5 Ways to Build an Eco-Friendly Home When Living with a Disability

Becoming disabled will have a big impact on your entire life, and it could also make it necessary for you to change several of the features in your home. However, there is no reason that you cannot keep the environment in mind while you are in the process of building a new home or rehabilitating your current house. In fact, there are several eco-friendly building opportunities that are perfect for people who have a wide range of disabilities.

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Five Tips for Building an Eco-Friendly Home that is Suitable for Your Disability

1. Sustainable Wooden Ramp 

If you need to install a wheelchair ramp at the entrance of your home, you should strongly consider choosing wood that comes from a sustainable forest. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service, this is one of the best building materials that you can use to help you achieve your goal of staying eco-friendly.

2. Motion Detection Lights

Many disabled individuals need to rely on larger quantities of light to help them navigate throughout their home. However, you can reduce your carbon footprint by installing motion detectors on all of your lights so that they do not stay on continuously. It is also a good idea to consider installing CFL bulbs to reduce your electric consumption.

3. Single Floor Living 

If you want a lot of space, it is likely that your builder will encourage you to have two floors. Instead of following this suggestion, it is best to utilize the space that you have available to create a single floor home. After all, stair climbers use a lot of electricity, and you will also need to use more heat to keep a multiple story home warm enough in the winter.

4. Use Energy Star Appliances

Even if you have to install grab bars to help you take full advantage of each of your appliances, it is still important to choose items that have an energy star rating. Fortunately, these appliances come in a wide variety of sizes and styles, so you should be able to find the perfect options to fit into your home.

5. Hire a Disability Attorney

It will most likely be difficult to pay for everything regardless of whether or not you are rehabbing your current home or having a new one built. Therefore, if your disability claim has been denied, you should definitely consider hiring a lawyer who has experience with similar cases. It is stated online by an experienced disability attorney firm at www.disabilitydenials.com that, “Just because you are told ‘No’ does not mean your claim has been defeated.”

They can assist you in the legal formalities to file an appeals claim and represent you in court, if needed. An attorney can help assist you in getting compensation for the income that you would have received from disability insurance that can help you pay for all of the necessary revisions to your home.

Taking an eco-friendly building approach is a good way to help the environment while also reducing your energy bills. For example, each CFL bulb will save you an average of $40 during its lifetime. Therefore, you should take steps to ensure that your builder is utilizing proven eco-friendly methods such as sustainable wood products.

Lisa Coleman shares some tips on ways for a disabled person to renovate or build a house in a more energy efficient and greener way. Living with a disability is already hard, dealing with a denied disability claim is even harder. She offers the tip to hire legal counsel, found online at www.disabilitydenials.com, to help fight a disability claim to gain compensation that can help assist in the financing of such a project.

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