Saving the environment is on the minds of many people worldwide these days. Many homeowners who want to make a significant contribution to helping our environment are considering structural steel homes. There are several reasons to consider building a structural steel home. Here are the five top reasons for building a structural steel home.

1. Most steel is recycled - With so much awareness for recycling, almost no steel is wasted. From cans to cars, hardly anyone throws away metal that can be recycled. Structural steel homes are mostly made from recycled steel.
2. Carbon footprint - An average wood/concrete constructed home can use over 30 average size (25 years-old) trees. Each tree removes 48 pounds of CO2 per year from the atmosphere, which means that an average wood home will add a total of about 144,000 of CO2 to the atmosphere, over the natural course of those 30 trees’ life span.
3. Strength - Whether it’s hurricane winds in the South or heavy snow loads in the North, a structural steel home is considerably stronger than conventionally built homes. Built properly, structural steel homes are literally impervious to even the strongest hurricane winds.
4. No interior or exterior load bearing walls - All of the load for structural steel homes is carried in the pre-engineered columns. This means that structural steel homes can have doors and windows almost anywhere and interior walls can be put anywhere. With a structural steel home, the homeowner can add or remove interior walls as the family dynamics change over the years.
5. Shorter construction times - Structural steel homes (when IMP [insulated metal panels] are used for the walls and roof) can be constructed in a matter of days, versus months with conventional homes. This saves labor costs and overall construction costs as well as the time it takes for a certificate of occupancy.

JLH Sustainable Housing, LLC has already built 2 buildings with structural steel and IMP technology. Construction time was days, not months. The strength, carbon savings and energy efficiency of each building is superior to any other construction method. We hope to make this more available to more homeowners and businesses soon. Our current project is a two story, solar powered and battery backup, carbon negative home that will produce and store enough energy to fuel an electric car and, never be without power.