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Book Review of The Northwest Green Home Primer

If you have picked up the NW EcoBuilding Guild’s Green Pages, then you should probably go and get your own copy of The Northwest Green Home Primer, by the Guild’s very own Kathleen O’Brien (first elected Board of Directors 1993) and her co-author, Kathleen Smith. Both Kathleens, of Bainbridge Island, WA, offer their own personal green building stories, along with dozens of other green building case studies from new construction, and remodeling, to affordable housing. All the case studies are local and offer practical tips for any Northwest project.

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What is a Green Home?

The vast majority of today’s green homes are visually indistinguishable from conventional homes. The difference is in the details. Green homes feature healthier indoor air quality, optimize energy and water efficiency, help promote a cleaner environment, and reduce our ecological footprint. Today, green homes include new construction, remodels, or even traditional homes. The vast majority of green homes are traditional stick-built homes, however, options also exist for natural building such as strawbale, rammed earth, super adobe, bamboo, insulated concrete forms, clay/straw wall systems, and structural insulated panel systems. However, some of these building styles are more prevalent in other geographic regions.

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The Impact of Reuse in the Construction Industry

Green building certification processes like Built Green™ and LEED™ reward projects that recycle large quantities of waste during demolition and construction. If proper arrangements are made, onsite recycling can be an easy task. Quantifying recycled waste can be even easier as it is determined almost entirely by the weight of material diverted. Since up to 95% of a structure may be recycled, that tonnage can add up quickly.

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Giving Remodeling the Green Light

There’s an increasing buzz around green building – and for good reason. There are many benefits to revamping your home using the tools of the green building trade, including financial savings, improved home health, upgraded appearance, and increased value. If you are considering a remodel, it’s worth taking a look at the benefits of remodeling green.

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A Best Practices Manual by Hammer & Hand

by Sam Hagerman, Hammer & Hand. In the spirit of collaboration we have recently made available our company’s Best Practices Manual — a guidebook of field-tested construction details, many shaped by our high performance building and Passive House construction experience.

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Trends in Quality, Sustainable Housing

How do you define home? For Ma & Pa Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie, home was four walls and a roof that protected them from the elements. However, today’s home is much more than that – it is a sanctuary, a place to build community, to work, to play, as well as a place to express who we are and the values by which we live. It is this last attribute that seems to be at the epicenter of today’s homebuyers shopping list. We are not talking about gingerbread window trims or turret shaped entries but rather how energy/water-efficient a home is as well as how easy it is to maintain – in an essence, how our homes impact the environment as well as our wallets and what that says about us as consumers.

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Sunlight Grows Farm Power near Seattle

Tani Creek Farm in the Pacific Northwest uses sunlight for more than just growing vegetables. In the misty hills of Bainbridge Island, across Puget Sound from Seattle, Washington, a 25-acre biodynamic farm uses solar power for all its agricultural needs such as irrigation, water movement (pumped from ponds to other uses) and food production, as well as for residential purposes. Jeff Collum of Sound Power, the electrical contractor who installed the 29-kilowatt system, explains that people are often shocked to hear that the Seattle area has 70 percent of the harvestable solar power of Los Angeles. Contrary to popular belief, solar power in the cloudy Pacific Northwest - where Bainbridge is located - is a viable energy alternative to fossil fuels. Only half joking, he says that in Germany they “hang PVs on everything in the sun that doesn’t move” and points out that Germany’s solar resource – except for a very small area - is inferior to the marine Pacific Northwest.

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Home Is Where the Health Is

Beneath the veneer of many newly crafted homes and crusty old dwellings, hidden dangers often lurk, undetected, in the folds of our daily lives, including icky biological stuff such as mold and dust mites and scary chemicals like invisible radon gas, volatile organic compounds, and formaldehyde. Homeowners Bryan and Tricia Smith uncovered such villains after a remodeling project in their former Yakima, Wash., home. It prompted a voyage of discovery into the world of materials, systems, and diet -- and the creation of a new home built “green” from the ground up.

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