Not a costly affair
At first glance, the house at H-1456 in South Delhi's Chittaranjan Park with its white and slightly narrow façade looks like any other beautiful house in the city. That is, if you don't know that it is the first green house in the country with a five star SVAGRIHA rating to flaunt. Named 'Green One' by its owner Prasanto K Roy, a media consultant by profession, pulled down his existing house to build a green one from scratch and received the country’s first five star Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) for an individual house.
The material used to build the house was sourced locally and is recycled, such as fly-ash bricks. Lighter weight autoclaved aerated concrete (ACC) bricks were used to build the outer walls. The house was built keeping in mind optimum use of daylight to cut energy costs while the glass panels retain the solar heat, while bringing in the light. Rainwater is stored and waste-water is recycled for non-potable uses. The house also has a compost system for kitchen waste.
The idea of a green home first struck Roy when 'ITC Green Center', a green building with LEED platinum certification came up near his office in Gurgaon. "When I decided to move to Gurgaon with my wife and daughter, we explored green-rated buildings but not one builder had them," Roy said."Green? We have a golf course...and many trees, a leading developer told us," he said.
"We moved into a rented place in Gurgaon but decided to redevelop my parents' house in CR Park, where I'd lived for 30 years, into a green home," Roy said.