Green Building Elements

Stimulus Bill Increases Rewards for Energy-efficient Remodeling

Energy-efficient remodeling replaces painting your bedroom walls as the most significant home improvement project of 2009.

We all know that green is the talk of the town these days, but we’re not talking about paint color any more when it comes to home remodeling. The word ‘green’ now holds it’s weight in eco-friendly, money saving home improvements.

To add to the wave, the government has now stepped in and made stimulating your home a great way to stimulate the ecomomy by giving back a 30 percent tax credit for homeowners who install energy-efficient windows, insulation or heating systems in 2009 and 2010.

Read the rest of this entry »

Improving Your Home Energy Efficiency

With all the talk of renewable energy and energy efficiency in the news these days it seems to me that having an energy efficient home is the way to go.

So why is there a need to improve your home’s energy efficiency?

A lot of homes these days are beyond energy efficient. In fact, if your home is over 10 years old, it was more than likely built with NO energy conserving features.

Read the rest of this entry »

What do get when you mix four of the Bay Area’s top green stars, a LEED certified location, lunch and corporate sponsor wanting to spread its green wings? The spirited Sustainable Symposium sponsored by Ace here in glorious San Francisco. The symposium, in short, brought some energetic and often useful ideas from the knowledgeable and spry panel (not to mention moderator and Chicago Ace Hardware store owner Lou Manfredini) and created solid dialogue in what could have been one of another “How to green this and that discussion.”

Read the rest of this entry »

While we are on the topic of decreasing our energy footprints in small homes, I’d like to share the simple and small round yurt design, that has been around for ages. The yurt is a type of “Green Weefab Mini-Home” and can be customized into another kind of hand-built “Earth Sheltered House” for those on a budget.

Yes a yurt is a portable, felt-covered, wood lattice-framed dwelling structure used by the nomads in the steppes of Central Asia for centuries, and yes it is also a modern dwelling here in the west. I have often seen yurts perched on ocean side clifftops, in horse pastures for riders, and used as outdoor guest houses for those with big yards. Read the rest of this entry »

“Tiny houses” are starting to enter mainstream consciousness, due in large part to new companies dedicated to manufacturing and promoting tiny homes, especially Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. And for good reason, too: one of the most effective ways to decrease your ecological footprint is to buy a tiny house. For obvious reasons, a tiny house requires little energy to build, and less energy to keep comfortable. There’s also the benefit of not maintaining extra unused space. Ultimately, you can live more simply and happily in a tiny house.

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you want to get paid for saving energy? If so, then you won’t want to miss this all important webinar that covers a host of incredibly useful information for home owners and builders. Organized by Treehugger Consulting, reserve your seat now as space is limited.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/861707592

Tree Hugger Consulting presents “Green Building Incentives 2009: Where and How to Get Them.” This webinar will cover tax credits and rebates available for energy saving building techniques and materials in the United States.  Where to find them, what to do to get them, and how to apply and receive them.

Both commercial and residential buildings will be covered.  Applicable projects include new construction, remodels, additions, and some building repairs.

Homeowners, building owners, designers, and contractors are all welcome to learn more about how to get paid for saving energy.

The webinar is scheduled for an hour and a half to allow plenty of time for questions.  The cost is $20.00.  After the registration form is complete, you will be directed to our secure PayPal site.  A confirmation email with the webinar details will be sent to you after payment is confirmed.  If you do not receive the confirmation email within two (2) business days, please send an email to treehuggerconsulting@comcast.net.

Title: Green Building Incentives 2009: Where and How to Get Them

Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009

Time: 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM PDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements

PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

If you have any questions regarding the webinar, please contact Dawn Killough at treehuggerconsulting@comcast.net.

Treehugger Consulting’s Dawn Killough is a regular contributor to Green Building Elements. Click here for a complete list of her informative and interesting articles.

Click here to learn more about Treehugger Consulting.

Send Vice President Biden and the other members of the Middle Class Task Force your ideas about creating green jobs and making buildings more energy efficient.

President Barack Obama announced today the formation of a Task Force to strengthen the American middle class.  As Vice President Joe Biden, a member of the group, describes the task force on the White House website, “This task force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting the middle class.  It is our charge to get the middle class – the backbone of this country – up and running again.”

First on the agenda for the task force is the creation of green jobs and the ways home energy efficiency can both save homeowners’ money and create green jobs that cannot be outsourced.  From the White House:  “If we create jobs that aim to reduce your energy costs – like your electric bill and your home heating bill – that means you have more disposable income for other things. Creating more green jobs has multiple benefits.  It helps the economy as a whole; it helps our environment; and it will save you money.” Read the rest of this entry »

We want to start the New Year off with an eco-bang, and so we’re launching a new Green Home Contest. Low Impact Living and Joie de Vivre Hotels challenge you to make your home as green as you can! We’re going to reward the greenest home of all with a luxurious 3-night stay at the very environmentally-friendly Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. More on the hotel and the prize in a minute!

Low Impact Living will identify the single family home (and its proud owners) that has the lowest Low Impact Living Index (calculated using our Environmental Impact Calculator), and we’re going to share with you what that family has done to get there. Don’t worry if you haven’t done big projects like installing solar panels or a wind turbine – as the calculator shows, many of the best green home projects are simple and inexpensive. We’ll show you how to identify projects to make your home more eco-friendly. The contest will close on February 15, 2009. So you have time to make green changes!

What you have to do to enter

1. Visit our Household Environmental Impact Calculator and calculate your base LILI (Low Impact Living Index). It will only take you five-ten minutes to use the calculator and create your account.
2. Once you have entered all of your base inputs, move on to the “select projects” page of the calculator. Make sure you only check projects that you’ve finished (or will finish by February 15th) before you log out.
3. Make sure that you log out or save your profile before leaving – if you just move on to another web site without logging out, your inputs could be lost.
4. If you’ve already created an account through our calculator, then you need to return and, log in again. We’ve added some new features recently, and they won’t work unless you refresh your account.
5. The calculator isn’t all-encompassing yet, so there may be projects that you’ve done that don’t show up. If this is true, send us an email at contest@lowimpactliving.com describing what you’ve done. Low Impact Living staffers will review your efforts and award up to a 5% additional deduction for compelling projects.

How we’ll select the winner

The contest closes on February 15, 2009, and we will announce the winner on March 1. This will give us time to check with the finalists to make sure that they’ve completed all of their checked projects. (Past entrants to our green home contests are not eligible.)

If you are a finalist (in our top 10 lowest LILI scores), we may ask you to verify that your projects are actually completed, via photos or receipts / invoices for work performed. We’ll also ask for your address (not to be published!) so that we can verify entered information about your home. If you are a winner, then you have to be willing to let us share your projects and process with everyone via our blog, and to provide us with the photos and project descriptions necessary to do that. You’ll become a green star overnight!

What you could win!

The greenest homeowner will receive three nights at Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. The Hotel Carlton is a member of the Joie de Vivre chain of hotels, which is deeply committed to making sustainability part of its core business operations. In fact, their mission is to “adhere to the strictest environmental standards, engage in sustainable practices and maintain an impeccable quality of guest experience.” The JDV Hotels environmental program includes hotel-wide recycling programs, composting, use of renewable energy, use of recycled paper products, energy-efficient lighting and much more. To learn more about Joie de Vivre’s commitment to sustainability, click here. To learn more about the Hotel Carlton, click here.

So, good luck, and get to greening!

2008 was the year that saw elements of green building become mainstream and increased interest in green technologies.  But for those of us who are not building a new house or who don’t keep up with all the new technologies, there are many simple, inexpensive (or free) ways to green your life that you can do right now.  The result will be a more energy efficient, healthier, and more sustainable environment for you and your children.  Do yourself and you family a favor, take one or more of the following resolutions to go green: Read the rest of this entry »

Fast becoming staples of the green building industry are pre-assembled structural insulated panels, or SIPs, which replace conventional framing and offer greater energy efficiency, reduced lumber usage, and quicker construction.  SIPs are polystyrene foam sandwiched between oriented strand boards that provide structural framing, insulation, and exterior sheathing in one piece.  They can be used as floors, walls, and roofs and provide much greater energy efficiency than insulation in stud walls with an R-value improvement of 15% to 40%.  The oriented strand boards are made from wood of fast growing trees and emit very low levels of urea-formaldehyde.  The polystyrene foam can also consist of recycled content. Read the rest of this entry »