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Does it Cost More to Build?
In a word, no. The passive solar heating and cooling concepts that significantly reduce the energy consumption of a home, office or retail space are accomplished through design and the creative arrangement of standard construction materials and methods. Because we utilize conventional building materials, such as reinforced concrete and prefabricated trusses, our structures are built at conventional construction costs. Rather than employing expensive, potentially complex, applied and evolving technologies, the buildings are efficient by design.
Simply put, any building represents a certain financial cost. That cost is contained in the labor and materials used in its construction. Those materials can be arranged into a conventional building that will have predictably higher future energy requirements. Alternatively, those very same materials can be arranged, at no additional cost, into a passive solar structure that will have significantly lower future energy requirements, reducing the building's impact on the environment and the owner's pocket book.
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