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You've likely heard that the U.S. Green Building Council recently released the revised residential LEED rating goals and system. In the past, LEED was mainly being utilized for commercial buildings. Not anymore.

There are some major benefits to the introduction of residential LEED. While the system is far from perfect, LEED residential is going to help ensure that more of our homes meet safety standards that will create a more positive impact on the earth.

If you’re new to LEED, here’s a quick rundown of the LEED goals for homes. Basically, LEED measures a house with the following eight criteria. If a home is LEED certified, that’s a quick way to be sure that the home is meeting the basics of eco-friendly building.

Location: The home shouldn’t take away from a community. This is all about home placement. For example, chopping down nice old growth trees, to build your home, is an example of what NOT to do, in order to meet this goal.

Innovation and design: This is more architect or builder based than home based. How innovative are the designs? Were cool new green ideas used to make the home more earth-friendly?

Sustainable land use: How the land the home is situated on is used. Example – when I built a house, we removed some of the Cedar trees for space, but we re-planted them on the land. We also built small to minimize our footprint on the land.

Materials: Are green materials used for building when possible? Currently, if there’s a traditional building material available, there’s a greener version as well. The point is to use that greener version. Some are leery because of initial cost, but in the long run greener materials will pay off.

Education: Some green building tactics depend on the home owner being able to utilize that tactic. For example, a rain water system won’t help if you don’t know how to use it. This criteria was designed to check out how well informed the home owner is by the end of the building process (before move-in).

Also covered are some bare basics: water efficiency, energy use (such as indoor cooling and heating), and interior air quality. Obviously residential LEED isway more involved, however, above is a good intro to what you should be considering if you’re building or buying a home.

To learn more you can download the entire LEED for Homes Rating System – all 114 pages of it. (opens in pdf) Long, but a great read.