This month we were nominated for a JDR 2011 Industry Blogger Award — if you haven’t already, you can vote for Jetson Green through April 15 — and we’re working on some enhancements behind the scenes. The most popular article on Facebook last month was about a zero-waste home, while the most shared article on Twitter was about the Hudson Passive Project. Below you’ll find a topical gathering of coverage from March.
This home is officially the first Passive House in North Carolina. It’s also the first Passive House in the country built out of concrete, according to Chris Senior, certified Passive House consultant and owner of Anchorage Building Corp., the builder. Senior said his company was able to keep construction costs “surprisingly reasonable” by fashioning the entire exterior from concrete.
U.S. Sunlight this year introduced a new product in the form of a low-profile skylight with flexible tubing and a 14″ ceiling lens. Similar to the flat-glass Sun Tunnel by Velux, Skylight Tube ditches the dome-shaped roof lens for a flatter, square design. The new product was designed for simplicity and efficiency and can be installed in a couple hours by a professional or an afternoon by a DIYer (with the right tools).
This 2,600 square-foot home in Kansas City was built with five, used shipping containers from China and designed by owner Debbie Glassberg. Referred to as Home Contained, the project has a green roof, spray foam insulation, passive solar design, and geothermal heating. Watch this video below with Glassberg providing a tour of the place:
The small wind market is doing well these days with lots of new companies popping up all the time. Since 2007, Urban Green Energy, one of these newish companies, has been expanding and growing — their vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) has been installed in 48 countries. One of their most recent installations was broadcast to the world last month on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (pictured).
*Leave a comment below through the end of Friday, April 1, 2011, to be considered for a random giveaway of a voucher to receive a ProHome Soil Sensor System to be connected to an existing sprinkler system.
Depending on where you are on the Pyramid of Water Conservation, you may still have turf grass or an irrigation system, or both. And these things guzzle water like crazy through Spring and Summer. If you’re thinking about using less water and saving more money at the same time, perhaps UgMO Technologies — short for underground monitoring — could help out with their water-saving UgMO ProHome system.
