Your Focus on Sustainability Is the Key to Improving Living Environments Moving Forward
Environmental stewardship, economic prosperity and social progress are directly linked with creating better living environments.
Environmental stewardship, economic prosperity and social progress are directly linked with creating better living environments.
Noise. It's hard to escape it. No wonder it's such a high-value consideration with more and more home buyers. Many factors go into the comfort and livability of the homes you build. Find out what steps acoustic-smart home builders are taking to enhance their properties.
A house is a complex system of different components assembled together. Correctly integrating these systems in a cost effective way is key when developing a high performance home. Therefore, there has to be a systems thinking when putting together a high performance building.
The decision to offer homes that are high performance, energy efficient, non-toxic, sustainable—whatever the preferred term—involves many considerations. Of course, green building techniques and products reduce a home’s environmental impact as well as owners’ operational costs, but what do they do for a builder’s bottom line?
According to the Urban Land Institute’s report “Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2015,” the combined impact of millennials and aging boomers—all 160 million of them—will have a significant impact on the housing market for years to come. Find out what this means for builders.
Since unvented attics started appearing and getting into the code, building science thinking has changed so much. See how code challenges were overcome to allow proper use of vapor retarders across the country.
Whether you aim to simply meet code, achieve a specific certification level or go significantly beyond, there are some pratical steps you can take toward creating a high-performance building envelope.
Thermal insulation has been used in buildings all over the world for many decades. Yet every so often, even seasoned professionals face a difficult time explaining how it works. And frankly, the mechanisms involved are not that simple. Find out more about how insulation works in this article.
Add another selling point for new homes—homeowners consider them healthier than homes built before 2001, according to the Houzz 2014 Healthy Home Trends Study.
To build a house to the rigorous Passive House standards involves a large investment that may be challenging to many profit-minded home builders. The idea of lowering the home’s carbon footprint is certainly appealing to many homeowners, but the substantial upfront cost is a roadblock that may be tough to overcome. This article offers a few ideas for overcoming this roadblock and building a higher performing home.