1. Working with contractors – Know the vocabulary. You’ll have a better chance of negotiating successfully with builders if you know about breaker boxes, water pressure tanks, load-bearing walls and other such construction anatomy. A good way to learn is […]
The New Ecological Home: A Complete Guide to Green Building Options Dan Chiras [Chelsea Green Publishing, 336 pages] THE QUANTITY OF BOOKS ON GREEN and sustainable home design grows by the day. Many of them cover similar material in similar
It’s a buyers’ market, and here are the four things that today’s buyers are looking for: Modest floor plans So long, McMansions! Surveys show that Americans are considering smaller homes. Organization and comfort A National Association of Builders survey identified
If you’re thinking that building or remodelling your home in an eco-friendly manner means spending more, think again. In fact, I urge architects, designers and builders—not to mention the homeowners who hire them—that building green doesn’t necessarily mean spending a
I like tiny homes—homes that are generally no larger than about 500 square feet. In fact, I lived in a 264 square foot home in the mountains of Taos, NM, for five years. And yes, I had an indoor toilet.
Recently, I overheard two people arguing about the relative efficiency of an old, small, inefficient, cold climate home in the Northeast versus a newly constructed large Southern California home using energy efficient methods. At first I guessed that because of
Try This Solar Decathlon Net-Zero Energy Home on for Size: the Chip House (via http://greenbuildingelements.com) For those sustainability designers and innovators wanting a net-zero product, take a look at the Chip House, a 2011 entry in the DoE’s Solar Decathlon,
Seven Sexy Solar Homes: a Slideshow (via sustainablog) Image credit: Jeremy Levine Design at Flickr under a Creative Commons license Editor’s note: Hey, everyone’s doing the slideshow thing, right? To move through the pages, simply click on the page numbers
The four aspects of home performance At the Building Performance Workshop, we always strive to distill complex concepts and practices to their most essential and basic elements. This does two things: It enables the professional to keep a cool, clear
The latest episode in the American Chemical Society’s (ACS’) award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes a process that could pave the way for a new genre of electric power-generating stations. These stations could supply electricity for more than a
