Sustainable building practices / Discussions

...building a prefabricated building that is more energy efficient than a similar counter part that is less efficient would take longer to build? The difference in the time it would take to build an energy efficient Prefab Home compared to a code-built less efficient home would be negligable. Any company you want to work ...

...building? That will help you work through the decision of whether to restore your house or take it down and rebuild. If you decide to renovate and do an energy efficiency retrofit, here are a few pages to read, starting with how to improve the efficiency of an old stone farm house. Sometimes there is no feasible or aff...

...building. I am not saying don't do it, but rather go into it knowing what you are going to get from it. Hydronic radiant floors have dedicated boilers that are sized for the space they are expected to heat, but you just won't get that same output from a domestic water heater. With that said - the water heater is not a ...

Hello, I have a craftsmen home build in 1929. The foundation is stone. When I bought the house 8 years ago it had some moisture in the walls and small streams of water and puddling when the h20 table was very high. Two years ago I had a water management system and two sub pumps installed (crushed stone, interior pipe i...

...buildings should be as airtight as possible so you can control the air quality with your ventilation system. And all buildings should have some control layer to manage water vapor based on climate norms for their particular region. That would be an interior vapor barrier in very cold climates, an exterior vapor barrier...

...building a foundation on a slope, piers (screw piles or helical piles) are one way but not generally our favorite if it can be avoided. Building on piers leaves one additional surface of the building exposed to air temperatures, so seasonally that will increase the energy demand and cost through heating and cooling. Fr...