It’s no secret that one of the best ways to boost the value of your home is to update your Kitchen and Master Bathroom. Not only that, but it tends to make our humble custom home much more pleasant! Eco Custom Homes has helped countless clients upgrade their kitchens and bathrooms. Being that we are
In December, JLC featured four advanced high-performance, super-insulated building designs. This week, we talked with homeowners who are living in some houses built following those designs to find out how the homes are coping with this year’s record cold.
Concrete is a problem from start to finish. The production of cement is responsible for at least 5% of the CO2 made by humans each year. That cement is mixed with aggregate that is carted out of huge earth-scarring gravel pits by giant trucks. It is then put in redi-mix trucks that race through…. Read more here
Made out of wood and formed chicken wire, “Daily Needs” is a one-stop gardening unit that allows gardeners to grow vegetables, raise chickens or other pets, and to close the cycle by composting any food scraps into more brown gold. Part of the structure can be modified to become a mini-greenhouse or coldframe, by using…. Read more here
From Patrick Creadon, director of WORDPLAY and I.O.U.S.A., comes a captivating look at a radically innovative approach to education. IF YOU BUILD IT follows designer-activists Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller to rural Bertie county, the poorest in North Carolina, where they work with local high school students to transform both their community and their lives. Living on credit and grant money and fighting a change-resistant school board, Pilloton and Miller lead their students through a year-long, full-scale design and build project that does much more than just teach basic construction skills: it shows ten teenagers the power of design-thinking to help re-invent not just their town but their own sense of what’s possible.
Showing on February 14, 2014 at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema in Atlanta called IF YOU BUILD IT, about influential designer-activist Emily Pilloton.
The Heatworks Model 1 is a next-generation water heater that reduces water use by 40%, slashes energy use by 10%, and delivers an instant supply of hot water. This heater energizes water molecules and senses temperatures 60 times a second to ensure precise and reliable stream of hot water. The water heater is also WiFi compatible, allowing users to control and monitor the unit remotely.
Being a high performance builder, you have to practice what you preach. This summer we completed a deep energy retrofit to our 1976 California Contemporary. A beautiful home with huge vaulted ceilings, little insulation, and massive amounts of south facing glass designed to overheat the home during our hot summers. Since I have been studying / preaching Passive House, I used the following standards in my home:
One of the first reflections my wife and I have had is the silence. It is extremely quiet. I don’t hear any ambient noise. I still hear a few birds chirping in the morning and the neighborhood rooster. There is no HVAC noise. No creaking when the wind blows. No rain noise at 3am when a storm blows in. No thumping of rap music when the NY Times delivery guy drives through the neighborhood at 4am. It has taken a while to get use to this sort of quiet.Next reflection I want to share is the general comfort. It was 9 degrees F the other morning. I was……. Click on Article to read the rest.
It looks like no single green home certification system will give a homebuilder the whole picture on a home’s performance. Zack Semke of Seattle-based home designer and builder Hammer & Hand … Read more…
When Jessica and Yianni bought this tiny vacation house on Sauvie Island, just north of Portland, they decided, instead of expanding on its 540 square feet, to remodel the house to make the best use of the space available. In this modest footprint they created a retreat with ample room for their young family AND for guests, using …….
For the 30,000 or so owners of passive houses these compromises are a thing of the past. They’ve got the comfort, the low emissions and barely a heating bill to speak of. I’ve looked at the technical reasons about why apassivhaus has a negligible heating bill in the past. But I’ve never mentioned how pretty……
Home appliances drain a significant amount of energy and therefore money. Enervee has built an extensive database of product data to help consumers choose the most energy-efficient appliances and electronics for their homes
Department of Energy (DOE) proposed strong new energy efficiency standards today that would address a major energy hog that may be lurking in your basement. The new standardswould reduce the energy consumption of furnace fans, which are the fans that circulate heated and cooled air supplied by furnaces, air conditioners, and heat pumps …..
Ultimate Guide to Upcycling with Pallets
From a simple shelf to a complete house, wooden pallets are a fabulous material to upcycle with and what’s more they’re often free if you hunt around your local area or take a look on sites such as Freecycle. Pallets are a great way to turn a mundane and boring looking object into a useful and very trendy furnishings that can be used in many styles of homes.
Our infographic gives you an insight into the the different types of pallets available – yes there’s more than one type of wooden pallet! You also need ………
Mother Earth News How to Remodel a Passive Solar Home Mother Earth News To learn more about passive solar design, this interview with Debra Rucker Coleman, conducted by Megan E. Phelps, discusses the many benefits of working with the sun, and what to consider when building a home using passive solar design……
Even fencing in your backyard can be done in a more earth-friendly manner with products composed of recycled materials, such as plastic (typically HDPE) and reclaimed wood fibers. This combination of materials creates a low-maintenance, durable composite fence that is resistant to cracking, rotting, and insect damage. Plus, it offers the look of wood, but ….. Click Here to see the rest.
Swiss company ÖKO , which means “eco” in Swiss German, have taken the idea of eco-friendly water containers one step further by utilizing NASA -derived filtration technology to create a bottle that can turn sodas (or anything else) into water. Hit the jump to see the water filtration system in action!
I think it’s time to provide some background on how this efficient-building standard compares with others.
Passivhaus may look like a funny spelling, but actually it’s just a normal spelling, in German, a language in which “haus” means building, not house. Passivhausen can be schools, offices, anything. …………..
For the past two decades, there has been little improvement in energy efficiency for North
American clothes dryers. Recent innovations in clothes drying technology offer new
opportunities for energy savings. One innovation in particular has substantial savings potential:
clothes dryers utilizing heat pump technology. This technology …..
Looking for a natural deodorant sans parabens, aluminum, and other yucky toxins? If so, you may have discovered that it can be difficult to find an effective brand. With a handful of ingredients that you may already have on hand, you can make your own effective, healthy deodorant in about five minutes. I get that it sounds crazy, but once I started making …….
So what has changed in the last eight years? Disappointingly, not very much.
The fundamental aim of the composting toilet designers is to deal with our inhibitions about poop. We have grown up with a flush-and-forget system where we don’t see the stuff, we don’t have to deal with it, we send the problem somewhere else. Most of the attention is going to making the composting toilet experience as close to this as possible, sometimes by……
