Architects in Costa Rica. How to select construction materials for your new sustainable home

Being green can be very simple and hassle free, when you decide to have a new Costa Rican tropical modern architecture project.

You can choose to go for LEED credits, but there are also many other simple ways to build your home in Costa Rica to be more sustainable.

Besides having a house designed on a passive design strategy basis, you can also start working on selecting the right building materials for your eco-home.

Wood is a very versatile material, used successfully for thousands of years. Ecologically speaking, wood comes from a rapidly renewable source and it reduces CO2 emissions in a natural way.

In general there are three main types of wood: soft and rapidly renewable woods, semi-hard woods and hard-dense woods and exotic woods.

1. Soft woods like “Melina” Gmelina arborea Roxb, San Juan Vochsya guatemalensis, Caobilla Carapa guianensis Abul, are used in furniture construction, interior finishes.
2. Semi-hard woods like “Laurel” Cordia alliodora Cham, “Jaul” Alnus acuminata Kunth, Guanacaste Enterolobium Cyclocarpum Griseb, “Gavilan” Pentaclethra macroloba, “Eucalipto” Eucalyptus deglupta, “Cedro amargo” Cedrela odorata,”Botarrama” Voychysia ferruginea are used for more structural purposes like beams, columns and trusses. Also floors, ceiling finishes and some carpentry.
3. Hard woods like “Teca” Tectona grandis, “Sura” Termininalia oblonga “Roble Colorado” Quercus costarricensis, “Roble Blanco” Quercus copeyensis, “Pilon” Hieronyma alchorneiodes, and “Cenizaro” Samanea saman, are used for structural purposes as well but are more durable in terms of resisting insect attacks, humidity, under water uses, outdoors and heavy construction.

Please try to follow the following simple tips when selecting wood:

• Be sure you are using wood from certified forests, otherwise you would be contributing to the destruction of primary forests. Please visit http://www.fundecor.org to know which companies grow their forests in an approved sustainable environment.
• Please do not accept endangered or precious wood species. They generally come from the black market, and are banned by the Decreto Ejecutivo de Veda #23700 MINAE. This happens frequently in rural areas where you may be offered Laurel Negro, Cocobolo, Cristobal, Cachimbo, Balsamo Nazareno, Cedar, Tamarindo, Caoba and Almendro.
• Teak, Melina and Corteza are recommended species that are not yet endangered.
• Try to select local wood providers so you don’t have to spend serious money on long transportation which would also increase CO2 emissions.
• If at all possible, try to use recycled wood which can add character to your home.
• If you’re going to use plywood, please select the ones with zero formaldehyde and no MDF in its gluing components.

It’s best to select woods that won’t need any additional wood treatments, some types of woods are really resistive to impregnated applications. This also depends on where you locate this wood, exterior applications are one of the hardest in the tropics for example decks or horizontal uses.

If you have to use these products, then select the ones with a green seal, water based. Grupo Sur company in Costa Rica, has the leadership in this kind of treatment and you can see some of their green seal products here, and be sure to ask your architect about the best practice for your selected material.

There’s a big variety on applications and be prepared to apply treatments to decks 2 times a year minimum.

One interesting wood protector is bee’s wax. It’s natural and it’s cheap (for about 13,000 colones a gallon you can treat 80 square meters) so this ecological application is a much better option for those who really want to be sustainable.

Written by Costa Rica Architect Gloriana Mejia who focuses tropical modern architecture and believes in following very basic principles: simplicity as a guide for good design, compact areas as a solution for space, passive solutions for sustainable architecture and context as a main character of the frozen music that architecture is….

For more information, please email Gloriana Mejia using the simple form below:

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.