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 [...]
Posts Tagged Efficient energy use
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 [...]
We have completed our client interview and are armed with a list of issues based on that conversation and our analysis of the homes energy usage patterns from the last 12 months utility bills. I use a data collection form I put together which is part checklist and part list of prompts that I use as [...]
When contemplating improving our home’s performance it helps to have a general guideline or ordering of priorities when making the decisions that provide the most benefit for our investment. It’s important to look at the house as a system where each part interacts and ideally works together with the rest. If we ignore this interaction and focus our attention on single source solutions, at best we miss opportunities to leverage our decisions and in the worse case cause unintentionally negative results.
First lets look at some ways a remodel can affect your whole house. You might be planning to do a simple kitchen or bath remodel. You would never think that it could affect the other areas of the your home that aren’t included in the remodel scope of work. Many of the neighborhoods I [...]
In case any of you are wondering whatever happened to this project or if it ever started, I thought I’d give a quick update on where we are in the process. No, unfortunately we haven’t started construction on the project yet. Yes, we are still planning to get going as soon as HUD and the powers that [...]
Ductwork Testing
Apr 29
Based on field testing conducted statewide over a number of years, the California Energy Commission estimates the average duct leakage in California homes regardless of size and vintage to be 30%.
This translates into an increase in heating and cooling costs of approximately 20% for the average home.
Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend a contractor orientation for the SMUD Home Performance Program. I wanted to share some of the details of the program as they stand right now. Please keep in mind minor modifications may be made to some of the details of the program as they get closer to [...]
The federal government’s stimulus package provides tax credits for an assortment of energy efficient home improvements. These range from building envelope improvements like air sealing and insulation through windows, heating and cooling equipment all the way to renewable energy projects like PV solar.
It’s a given that a green home should provide its occupants with superior indoor air quality, but the reality is all homes need good ventilation to exchange indoor air often containing moisture, odors and pollutants with fresh outdoor air. Thanks to environmental programs such as the Clean Air Act and other regulation our outdoor air [...]
What comes to mind when you think of energy efficiency?
It’s also important to keep in mind that energy efficiency isn’t about giving up things like comfort and convenience. It’s about getting more out of the resources we already use. We can enjoy a comfortable, well-lit home while being energy efficient and saving money too.
There have been a lot of marketing dollars spent promoting the advantages of tankless water heaters, but little attention given to the issues that could reduce those advantages. In the last couple of posts in this series, we examined a number of important issues any homeowner needs to weigh before deciding to replace their existing [...]
2009 may well go down in the record books as one of the economically worst in recent memory. Venture capitol investing and IPOs fell to their lowest levels in over 10 years. Governments around the globe scrambled to implement stimulus programs to shore up their crumbling economies and try to create jobs to counter rising [...]
