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Home buyers in Seattle will be the first in the nation with the ability to obtain a “carbon-neutral mortgage” from local real estate lenders. Under such programs, the lender agrees to make a donation to offset the greenhouse gas the new home will generate in the first year.
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Any product junkie knows many innovative developments happen overseas. The international community's willingness to experiment with cutting-edge materials has yielded architectural favorites such as fiber-cement siding, wood-resin exterior panels, and cellulose-wood laminated cladding.
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Air conditioning a house is the costliest part of owning it. Though this has always been the case, rising energy costs mean that an efficient system is more important than ever.
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Washington, D.C., is known more for filibusters and less for innovative design. For one rain-soaked week last fall, however, innovation was the theme when 18 university teams converged on the city for the Solar Decathlon, a biennial event in which students compete to see who can design, build, and...
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By now familiar to most builders, SIPs are made from expanded polystyrene (EPS) or polyisocyanurate rigid foam insulation sandwiched between two structural sheets of oriented strand board. About 12,000 homes were built with SIPs in 2002, according to the Gig Harbor, Wash.-based Structural Insulated...
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In its Building Material Emissions Study,. the waste board concluded that recycled-content building products and traditional ones, on average, performed about the same in terms of indoor air pollution.
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An increasing number of builders and architects consider sprayed foam insulation to be a superior product.
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Research house may offer realistic applications for green practices.
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Paul and Peggy Dunckers' residence in Wilson, Wyo., is the kind of house you might expect a pair of architects to design for themselves: hip, budget-minded, energy efficient. The 1,900-square-foot farmhouse has exposed, split-faced concrete blocks, radiant heated concrete floors, geothermal heat...