Is sustainable design a priority in your home building project?  Do you know how to achieve it? John Gower, residential designer, tours a building site and discusses some of the elements of sustainable design in this short video by Edward Homer. (You can view other great videos on Edward Homer’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/EcofilmsbyEHomer)

We’ve created a table that outlines some of the challenges we face in the era of climate change, along with practical ways to respond to these challenges. Can be downloaded and printed as an 11″ x 17″ poster or handout:   Creating the Resilient Home

So you’ve found a great piece of property and now you want to build a house. Before going any further you might ask yourself: how big a house do I really need? Well, it depends who you ask.

The building industry, which tries to set the trends and provides much of the new housing in this country, has a standard product (3 – 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, two car garage) that assumes that everyone has the same spatial needs and financial resources. Unfortunately, this marketing-oriented philosophy leaves increasing numbers of us out of the equation, forced to buy homes that are bigger and much more extravagant than we really desire or are able to afford. [Read more…]

So you’re thinking about doing some renovations to your older home, but have heard some real horror stories about wild cost overruns and jobs that have gone on forever. How can you help ensure that your project comes in on time and within budget, and doesn’t disrupt your lives? [Read more…]

Now that you are ready to build a house, how do you go about finding the plan which best suits your needs? When building a new home from scratch, your choice of a design is the single most important decision you will make. [Read more…]

How Radiant Heating Systems Work
Materials are made up of atoms in motions, as heat energy is absorbed by an object, the vibrational motion of its atoms increases. Temperature or heat is a measurement of the severity of this vibration motion. Now, you ask, what does this have to do with the heating system that I want to install in my house? Well? I’ll get to that, hold on. [Read more…]