Tag: Big Steps In Building

But the builders and the realtors are fighting sprinkler laws across the country.

These proposed tiny house building codes will mean safer tiny houses.

All of the benefits of a sprinkler system without all the problems.

Advanced framing and engineered joists may use less wood and leave more room to insulate, but they will burn a lot faster.

Nest, the inventors of the smarter thermostat, turn their attention to the smoke detector and get it right.

It's time to rethink our practice of adding dangerous chemicals to combustible plastics and putting them in our houses.

Architect Manit Rastogi uses stepwells and screens, technologies that are thousands of years old

Jeanne Gang's tower is lovely to look at but really, we shouldn't build buildings with radiator fins any more.

We are relying on technology that is better as a kitchen appliance than a life saver

There are some very simple moves one can make to reduce the amount of energy a house uses, that any builder in America could do without adding much to the cost of a house. Builders ignore orientation, window placement

There are a lot of reasons that architects design condos with floor to ceiling glass; people like views and they can look very elegant in the right hands. But the main reason they do it is cost;

There is a strange debate going on at Green Building Advisor, where a writer thinks "home buyers have been "brainwashed" into thinking only about R-values, as energy codes give short shrift to the

In our Big Steps in Building series, I advocated for sprinklers in every housing unit, not just for fire safety, but so that we could also get rid of all those flame retardants that are building

Julia Gersovitz of Montreal's FGMAA Architects made the point: Buildings used to look like alphabets, to minimize the distance to an exterior wall and maximize natural light and ventilation. We have all seen many Cs, Os and a few Es (I forgot to draw

It really isn't that hard; every architect and builder knows exactly what they have to do to cut greenhouse gases significantly. People just don't want to pay the price, either in cash or in lifestyle changes. Here are just a

A few months ago TreeHugger reported on a silly study (That 70s Show: Developers Still Don't Know How To Make a Building Green) from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association (abbreviated as NAIOP, don't ask why)

Many people are screaming that the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) doesn't go far enough; when architects, builders and building code officials get through it, there will be a lot of screaming that it

The solar power subsidy is an equal opportunity employer; according to Brian's post, "any solar system you purchase this year is 30% percent off, thanks to the government (or at least, you'll get a tax rebate for that much). Solar powered water heaters