By Guest Author: Michelle West An HVAC system is expected to last 15 to 25 years. However, it is not uncommon for some HVAC units to last a lot less than that because of various factors. Everybody wants their HVAC system to last as long as it could. After all, an HVAC system is a [...]
October 2017 BPC Green Builders Earns Another U.S. Department of Energy Housing Innovation Award: 2017 US DOE Housing Innovation Award for Custom Homes for Buyers BPC Green Builders Inc. received its fourth DOE Housing Innovation Award in five years. The award category was "Custom Homes for Buyers". Built in Clinton, NY the winning custom green home [...]
Here are some tips for making your home more accessible and safer if you plan on living in your home into retirement. It can also be useful if you are planning a home where your parents will live in or for making their home more accessible and safer. It's helpful to think ahead when [...]
Ridgefield “Net-Zero” House Powered Fully by the Sun NewsTimes, Feburary 23, 2017 This article about a sustainable Net0-Zero Energy home built by BPC Green Builders and designed by Trillium Architects starts: "After nearly a year in their new home, the Ranades haven’t had to pay a nickel for the energy needed to run it. [...]
Passive Housing Trend Gaining Momentum in Fairfield County The article below is about a BPC Green Builders Net Zero Energy home built in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The article's title suggests this home is a Passive House but it is not a certified Passive House. The home does use some Passive House design and construction approaches [...]
What do you think of when you hear “green home?” For most people, it’s energy efficiency. For others, it’s eco-friendly building materials. Unless you live in a severely drought-stressed area, water conservation is unlikely to be the first thing to come to mind. However, most people don’t realize how much energy is burned to [...]
June 2016 Front View On June 28, 2016 the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that the single family Taft School Faculty Home, which BPC Green Builders built and Trillium Architects designed, in Watertown, Connecticut was awarded the national 2015 LEED Homes Award for “Outstanding Single-Family Project”. According to USGBC the annual LEED Homes [...]
Modern Breed Ridgefield Magazine, November/December 2015 This article is about a home BPC Green Builders built in Ridgefield, Connecticut begins: ““A HOUSE IS NOT JUST WHAT YOU WANT BUT WHAT THE SITE WANTS,” says architect Vincent Colangelo. That’s particularly true for the modern house he designed off Branchville Road. Finished in 2010, this stunning contemporary [...]
BPC Green Builders won the overall Grand Prize in the 2015 Housing Innovation Awards from The US Department of Energy for “Custom Innovation on the Path to Zero Net-Energy Ready Homes” for a new colonial-style home in Watertown. This home was commissioned by the Taft School as a new faculty home which could also [...]
The rear exterior of my Passive House Those of you who have hung with me through this extended series of blogs now have a pretty good idea about how a highly energy efficient house is put together. You know that it’s not just lots of insulation between the framing members, it’s also [...]
This is an energy recovery ventilator which runs 24/7/365 to bring fresh air into the house while recovering the energy in the air to essentially pre-heat the fresh air. It uses about as much energy as a CFL light bulb. Because my heating requirements are so small, my house does not need a central [...]
In my previous blogs, I’ve written about how the foundation, walls, and roof of my house are built using familiar American construction materials; but they are framed, air-sealed, and insulated somewhat differently from conventional building practice to create a thermal envelope that requires much less energy to heat and cool than a typical new home [...]
Let me answer the rhetorical question I asked at the end of part 7 of this series. Why does the triple glazing (three separate panes of glass) in most European windows and doors (W&D) have much better insulating values than the triple glazing in most American windows? After all, besides having the same three panes [...]
Is Green Building Too Expensive? By Kevin Ireton Editor, Fine Homebuilding My wife and I decided not to have children. We just couldn’t make the numbers work. From prenatal care through college tuition, we were looking at half a million dollars. Minimum. And it would be 25 years before that investment would even begin to [...]
July 2015 A new colonial-style home in Watertown, CT, has been certified as a Passive House by Passive House Institute US (PHIUS). For a home to meet this standard, it must meet a series of strict performance standards that result in an 80% reduction in energy required to operate [...]
