Are your windows locked? We don’t tend to think of air leakage in the summer like we do in the wintertime. When it’s cold, we can feel the cold drafts wafting through the house. (more…)

Here’s a discussion that came up today on one of my projects. We were making a brick selection for the exterior of the house. The brick companies readily provide sample boards that have thin pieces of actual bricks, not just photos, for you to see. That’s very helpful, but the problem is that the cardboard sample boards do not have any mortar between the bricks. If there are sample boards with “mortar,” they use a synthetic mortar substitute because real mortar would break out on a board like this. It may or may not be the color of the mortar you will be using. Either way, the true, final color that your brick wall will produce is not readily apparent. (more…)

    Last week, at BookExpo America, I was discussing my book with a young woman and I mentioned that it concerned me how there is such hysteria and fanaticism surrounding anything touted as being green or environmentally friendly and often these things are not very “green” and maybe have negative environmental implications that are not readily appreciated. I pointed to compact fluorescent lightbulbs, known as CFL‘s, as an example. (more…)

        An even simpler way to think about how to situate parts of a house with regard to climate and weather is to imagine yourself standing outside on your property on a sunny, windy winter day. To stay warm, you would naturally turn away from the north wind and face the southern sun. You might even turn your collar up. By making this simple adjustment, you would be sheltering yourself from the wind and maximizing the solar heat gain from the sun. Well, that’s exactly what architects do for houses when they place the garage in the path of the prevailing wind and position the windows toward the sun. The house is responding to the climate in the same way you would. These ideas are the first steps in passive solar design. And best of all, there’s no added cost for any of this. By merely acknowledging and responding to the climate of the site, the house will live in harmony with the nature around it. (more…)

These days, it seems like everything anyone sells is energy efficient, green, or sustainable in some way. Those are the words plastered on the products we buy because without those claims, a product is virtually unsaleable in this climate (pardon the pun) of environmental zeal. This is a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say, but sometimes it’s a bad thing. The good thing is that energy efficiency can save you money and possibly the planet, if you buy into that hysteria. Even if you don’t conserving resources is simply a responsibility we all have. (more…)

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originally uploaded by edavid3001.

I was on an airplane from Los Angeles today and chatting with the fellow seated next to me about things to consider when designing and building a house. I told him that even if you were not designing a house from scratch, but simply buying a builder’s model home plan, there were avoidable mistakes you could sidestep. He nodded knowingly and said he had an example of one that he realized only too late. (more…)

      Houses built in northern climates should be designed to capture natural light, to brighten and warm the rooms used during daylight hours. Winters can be gloomy and light deprivation can cause a wintertime depression. By simply allowing as much daylight into the house as possible, a properly oriented house can relieve these symptoms and lower the consumption of electricity required to operate artificial lights.  (more…)

    Sustainable and Green are terms that are being tossed around more and more frequently, especially in the world of construction and home design. If you have a product to sell, labelling it “green” is the first consideration in your marketing plan. But just what do these terms really mean?

    Wikipedia defines Green Building as “the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources.” (more…)

Would you buy a suit that was a couple of sizes too small? Would you pick your new shoes from a rack of “standard” sizes and colors, even if none of them actually fit or the colors weren’t right? Of course not. So why is it that we are willing to pick out a house from a handful of “standard” plans offered by a builder or developer. (more…)