Last Friday I attended the contractor kickoff meeting for SMUD’s Home Performance Program. Promoted as a soft launch, between now and September SMUD staff will verify eligibility requirements of participating contractors and gear up for a media campaign involving print, online, television and radio advertisements. Here are the basics of how the program will work: [...]
Archive for July, 2010
Here’s a good article and graphic from Fine Homebuilding by Martin Holladay, Senior Editor of GreenBuildingAdvisor.com. It outlines a 10 step program that’s guaranteed to reduce your utility costs. It’s along the lines of the page found on this site, but includes a pyramid shaped graphic that’s kinda cool. As always the first step is a [...]
When I first moved to Sacramento in the summer of 1987, one of the first things I had to get used to was working in construction in 100 degree heat for days on end. Coming from the cool and foggy Bay Area, it took me about 3 years and a million gallons of water before [...]
On Tuesday of this week the Federal Housing Finance Agency which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and over 50% of the mortgages in the United States, issued a statemet which effectively put at end to PACE programs at least temporarily. They instructed their lenders and loan servicers to adjust their underwriting criteria in any [...]
In a response to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s latest instructions to their lenders, Placer County has suspended their mPower PACE program indefinitely. On Tusday of this week, the Federal Housing Finance Administration adjusted their underwriting criteria in communities that have PACE programs to reflect increased loan-to-value ratios and debt-to-income ratios on all properties regardless of [...]
Retrofitting Suburbia
Jul 7
A regular reader of my blog sent me this video of a January 2010 TED Talk by Georgia based architect Ellen Dunham-Jones. Dunham-Jones is widely recognized as a leader in finding solutions for aging suburbs. She is the co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs. As you drive around the largely suburban Sacramento [...]
Here’s a great graphic of the impact that the 285,000,000 new computers that will be sold this year will have on the environment. For instance, the fossil fuels required to manufacture those computers will be more than the annual consumption by the entire state of Iowa. The water required could fill 65 olympic sized swimming [...]
Catherine Mohr is a self admitted geek. An organic food eating, carbon footprint minimilizing, robotic surgery geek. She also wants to build her house green but is supicious of all the well meaning but ultimately materials focused “go green” articles in the media. I don’t claim to agree with everything she says, but I love the presentation [...]
In the last few months we have heard a lot of discussion on upcoming home performance incentive programs that will be offering great opportunities for homeowners to increase the comfort and efficiency of their homes. Whether it’s PACE , utility programs or the Home Star legislation, interested consumers and members of my industry have been [...]
There was a good article in the New York Times today concerning the effects on home owners and small businesses caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s position on the nation’s PACE programs. PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy. Under the financing programs, a local government borrows money through bonds or other means, and then uses [...]
