"To Build it Right You Must Build it Tight" Michael Trolle, Principal and Cofounder of BPC Green Builders Your Home's "Building Envelope" is arguably the most important aspect of making a home energy efficient and comfortable. It is also a key element in making your home a healthy home. [...]
by Marc Rosenbaum The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association With ZNEBs becoming more common in NESEA country, we can begin to codify the strategies they share. A zero net energy building is one that uses no more energy annually than its renewable energy system generates. It imports energy when site resources are insufficient, and it exports [...]
Guest Author: Julie Scott With an increased focus on greener building and energy efficiency, the term “passive solar” is being used more and more. Not to be confused with solar panels, passive solar is the use of the natural environment in a way that optimizes the internal temperature of a home. Rather than relying [...]
Guest Author: Jennifer Dawson, Writer for: PoolCareGuy Some people may argue that there is no such thing as an eco-friendly pool. As pool maintenance often requires the use of harmful chemicals, which contribute greenhouse gases to the ecosystem, many believe pools cannot be made “green” at all. But this simply isn’t the case. There are [...]
Guest Author: Michelle West It’s understandable why some people would think that the bigger the heating or cooling system, the more comfortable you and your family would be. After all, bigger HVAC units are more powerful, and therefore more capable of providing the best possible heating and cooling, right? There are also people [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The Design/Bid Approach for Custom Homes and Renovations Can Lead to Problems One of the ways to go about designing and building a custom home or a home renovation is the design/bid method. The design/bid approach is one in which homeowners and their architect develop plans based on what the homeowner is looking for [...]
As green builders, we talk a lot about the energy savings and the environmental value of our sustainable, high-performance approach. Now, homeowners are increasingly interested in another aspect of our green home building: the indoor-air quality expertise that enables us to build homes that won’t make them sick. You see, there’s a difference between green [...]
As with many green trends, momentum for the Passivhaus movement began with homeowners willing to invest a little more up front to build sustainably and create durable, healthy homes that would continue to preserve the environment for decades to come. Today, however, the good news is that passive houses are not only sustainable, they’re becoming [...]
When most people think about sustainability, they usually think a “sustainable builder” has to specialize in building new, modern-looking homes. What’s interesting is that sustainability has long been a core principle in the preservation of older homes. Jean Carroon, chair of the AIA’s Historic Resources Committee and author of Sustainable Preservation: Greening Existing Buildings, points [...]
One of purposes of a Home Energy Audit is to find and fix things that are running up your energy bill. Inside the home, energy culprits include your lighting – but it’s not just the light bulbs themselves that can lead to unnecessary energy costs. Our home energy auditors can always suggest switching from incandescent [...]
As a custom green builder, I know for a fact that the savings of living in a green custom home can be considerable. Just how considerable was pointed out in an article I recently read that explored the connection between green houses and mortgages. The article was based on a new study of 71,000 home [...]
by Brita Belli Green Home 2013 Homeowners looking to build green have plenty of certification programs to choose from, but they all revolve around one key principle – saving energy. Complete article… Reprinted with the permission of Green Home 2013.
