Modern. Sustainable. Atlanta. 404.303.7280

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    They’re Baaack: Average House Size Shoots Up To Highest Ever

    As the housing market entered its steep decline during the latter part of the past decade, it took home sizes with it. While there was much to bemoan about the state of the industry, among designers and architects it seemed the one bright spot was what appeared to be the demise of the McMansion and an increased focus on efficient functionality. Between 2007 and 2010, the average size of a new, single-family home in the U.S. fell from 2,504 square feet to 2,381 square feet, according to U.S. Census data. It was the rise of smaller and smarter.

    Or was it?

    “For all these years, the trend was going [down], and then in 2011 it got reversed,” says Rose Quint, assistant vice president of survey research at the National Association of Home Builders

    • April

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      2012
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    Beat the heat: how a new type of eco home is helping tackle global warming

    Beat the heat: how a new type of eco home is helping tackle global warming The Ecologist The heat storage capacity of different materials is one of the most important features of building a passive house , explains Swift, which is why several of the designs on the site are partly buried underground, to make the most of the constant …

    • April

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      2012
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    Habitat builds passive house in Berea

    Habitat builds passive house in Berea Lexington Herald Leader A family in Berea is getting an energy-efficient home from Habitat for Humanity. The Richmond Register (http://bit.ly/HkaBZC) reports it is Habitat for Humanity’s first ” passive ” home in the state, which means it exceeds federal Energy Star ratings and … Berea family getting Habitat’s first; Passive home in Kentucky.

    • April

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      2012
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    New App Will Monitor Residential Energy Usage

    A new Facebook app will enable consumers to quickly and easily benchmark their home’s energy usage against similar homes, compare energy use with friends, and share tips on how to become more energy efficient.

    The social energy app is an initiative of Facebook, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), software provider Opower, and 16 utility companies. More than 20 million households within the 16 participating utilities’ territories will be able to take advantage of the app’s “Utility Connect” feature, allowing customers to choose to have their energy use automatically update each ….

    • April

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      2012
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    LEED overhaul to address long-term building performance

    The US Green Building Council (USGBC) is revamping the LEED rating system this year. LEED 2012 will focus on improving the rating system’s clarity (providing more precise technical criteria) and making the system more user-friendly. Some may consider these competing notions, so i’’s quite a lofty goal to meet. There will be revisions of prerequisites and point systems. LEED 2012 is going through a third public comment period, and has a proposed launch date in October. A FAQ document developed by the USGBC highlighting the

    • April

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      2012
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    How To Start a Compost Heap

    Many of us recycle and reuse, but there’s something vaguely intimidating about making the move to composting. I’ll admit that I was guilty of hesitation, worrying about the smelliness of the endeavor and never entirely sure of what can and can’t be composted in the first place. But after a bit of investigation and minimal effort, I’ve realized that composting is really easy, affordable, useful, and sustainable.

    • April

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      2012
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    Scoring the Referees: How Pharos Judges Green Labels

    [Editor’s note: This post is authored by Bill Walsh, Executive Director of the Healthy Building Network .] When building products carry different green certifications, how do you know which product is best? Maybe there is a way to compare apples and oranges. As green certifications and labels have proliferated, so has greenwash.

    • April

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      2012
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    Energy Efficient Buildings in Demand Worldwide

    We cannot sustainably keep pace with the world’s continuously growing hunger for energy if we continue along our current path. Especially in the building sector, however, there exists an enormous potential for energy savings where we can reduce energy use by 80 to 90% without any reduction in comfort.

    Countries around the world are realizing this. Only “Net zero energy buildings” will be built inSouth Korea and California as of 2020 and throughout Europe, all new builds will have to be constructed as “nearly zero energy buildings” by 2020. Europe’s future energy efficiency directive also calls for high annual retrofit rates of public building stock

    • April

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      2012
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    How To Make Natural Garden Pesticides

    Garden pests are one of the few things I find frustrating about gardening. Whether it’s the snails taking over your lettuce or the aphids sucking on your roses – it’s definitely annoying – but not a reason to fret and reach for harmful, toxic sprays. They might eliminate the pesky culprits, but they are harmful to you and the environment

    • April

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      2012
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    A new Living Building Challenge: Community-scale retrofitting

    Green building might be little more than a fringe hippie idea if not for certification. The medals and honors now available through rating systems have enabled a good and altruistic effort to become a highly marketable quality. LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – is now the most well-known and well-used certification system, claiming nearly 9 billion square feet of space participating in its various certification programs globally. But it’s not alone, and it’s not necessarily the greenest of the green. The relatively new Living Building Challenge has been steadily gathering fans in the green building community for tougher-than-LEED standards such as net-zero energy and net-zero water.

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Costs of Custom Homes

The first thing most people want to know is: What does it costs to build a 3000 sqft custom home in the Atlanta, GA. market?  The first thing you have to calculate is the square footage you want.  Once you have that, the numbers below give you a good starting point.

Adjusted Square Foot Calculation:

New Construction:

Renovations:

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