Sustainability of a Yankee Barn Home
A Yankee Barn home is a good fit for those who seek to build an energy efficient green building with a small environmental footprint. A Yankee Barn home is an energy-efficient structure built with sustainably produced materials by a company that values environmental stewardship.
This green home building includes proper insulation, efficient heating and cooling systems, rainwater harvesting, green roof systems, and renewable energy sources. Yankee Barn Homes can also maximize natural lighting while minimizing the amount of electricity used for lighting in their energy-efficient home construction.
Yankee Barn Homes can construct beautiful, energy-efficient green homes that are both comfortable and good for the environment through energy-efficient building technologies, sustainable materials, and a dedication to environmental stewardship. By building a Yankee Barn home, you can enjoy a high quality of living while also helping reduce 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 highly efficient windows, doors, polyisocyanurate insulation and meticulous house wrap detail to create an impeccably sealed “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 has a corporate recycling program for all office and manufacturing waste www.zero-sort.com. With a net zero manufacturing goal in mind Yankee Barn Homes is developing the first in the nation recycling program for waste polyisocyanurate insulation. This will divert 400 cubic yards of insulation per year from going to the landfill.
- 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 oporations, or burned by employees for heat.
- Yankee Barn Homes reviews the corporate environmental policies and practices when evaluating potential suppliers and business partners.