both comfortable and healthy. Through the use of energy efficient building technologies, sustainable materials, and a dedication to sound environmental practices, a Yankee Barn home provides a high quality of living while reducing your carbon footprint.
Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency has been a defining characteristic of Yankee Barn Homes for over 50 years.
- The Yankee Barn Homes Shell Package utilizes energy-rated windows, doors, polyisocyanurate insulation and ZIP System® Sheathing to create a highly efficient building envelope. Download our Shell Package Energy Efficient Features
- For additional energy efficiency, clients may choose to upgrade their Yankee Barn Homes with additional insulation in the True Wall and True Roof™ panels. The True Wall panel can be upgraded to an R-value range of R28-R40+ and the True Roof™ panel as high as an R-value range of R59-R71+
- Each Yankee Barn home is designed to take passive solar gain into account.
- Some clients choose to take it a step further, and build net zero. Check out this article in Green Energy Times about a recent build, and how Yankee Barn Homes took part in the clients’ net zero dream!
Sustainable Materials
Yankee Barn Homes takes quality and sustainability into account when selecting the materials to be used in our Shell Packages. Only the best materials with the smallest environmental footprint become key components of our homes.
- Our new Douglas fir timbers are sourced from members of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative whenever available.
- The polyisocyanurate insulation in a Yankee Barn Homes Shell Package is much better for the environment than polystyrene, the common alternative. Polystyrene contains a particular type of hydro fluorocarbon that is 1,430 times a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It would take 65 years of greenhouse gases saved by this insulation to offset the damage this hydro fluorocarbon does. It only takes 2.7 years to offset the greenhouse gases emitted during the production of polyisocyanurate.
Corporate Responsibility
Yankee Barn Homes has a strong company culture of environmental responsibility.
- Yankee Barn Homes uses drawing software to determine the best use of materials when building a Shell Package, reducing waste to <5% for each home built.
- Yankee Barn Homes pursues a corporate recycling program for office and manufacturing waste. With a net zero manufacturing goal in mind, YBH uses a recycling program for waste polyisocyanurate insulation. This allows the diversion of 400 cubic insulation yards from going to the landfill every year.
- Yankee Barn Homes recycles wood shavings by donating them to local farmers, who use them as bedding for their livestock, and all of our scrap timber and lumber is donated to local residential maple sugaring operations, or burned by employees for heat.
- Yankee Barn Homes reviews the corporate environmental policies and practices when evaluating potential suppliers and business partners.