In Fraser, Colorado, there’s a new net-zero energy house that was designed with impressive active and passive building technologies. It’s grid-tied and all-electric, using no fossil fuels thanks to the solar photovoltaics and evacuated tube solar thermal array. But the house isn’t the only thing powered by the sun. The 17-kW array also powers two all-electric plug-in vehicles.
Earth Bound Homes is involved with several ultra-green homes and this one in California deserves a mention. It was designed by Bill Leddy, LMS Architects, and built by Earth Bound Homes for David and Stephania Kaneda, receiving a Green Point Rated score of 268 and LEED Platinum certification.
Readers noticed the omission of one particular project in our year-end compilation of 15 shipping container projects from 2010. If you’ve seen TRON: Legacy, you know Sam Flynn (played by Garrett Hedlund) has a cool shipping container house in the movie. After some investigation, it turns out that a temporary container structure was built as a set on the shore of South Vancouver and later torn down.
A few days after Christmas, the EPA issued updated guidance on how to clean up a broken compact fluorescent lamp (“CFL”) bulb. CFLs are made with a small amount of mercury that can be released as vapor when broken. That vapor is a health risk, although the EPA still encourages the use of CFLs to save energy and reduce GHG emissions. Here’s an outline of the EPA’s CFL cleanup guidance:
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As with last year, green building consultant Jerry Yudelson published a top-ten list of green building trends for the next year. Yudelson explains that green building is growing in popularity across the globe — that “more people are going green each year, and there’s nothing on the horizon that will stop this trend.“ I’ve hand-picked some of Yudelson’s trends that will apply in the residential sector below:
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Project Profiles
