A quick, but interesting, little tidbit of information … in Haringey, a city in the UK, the city council hired a company to use a military-style plane outfitted with a thermal imaging to take pictures of every structure in the area.  They took the heat loss information from the pictures and created a color-coded map identifying the various levels of heat loss for each building.  As you can see from the image shot above, the dark red homes are really losing some heat.  By visiting the Haringey Interactive Heat Loss Map, you can scroll over each gray dot and get the address of that particular energy loser.  I’m not sure if the data has led to any improvements (there’s definitely a concern over privacy here in the U.S.), but it’s probably led to some interesting discussions: "Excuse me neighbor, did you know you’re a red house?  Well, I’m a blue house and I think I can help…"  Via CD + TechDirt. 

• Vehicle to Grid Technology – Power to the people: run your house on a Prius. 
• Fitter. Happier. Better. Greener.  Science shows sustainable design does more than help the Earth, it makes you feel better, too. 
• AlwaysOn Going Green 100 – a first annual list of the hottest private companies in greentech. 
• There’s a new trend in residential energy: being the first small wind turbine on the block. 
• Aspiring to be America’s greenest city, state commitment helps Sacramento rank No. 2 in energy efficient office space. 

PieceHomes is a new modern prefab offering by Davis Studio Architecture + Design, set to debut in about a week at Dwell on Design.  Notice the interesting tagline — "pH: for a balanced home."  Nice.  PieceHomes plans to distinguish itself among the pack by providing custom and standardized, modern, modular architecture that is green and affordable.  With a variety of home designs taking shape, pieceHomes will be available this fall and manufactured by XtremeHomes.  Take a gander at the website and some of the home designs.  I’m particularly intrigued by the Container House, 3×4, and Solar Passage (all pictured in this post).  Like many prefabs, pieceHomes also will be designed to incorporate solar panels, green roofs, and other environmental features that fit home site conditions.  It’ll be nice to see some of these renderings in real life. 

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As you may already know, Jetson Green is a proud media sponsor of West Coast Green, the first and largest residential green building expo and conference.  I’ve received word that West Coast Green is seeking volunteers to help staff this year’s conference, to be held at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on September 20th – 22nd. As a volunteer, you will provide crucial support enabling the success of the event. Volunteers also have the amazing opportunity to see over 250 exhibitors of the latest innovative building materials, hear from the 220 leaders and visionaries in green building, and experience how beautiful green can be firsthand by walking through the mkLotus show house by Michelle Kaufmann, celebrated architect of the Sunset Glidehouse.

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It looks like construction on the WIRED Livinghome began this morning and there’s a webcam documenting the process.  There’s an archive of stills at frequent intervals, so you can click over and view the entire process from the beginning (or every thing that’s been completed so far).  All the main parts are supposed to be complete by September 7, and we’ll be able to get a pretty good picture of what the final home will look like.  Also, if you’re interested in green prefab, the official WIRED LivingHome website, which fully launches on September 25, has some videos on deconstruction and factory-built homes. 

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