Arlington Designer Homes is committed to green building for the health benefits, energy savings, and reduced environmental footprint it provides for our buyers and our community. With constantly changing regulations, technologies and products, buidling a new green home from the ground up isn't always easy - but it's always interesting!

Welcome to our behind-the-scenes blog about green building and remodeling, where you can watch a green home go up step-by-step and learn about using green building techniques for your own home. And visit our website at to learn even more about green building and remodeling.

January 18, 2013

Conserving Water and Preventing Run-Off

It has been a long road but we are well underway building what will surely go down as one of the most amazing and unique homes in Arlington.  We are excited to be working with many new and interesting systems. Because of the unique position this lot is in, we have worked to design the lot in such a way that there will actually be less storm water run-off post development than pre-development.

In this way we are truly ahead of our time. Arlington, Virginia, and all localities within the Chesapeake drainage basin have been working for years to reduce run-off from farming, industrialization and housing development. During our development process we had our civil engineers work to design the lot in such a way that we will be on the cutting edge of development technology in our area. The technologies we will use to prevent run-off and help do our part to preserve the Chesapeake Bay include:

1.       Rain water re-use

2.       Pervious pavers

3.       Green roof

4.       Bio-retention

5.       Swales

6.       Mitigate time for unexposed soils

7.       Shared trenches for utilities

8.       Area appropriate plantings

9.       Hydro-zoning

Not only will these technologies prevent run-off and pollution into Arlington’s storm water systems, they mean our new home will use less water. We will need less water for bio-retention, pervious pavers, and hydro-zoning, as well as the features going into the house.

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