green remodeling
Empire State Building Now With Energy Star
Energy Star for Commercial Buildings offers a good standard to work to if you are considering upgrading especially when combined with the commercial tax credit for energy efficient upgrades.
Resource Efficient Renovation
Working in the green building industry I knew I wanted three things out of this project: efficient fixtures, low-VOC substances and resource efficiency (that includes saving $).
Frustration, Misunderstanding and Delay – Oh, My!
To be honest, even for us in the field, it is sometime frustrating how slow the process goes at times.
Windows are meant to bring in light not water
There are two pressing problems with our existing building that are typical issues with many older homes – the windows and the insulation.
Although the exterior walls have cutting edge insulation for their time, there have been vast improvements on how the insulation meets the windows. In our home, the windows are set into exterior foam [...]
The One Place Smaller is Better
For the longest time we have been thinking about how to build a cost and resource efficient addition. The design inspiration we had came from two typical sources, This Old House and HGTV. Our idea was to build a completely separate building so we wouldn’t have to “touch” the existing structure. We could use share [...]
From the 70’s to the 2000’s
We live in a 1970’s designed home, built to incorporate the best building practices of its time including passive solar heating, 2” exterior foam insulation, and a small building footprint. Many things have changed since then in both our knowledge as well as in our lifestyles. And as a result, there are energy and resource [...]
Green water well choices
The well at our house started leaking this week and we’ve had to turn the water off in an attempt to save energy. The seal is leaking at the bottom of the well so the 220V pump runs continuously, if we need water or not.
This morning I had to make some decisions on what equipment [...]
