Eco Custom Homes featured twice in Atlanta Home Improvement Magazine
Pick up the current copy of Home Improvement Magazine. We have 2 projects featured in this years Green Guide. Click here to read the rest…….
Pick up the current copy of Home Improvement Magazine. We have 2 projects featured in this years Green Guide. Click here to read the rest…….
f you are interested in green building, or call yourself a green building expert, then you should know about Mineral Wool insulation. If you have not seen Mineral Wool handled and installed, then you need to read this. If you think that Mineral Wool batts are similar enough to Fiberglass batts that you already know what you need to know about it, then you are a fool. And you still need to read this.
Video: The Passive House Revolution By Charles Hoxie.Twenty years ago, German physicists erected a home that demonstrated how little energy a building would need if built with, among other things, thick insulation and airtight walls. The so-called “ Passive House ” (or “Passivhaus” in German) was soon …
a resilient home is extremely well-insulated, so that it can be kept warm with very little supplemental heat–and if power or heating fuel is lost, for some reason, there won’t be risk of homeowners getting dangerously cold or their pipes freezing. If we design and orient the house in such a way that natural heating from the sun can occur, we add to that resilience and further reduce the risk of the house getting too cold in the winter.
Тhе registration for the first edition of the electronic design competition for a passive house in the village of Lozen, near Sofia, Bulgaria has started. The event is set up by Passive House Bulgaria and the agenda has been published on the …
10 Green Building Predictions for 2012 from Earth Advantage Institute MarketWatch (press release) Portland State University’s mechanical engineering department recently partnered with a local builder to measure the effects of phase change material used as insulation in a duplex passive house , while Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories is …
The United Welsh Housing Association is running a competition to find people to live in and assess two homes built on the site of a former steel works at Ebbw Vale in Blaenau Gwent, south Wales. The homes, built to showcase the “Passivhaus” concept, are in a group of state-of-the-art homes built for the 2010 National Eisteddfod.
The White House hopes that someday soon everyone will be able to monitor and control their home energy usage, and lower their monthly utility bills, with a few swipes on a smartphone app. At least that’s the vision of the Green Button initiative, a recent White House effort to bring together the nation’s utilities, energy consumers and private industry to develop Internet and mobile phone-style technologies and business models aimed at reducing energy consumption.
The Passive House Institute U.S. (PHIUS) will no longer give its blessing to projects incorporating spray polyurethane foam insulation (SPF) that uses blowing agents with high contribution to global warming, according to executive director Katrin Klingenberg.
The city known for expensive real estate has unveiled the smallest self-contained rental suites in the country — just 226 to 291 square feet — renting for about $850 per month, including cable and Internet. Location comes with a price tag, of course. These 30 “micro-lofts” are the result of a heritage project to renovate the century-old Burns Block building in Gastown, a trendy area for shops and restaurants. The contrasting backdrop to Gastown is the poverty, substance addiction and homelessness of the Downtown Eastside where Burns Block recently operated as a rundown hotel.
The PumPing Tap might be just the green gadget that phantom power regulators have been looking for. It’s a smart socket that knows when you’ve turned your appliances off and if you don’t pull the plug out after ten minutes it pops your vampire power sucking cord right out
There are so many advantages to straw bale construction. Engineer Brian Waite lists some of them from his home in Cumbria: He has designed a straw bale home that adds the additional advantage of some very clever engineering. Most strawbale buildings have straw walls and use other materials for the roof; Waite essentially eliminates the roof (or the walls, depending on your perspective) and creates a cruck frame, a modified A frame that is curved to maximize interior volume.
Onyx just announced that they have installed their first 330-Watt “Plug-N-Play” solar panels at their demonstration site in Orlando, Florida. The two all-in-one solar panels have an incorporated micro inverter and a standard US AC power outlet plug that allows the owner to simply plug an extension cord into the panel and then use that chord like an outlet in their home. One of the demonstration panels also has a lithium battery incorporated into the unit that can store power for when the sun isn’t shining.
Want to create a cozy retreat for those cold, wintry days and nights? There are many things you can do to make your home feel warmer, improve its efficiency and lower energy bills. In this post I’ll focus on ideas for drafty windows and doors. ADD THERMAL DRAPES OR ADD CURTAIN LINERS to your regular.