We like to keep up with everything that’s going on in the world of LEED certification here at Trilogy Partners, so we found this news to be really cool. Students studying architecture at Tulane University, along with their professors, have built the first LEED-certified residential project for a first-time home buyer in New Orleans.

According to Editor at Large, this project was a collaboration between URBANbuild, a design-build program at Tulane University in which students take part in, designing and constructing prototypical homes in neighborhoods throughout New Orleans, and the Neighborhood Housing Services.

The home’s owner, Tami Hills, was thrilled to receive a certificate honoring her home’s energy-efficient design. She noted having insulation as one of her favorite aspects of her home because for the first time since she began living in New Orleans, she is “warm in the winter and cool in the summer.”

The porch of Tami Hills' LEED-certified home in New Orleans.

Additional green features of this LEED-certified home include low-E windows, Energy Star electrical features, an energy-saving air conditioner, and sustainable materials such as bamboo flooring and zero-VOC interior paint.

We think this is awesome news for the LEED program! You can learn more about this project at Editor at Large.

Photo credit: Editoratlarge.com.

As more homeowners consider ways to reduce their impact on the environment, more and more are choosing sustainable and green building methods. It’s really great that so many people are becoming more environmentally conscious, but according to Buildipedia.com, if you want to make sure the final product is a quality green build, you’ll want to make sure your project is certified through a third-party rating system.

The most popular green rating system here in the U.S., and one that you here us at Trilogy Partners talk about a lot is the LEED for Homes system from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Another program, the National Green Building Standard (NGBS), was created by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the International Code Council (ICC). Today we’re going to share a few of the differences between the two programs with you.

  • LEED for Homes requires a LEED for Homes provider and a Green Rater for each project. The NGBS’ third-party verification depends on which performance path the homeowner chooses to follow.
  • LEED for Homes requires preliminary and final certification of each project, including a preliminary certification and review by the Provider, a preliminary inspection by the Green Rater (typically done before drywall installation), final inspection and testing  by the Green Rater, and a final certification by the Provider.
  • The NGBS’ performance path consists of various inspections and testing similar to that of the EPA Energy Star program. This includes testing and inspecting individual components, such as grading the insulation installation. All testing is performed by NAHB-approved verifiers.

You can learn more about LEED for Homes and the NGBS, as well as the similarities and other differences between the two programs, at Buildipedia.com.

Photo credits: Ecohomemagazine.com and Builderonline.com.

Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

USA TODAY

Just how tough is the passive house standard that’s starting to catch on in the United States? I put my own new green house to the test.

My house, nearing completion in Falls Church, Va., wasn’t designed to meet the rigorous passive standard, which focuses solely on energy efficiency, but rather the top rating of a more general program by the U.S. Green Building Council. Yet it has many of the same features of certified passive homes, so I figured: why not try?

After all, my project has high-performance windows by Serious Mate rials, a well-insulated and sealed exterior (we used structural in sulated panels or SIPS) and ultra-efficient appliances and lighting (only LEDs and compact fluorescent lamps.) Really, how hard could it be?

John Semmelhack, a passive house expert in Charlottesville, Va., who runs the Think Little consul ting firm and advised on how to make a Waldorf school meet the passive standard, agreed to do a preliminary analysis of my project for this story. I anxiously awaited his results.

He let me down gently. “While the house is going to be a very energy efficient house, it’s not going to meet the Passive House standard,” he wrote in an e-mail that reported his findings. He explained them in a phone interview.

“The biggest problem by far is your windows,” he said. My house simply has too many of them, and the large south-facing windows don’t capture enough solar energy because of their glazing and less-than-optimal siting. (To get the perfect southern angle, the house would have needed to sit diagnally on the lot, which would look odd.)

Windows absorb more solar power if the glass has a high “solar heat gain coefficient” or SHGC. But since we have a shady lot and the U.S. government’s Energy Star program doesn’t recommend high SHGC windows for the Mid-Atlantic region, we didn’t request such glazing.

The second biggest issue, Semmelhack said, is the home’s geometry. It’s not a simple cube. My L-shaped home opens to a south-facing courtyard, so it’s more spread out than a colonial or a foursquare, which is an easier shape to make energy efficient. Its top floor also overhangs the main level in both the front and back, which looks cool but creates potential thermal breaks.

Semmelhack said the home’s foundation, walls and windows could also have benefited from a bit more insulation, but he said we didn’t miss the mark by much.

He said the Mid-Atlantic is a tricky place to do a passive home, because “we get a little bit of Maine and a little bit of Florida.” Homes certified by the Passive House Institute US, a private Illinois-based group, need to have annual heating or cooling loads be low 4,750 British thermal units per square foot of interior finished space, which is about 10 times less than many regular new homes.

Semmelhack figured my heating load was about twice the passive standard while my cooling load was about 30% higher. My home’s overall energy use was about 20% higher than the standard’s maximum of 38,000 Btu per square foot of interior finished space per year. He said we could opt for a slightly more efficient Rinnai tank less water heater, but the conventional Carrier Infinity heating and cooling system we selected is just fine. “It’s about as good as you can get,” he said, noting its 95% efficiency rating.

The passive standard also requires homes be virtually air tight, limiting the air changes per hour (at 50 pascals) to 0.60, which is a fraction of what the Energy Star program al lows.

I don’t know yet how well my house will fare on this measure, because we haven’t done our final blower door test. But my builder, Arjay West of West Properties, did preliminary checks before enclosing the walls in drywall and tried to address any thermal breaks. Since my house isn’t a simple cube, though, sealing it is more of a challenge. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Source: USA Today
By Jerry Yudelson Yudelson Associates –  More people are going green each year, and there is nothing that will stop this trend. In fact, it is accelerating each year. As a result, we expect to see considerable interest in green products that promote water conservation and energy efficiency, including fixtures and appliances, as well as energy-efficient windows and doors, certified wood products (either FSC or SFI), and recycled-content materials.Many individual homes and businesses are investing in new resource-efficient technologies and green operational practices, and cities are developing certification systems to reward this behavior. My consulting company, Yudelson Associates, is a good example. In December 2010, we were certified by the city of Tucson, Az., as a green business because of our operational practices, including solar electric and thermal systems, water conserving fixtures and rainwater harvesting, waste recycling, and environmentally preferable purchasing. These are all measures that you will begin to see adopted in greater numbers by many of the end-users served by you and your direct customers.

Let’s take a look in more detail at where some of the green building trends are headed.

1. Worldwide, the green building movement will continue to accelerate, as more countries begin to create their own green building incentives and develop their own green building councils. Inside the U.S., we expect to see an expanding roster of green product certifications, each aiming to influence the consumer’s choices. Dealers will need to stay on top of these product choices, to find which are favored by their customers.

2. Green building in the commercial sector will rebound in 2011, as measured by the new LEED project registrations. The dramatic slowdown in new construction of commercial real estate was not offset by other sectors, such as government, so the growth rate of new green building projects fell dramatically in 2010. However, we expect a continued upward movement of new green buildings, albeit at a slower pace, as green continues to take market share.

3. Recent announcements of the federal government’s commitment to a minimum of LEED Gold for all new federal projects and major renovations of public buildings highlight the Obama Administration’s continued focus on green technologies. At the state and local level, other layers of government show no signs of “green fatigue.” In fact, new green building mandates and incentives continue to grow. This means more product sales, as commitments become action.

4. The focus of the green building industry will continue its switch from new buildings to greening existing buildings. The fastest growing LEED rating system in 2009 and 2010 was the LEED for Existing Buildings program-and I expect this trend to continue in 2011. Affordable energy and water conservation devices will accelerate this trend, and should lead to greater sales of such devices.

5. Blue will become the new green, especially in arid areas of the West, Southwest and Southeast. Awareness of the coming global crisis in fresh water supply will continue to grow, inducing building designers, owners, and managers-as well as consumers-to take further steps to reduce water consumption and increase sustainability. This will be accomplished through the use of more conservation-oriented fixtures, rainwater recovery systems, and innovative new water technologies. Many new packaged systems are coming to market, and these could provide good opportunities for dealers and distributors in water-short regions.

6. Zero-net-energy designs for new buildings will become increasingly commonplace in both residential and commercial sectors, as LEED and ENERGY STAR ratings become too common to confer competitive advantage. From a product standpoint, you may start to see demands for such things as triple-pane windows and better building monitoring and control systems.

7. Performance disclosure will be the fastest emerging trend, highlighted by new requirements in California and cities such as Austin, Tx.; Seattle, Wa., and Washington, D.C. In these areas, commercial building owners will be required to disclose actual building performance to all new tenants and buyers, to comply with new requirements.

8. Certified Green Schools will grow rapidly as part the LEED System. This trend will accelerate as understanding of the health and educational benefits of green schools grows. By mid-year 2010, green schools represented nearly 40% of all new LEED projects in the U.S. We’ll also see energy-efficiency retrofits come into vogue as a way to green existing schools, so be on the lookout for what local energy managers for school districts are saying and doing.

9. Local and state governments will step up their mandates for green buildings, for both themselves and the private sector. In 2011, I expect to see at least 20 major new cities with commercial-sector green building mandates. The desire to reduce carbon emissions by going green will lead more government agencies to require green buildings.

10. Solar power use in buildings will continue to grow. This trend will be enhanced by municipal utilities trying to comply with state-level renewable power standards for 2015 and 2020. Third-party financing partnerships will continue to grow and provide capital for large rooftop solar systems, such as on warehouses. However, we may very well see a slowing of large solar and wind systems, as federal grant support, in lieu of tax credits, is phased out. In the building products area, look for new forms of solar roofing systems that allow a homeowner or building owner to do their own retrofits at minimal extra cost.

11. The development of “software as a service” using the Internet “cloud” will rely on a whole new generation of smart meters, monitoring devices, and intelligent controls. Energy-monitoring services such as Google “Power Meter” will lead consumers, business, and industry to start investing in more home and building electronics.

– Jerry Yudelson is an engineer and business consultant with nearly 15 years experience in green building. Since 2005, he has written 12 books on green building, green products, green development, and water conservation. His most recent book, Dry Run: Preventing the Next Urban Crisis,  showcases business opportunities in water efficiency. His firm, Yudelson Associates, provides green marketing, green building, and sustainability consulting services nationally to a wide variety of private sector clients. He can be contacted at jerry@greenbuildconsult.com.

From www.building-products.com

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) recently completed a survey study to determine how new homes will shape up over the next several years. The study, presented annually at the NAHB International Builders’ Show, surveyed builders on consumer preferences and revealed that Americans have changed their views of what they would like to see in their next home.

68 percent of builder surveyed suggest that homes will include more green products, features, and technology such as low-E windows; engineered wood beams, joists or tresses; water-efficient features like dual-flush toilets and low-flow faucets; and EnergyStar rating for the whole house by 2015.

Additionally, the study predicts that home sizes will decrease. To save on square footage, homeowners are eliminating spaces like living rooms, foyers, and dining rooms. However, about 54 percent of builders reported that family room size is likely to increase by 2015, according to the NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research, Rose Quint.

You can learn more about the housing trends that are expected to be present by 2015 on the NAHB website, or you can check out the full study at Housingeconomics.com.

Photo credit: Nahb.org.

You may recall that a few days ago we told you that the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) named Denver the “greenest” city in the U.S. Just a few days ago, the USGBC released the list of the “Top 10 States for LEED Green Buildings,” and we are excited to see that Colorado placed in the top 10!

The USGBC based the list of the top 10 states for LEED certified buildings per capita on information collected from the 2010 U.S. Census, according to a USGBC press release. Scot Horst, the USGBC senior vice president of LEED, said “Using per capita, versus the more traditional numbers of projects, or pure square footage, is a reminder to all of us that the people who live and work, learn and play in buildings should be what we care about the most. 2010 was a difficult year for most of the building industry, but in many areas, the hunger for sustainable development kept the markets moving.”

The top LEED states per capita, including the District of Columbia, are as follows:

Colorado is one of the top 10 states for LEED certified buildings!

  • District of Columbia
  • Nevada
  • New Mexico
  • New Hampshire
  • Oregon
  • South Carolina
  • Washington
  • Illinois
  • Arkansas
  • Colorado
  • Minnesota

Here at Trilogy Partners, we’re proud to do our part in creating LEED certified, sustainable, green homes. We think it’s awesome that Colorado placed in the top 10, and we look forward to continue building more LEED certified homes!

Photo credit: U.S. Green Building Council Colorado Chapter.

Our neighbors in Denver have something to celebrate – the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has named Denver the “greenest” city in the U.S. According to Editor at Large, almost 30 projects in Denver have achieved LEED green building certification since last year, and two of those projects attained the highest LEED rating, LEED Platinum.

Deb Kleinman, the executive director of the Colorado Chapter of the USGBC said “Colorado’s culture of sustainability and conservation are a part of its DNA; individual cities… clearly understand the importance of green building as a part of that culture.”

Denver was recently named the "greenest" city in the U.S. by the USGBC.

There are many noteworthy LEED certified buildings in the Denver area, including the Wells Fargo Center, the Colorado Convention Center, and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment Building. Scot Horst, senior vice president of LEED USGBC, said “The LEED green building program sets the benchmark for what is possible with high-performing buildings. Denver has been a pioneer in the green building efforts, setting examples and showcasing new innovation with its many LEED projects.”

We here at Trilogy Partners think it’s great that our neighbors in Denver are doing their part to create green and sustainable structures. Since Denver has been named the “greenest” city in America, we think Colorado could have the potential to become the “greenest state” in the country!

Photo credit: Denver-travel-services.com.

Straw

Ooh-arr, straw appears to be the sustainable material of choice at this year’s Ecobuild. The natural material features in board form in the latest home design from eco-architect Bill Dunster, in prefabricated panels in a turnkey retail building from Modcell and there is even a series of straw bale workshops for those planning to build homes, schools and offices from the readily available agricultural by-product.

Specifier

For the StramitZED house (right), Dunster has teamed up with straw board manufacturer Stramit to produce an eco-house in two-, three- or four-bedroom configurations, all of which meet the latest Lifetime Homes and London Housing Design Guide standards. Its design is based on Dunster’s code level 6, RuralZED development at Upton in Northampton. The homes are assembled from cassettes of strawboard combined with Welsh timber and recycled newspaper insulation.

Hot water and electricity are generated by solar photovoltaic and solar thermal panels, with surplus electricity sold to the grid. The homes costs upward of £135,000, a figure claimed to be £20,000 less than the normal cost of constructing a code level 6 house.

Straw bales are at the heart of Modcell’s retail solution too. This uses prefabricated panels (left) made near the costruction site, in a leased workspace or barn. The panels are assembled from untreated, locally sourced straw set into a panel frame assembled from sustainably sourced timber, which is then plastered with a protective lime render. The turnkey solution is claimed to save energy, money, carbon emissions and build times.

For those that want their straw raw and not pre-assembled, there will be plenty of opportunities to learn all about both load bearing and non-load bearing straw bale construction techniques at the straw bale workshops, which take place twice daily at Ecobuild – for further details and timing check out www.ecobuild.co.uk.

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Phase change materials

If straw is too rustic and high-tech is more your thing, then check out the various phase change materials (or PCMs in techie-speak) at this year’s show. A good starting point is the Cool Workspace, which is one of the interactive attractions on the exhibition floor. Sponsored by Capita Symonds, the attraction has been designed to showcase how cutting edge materials and technologies can be used to create a more sustainable workplace.

PCMs are just one of the technologies on show. The advantage of these materials is that they can be used to store both heating and cooling energy. In the Cool Workspace, PCMs are embedded in the walls and ceiling tiles where they will absorb heat to help keep the workspace cool and reduce the need for air conditioning.

Specifier

If you want to know more about the technology visit both the BASF and DuPont stands.

BASF’s Micronal PCM has been incorporated into the Racus ceiling tile system for both new build and retrofit applications. Developed by Datum Phase Change, the tiles feature microcapsules of a special wax developed to store latent heat as it absorbs heat during the day, changing from a solid to liquid – . At night, when the temperature drops, the wax gives out heat and returns to being solid. The tile system has been used in the Victorian terrace refurbishment project at BRE in Watford.

DuPont’s phase change offering is called Energain. It is available in lightweight panels developed to enable thermal mass to be added to lightweight structures. The company claims that using the material can reduce indoor temperature peaks by up to 7ºC, optimising comfort and decreasing air conditioning costs.

Sustainable towers

With the world’s population becoming increasingly urbanised, the need for a fast, economic, high-rise, sustainable solution is becoming ever more urgent. One solution could be to build upwards using timber. As part of the fringe session, Advantage Austria is presenting a case study of a modular high-rise timber construction system designed for energy-generating buildings of up to 20 stories. Not sure about timber high-rise? Hear the discussion at South Gallery 10 at 12.30 on Wednesday 2 March.

Specifier

The results of a student competition to design sustainable towers located in the Greenwich South district of Lower Manhattan, New York will also be announced at the show. The design must encompass Isover Multi-Comfort principles, which are based on Passivhaus ideas of high levels of energy efficiency and comfort for the occupants. Wolfgang Feist, founder of the Passivaus concept and the Passivhaus Institut in Germany, will judge the competition and will attend the award ceremony on Isover’s stand N260, where the winners will be announced at 3pm on 2 March. See below for the shortlisted designs.

Shortlisted designs

Manhattan Sky Podium: a design which aims to connect Greenwich South with its surroundings through a series of elevated pedestrian routes which meet to form a significant green podium in the sky.

Social Tower Experiment: a tower designed to foster vibrant communities and social interaction at height.

The Green Ramp: a design which aims to integrate Lower Manhattan’s green spaces into the city fabric with a building that forms a ramp from Battery Park to theGreenwich South site, culminating in a Passivhaus skyscraper.

Solar Slice: a tapered tower that evolved through consideration of New York’s sun paths, it respects the solar rights of the existing 88 Greenwich Street tower to the north of the site by carving a huge slice out of its mass.

Green Canyons: a prototype to counter the depleting quality of life in vertical urban sprawl.

Green Tower: a design which takes into consideration the forms of surrounding towers and icons such as the Statue of Liberty.

Windgate (below): a tower which aims to make maximum use of wind energy while also utilising the building design to form a new gateway into Manhattan.

windgate2

Vertical Sunspace Tower: taking inspiration from the Denby Dale Passivhaus, this design features a series of stacked, south facing sunspaces to maximise passive solar gain, daylight penetration and to create social spaces at height in the city.

The three winning UK teams will receive cash prizes of up to £1,000 and will go on to compete in the seventh international final, which takes place from 18-21 May 2011 in Prague and features a top prize of €1,500 (£1,263).

Wolfgang Feist will also be participating in two fringe sessions taking place on 1 March from 4pm to 5pm (North Gallery Room 9) and 2 March from 4pm to 5pm (North Gallery 6 & 7). The sessions will provide an insight into the Passivhaus and Isover Multi-Comfort House concepts.

Bees and biodiversity

bee

With wild bee populations facing a growing number of threats including pests and diseases such as the varroa mite as well as a growing lack of wild flowers to provide food and habitat, is it time for the urban beekeeper to come to the rescue? A small back garden or access to a rooftop is all that is needed to keep bees. What’s more, there is a rich variety of plants in urban gardens, parks, railway sidings and tree-lined roads, all of which can be turned into delicious honey by our pollen and nectar eating friends.

The idea is not as crazy as it first sounds – probably the most exclusive address for bees anywhere in the world is the roof of upmarket grocers Fortnum & Mason in London’s Piccadilly. Even the beehives have been given a distinct architectural style and some rather elegant gold details (www.fortnumandmason.com/fortnumbees.aspx).

Honey bees rely on a diverse range of garden and urban flowers for their diet, which means it is important to create an environment in the city that not only safeguards existing wildlife but also encourages further diversity and food for bees. Helping designers and planners incorporate biodiversity and meet new regulations is just one of the topics in the Cityscape programme, along with a biodiversity surgery.

For further details and timings, check out the Cityscape area on the Ecobuild website www.ecobuild.co.uk.Alison Benjamin, co-founder of Urban Bees, will be offering top tips for potential urban beekeepers on Wednesday 2 March, in Cityscape theatre two, at 11am.

Sustainable materials

In addition to the hundreds of products already made from recycled materials that are on display at Ecobuild, Kingston University will be looking for the construction industry to use sustainable materials seen in other sectors but little used in design and construction.

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Rematerialise, a library of 1,200 samples of sustainable materials from 15 countries, is being launched by Kingston University. The materials have been selected to provide an environmentally responsible alternative to more resource-hungry materials and include post-consumer and post-industrial waste streams, scrap and refuse otherwise destined for landfill. The library holds information on a material’s recycled content and its sustainable attributes along with technical data and examples of current applications for each material. The database was recently used to advise retailer Marks & Spencer on the use of appropriate sustainable materials for its new headquarters.

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Part of the collection – including finished products manufactured from sustainable materials – will be showcased at Ecobuild to inspire further collaboration with industry and to bring to designers’ attention to sustainable materials not yet used in construction.

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by Andy Pearson.
On January 18, 2011, in Observations, by Bob Borson – What is creativity? That was the question presented to a group of us who participate in a event where we are write on the same topic. It is an interesting exercise and one that I take part of quite frequently. So what is creativity? That is a leading question simply because creativity can manifest itself in many forms. Writing this blog 3 or 4 times a week takes an obscene amount of creativity if I do say so myself. In an effort to help define what creative can define, let’s consider some synonyms:

 cleverness   ingenuity   originality   imaginativeness

 Who doesn’t have these traits in some form or another? When I was younger, being “creative” simply meant you were artistic and that you used your creativity to produce items of visual merit. I don’t feel that way anymore – not since I met my wife Michelle – the resident Borson household genius with the masters degree in Mathematics. I am constantly amazed by how smart she is and how her brain processes information. I’m not going to say she is always right but it is hard for me to win an argument against her. My debating technique has more to do with misdirection and confusion but she can rationally and logically peel away what I am saying and befuddle me. Truth be told, that’s one of the reasons why I married her, because I love how she thinks.

I started thinking that creativity has more to do with how a person thinks, views, and processes information rather than their ability to draw or paint well. As a result I think some of the most creative people are scientists – people who don’t generally come to mind when the topic of creativity comes up. These are people who conceive of the unthinkable and envision the unknowable. People like Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, and Robert Oppenheimer, among many, many others. If you are unfamiliar of these men and what they did, take some time and look them up on Wikipedia. If all you know is their work on the Manhattan project, you are considering only a small part of their story. Besides developing concepts that made things like the atom and hydrogen bomb a reality, these people were visionary thinkers.

But you don’t have to be a genius level intellect to have demonstrate creativity. Sometimes it’s about being clever and noticing what’s around you and realizing that you can do something with what you see. Like Velcro.

Close Up Of Velcro

Most people have heard the story about how Velcro came to exist. The idea for Velcro is credited to a Swiss engineer, George de Mestral … in 1941. Apparently the idea came to him one day after taking his dog for a walk and saw all the burs that were sticking to his pet’s fur. He examined them under a microscope and noticed that the burs were made up of hundreds of hooks that were catching on anything that had a loop. Despite not being taken seriously, Mestral continued to develop the idea for Velcro. In the end, it took over 10 years before he was able to create a mechanized process that could recreate the hook and loop system he saw under his microscope years prior.

How about a composer how couldn’t hear? Ludwig can Beethoven was born December 17, 1770 and started losing his hearing in 1796 when he was 26 years old. He lived and continued to compose music for until his death in 1827 having decided that despite his profound hearing loss, he would continue living for and through his art. At the premiere of one of his most recognizable and famous pieces, the Ninth Symphony, he actually had to turn around after conducting the performance to see if people were clapping or not. For someone as interested in music as I am, I can’t convey how unbelieveable that is to me.

Creativity surrounds all of us everyday and there are no uncreative people. How people interact with their world shapes their experience – positively and negatively – but it is unique to their own doing.

Source: LifeAsAnArchitect

 

 

While conjuring up comfort in the home seems like a basic principle, it’s a far more complex process for architect & remodeling guru Sarah Susanka, who believes that comfort can significantly influence the sustainability of your personal abode. With her mantra of “build better, not bigger,” Susanka promotes quality over quantity whenremodeling a home. Through transforming your living space into a more beautiful and comfortable environment, Susanka says that any home’s occupants will automatically take better care of their space in a more sustainable way. We sat down with Susanka to get the low-down on how to do more with less when revamping your space.

TIP 1 – Re-evaluate the Space You’re Working With

Remodeling is often associated with building an addition onto a home. However, Susanka is a strong advocate of re-evaluating the space that your home already contains and working within that original floor plan whenever possible. As she says, it’s important to ask yourself how you can make your existing house more tailored to the way you live. Instead of jumping ahead and planning a structural addition without any thorough thought, take a moment to consider whether or not you could work within the space you already have available. Ask yourself these questions: Do you really need more space? How much space do you need to be comfortable in your home? Can you borrow from the adjacent space to conjure the extra square footage you need? Then, as a last resort, consider a bump out or a small addition.

Unfortunately, most people start at the last resort instead of first weighing the other more economical and quality-generating options. Remodeling can be a difficult and often stressful project, so if you doubt anything along the way, look into hiring a professional to assist in the process. As Susanka says, “When we are having surgery, we normally don’t do it ourselves. Remodeling your home is one of the most expensive investments of a lifetime so we want it done well.” If you are in the market for a pro that understands Susanka’s philosophy on renovation, check out her Home Professional Directory for an expert in your area.


TIP 2 – Get an Energy Audit

When you start engaging in a remodeling project, one of the first things to check off the list is an energy audit. This helps you identify some of the most cost effective ways to make your home more sustainable, and those shifts can easily be incorporated into the changes throughout the rest of the renovation process.

Susanka tells Inhabitat that 20% of carbon emissions come from existing housing stock. By incorporating energy audits into the renovation process, not only will you end up with economical savings, but you will also contribute to the larger home emissions issue. This will help make your home easier to maintain as well as reduce your carbon footprint. It’s a win-win situation for both you and the environment!

TIP 3 – Invest in Quality Over Quantity

When you get home and enter a space that exudes quality and character, you automatically feel more at home. On the other hand, if you go overboard with quantity because it’s the knee-jerk response to generate change, you end up with a lot of uninspiring stuff. What Susanka reiterates throughout her books is the importance of utilizing the space you have to its highest potential. By creating a room that’s comfortable to be in, we are motivated to care for and sustain its beauty. Instead of tossing dollars around to quantify space, use your budget to induce quality elements that address your particular needs and aesthetics.

Ask yourself what will add more of your own personality into your space. What colors, shapes, or artwork do you enjoy looking at? Which rooms do you spend the majority of your time in? Do you have good heating and cooling systems that maintain a comfortable atmosphere in your home? These thought-generating questions will help you determine the best ways to approach the concept of quality over quantity.

TIP 4 – Use Lighting to Amplify Perspective

The way you introduce light into a space can have an enormous effect on an environment, hugely improving its quality and character. Susanka can’t say enough about how reflective surfaces can influence rooms throughout your abode. Reflective surfaces help bounce light around, augmenting the presence of natural light within a space.

One less obvious way to do this is by adding a built-in bookshelf near a window. The shelving edges act as reflective surfaces, bouncing extra light into the room.

Another option is to place a window adjacent to a perpendicular wall, instead of in its typical central location; that wall then becomes a reflective surface as well. Finally, placing soffits above windows can help transfer light into a room. All of these alternative lighting sources help with the ambiance and feel of a space.

TIP 5 – Enhance Your Space With Color

The way the light falls on different colors can completely transform a room. Determine the most important wall in each room — the place to which you want to draw peoples’ attention — and paint it to your heart’s desire.

This is the point in remodeling that can allow for personal freedom of expression in your home. Susanka points out that there’s no need to be shy in this process; be creative and experiment with a variety of colors to sense how they each make you feel in the space. Paint large pieces of paper in all the colors you could imagine and even all the colors that you’d never expect to use. You might just find that the brightest or most unexpected shade fits perfectly on your favorite wall.

Images from Sarah Susanka and Mark Vassallo’s book, Not So Big Remodeling, published by Taunton Press in 2009; by photographer Randy O’Rourke.

Green Remodeler – Sarah Susanka

Sarah Susanka, FAIA, is the leader of a movement that is redefining the American home and lifestyle. Through her “build better, not bigger” approach to residential design she has demonstrated that the sense of “home” we seek has to do with quality, not quantity.  A thought leader and acclaimed architect, Susanka is the best-selling author of nine books that collectively weave together home and life design, revealing that a “Not So Big” attitude serves not only architectural aims, but life goals as well.  Her books have sold well over one million copies.  Susanka’s most recent book, More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home, was released in February, 2010.  Join her online community at www.notsobig.com.

Article taken from Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World – http://inhabitat.com
URL to article: http://inhabitat.com/5-tips-for-a-green-home-remodel-from-eco-architect-sarah-susanka/

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