If you're leaning towards environmentally friendly building design for your new home or office premises, you might want to consider incorporating green walls. But what are green walls and what benefits do they offer? Read on for more information.
Green walls – the concept
The concept of green walls involves installing multiple hydroponic panels on the outside of buildings and growing a selection of different plants on them. Green walls can also be used on a smaller scale inside buildings where there is sufficient space and natural light to allow the plants to thrive.
Green walls offer a number of benefits:
Clean air
Plants filter air naturally, efficiently removing large amounts of common urban environment contaminants including toluene, carbon monoxide and benzene. These potentially harmful chemicals can be found in things like paint, printer ink and in some makes of furniture
A green wall also uses carbon dioxide and gives off oxygen, removing stale air from your environment and replacing it with fresh, breathable air.
Insulation
Installing a green wall as part of your building design can help with insulation and keep your electricity bills down. The plants that make up the green wall can deflect excess heat in summer and help the building to retain warmth during the colder months.
Noise reduction
If you live or work in a busy area, a green wall can help to reduce the invasive noise of traffic from outside. The plants that comprise the green wall effectively soak up excess noise, keeping out intrusive noise and making your environment much quieter and less stressful.
Aesthetics
Green walls are clearly much easier on the eye than ugly steel and concrete. You can choose the plants that are installed in your green wall so that your building has a different look and colour scheme, depending on the season.
Health benefits
Living and working in an environment that is healthy, quiet, and visually pleasing can mean a reduction in stress levels and lower blood pressure. Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) is a well-known problem that affects many workers in urban office settings.
Green walls can do much to counteract the debilitating effects of SBS, meaning less downtime and improved morale and productivity for your workforce.
In conclusion
Including green walls as part of your building design has many benefits. Why not have a chat with your construction contractor to find out more about incorporating this environmentally friendly feature on your new build? For more information, contact a business such as Bill Jacobs Pty. Ltd.
