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A look at NAHB’s “Recommended Code Amendments”

In a recent email sent to NAHB members, I couldn’t help but click on the piece entitled; “NAHB’s Recommended Code Amendments Can Save Home Buyers and Home Builders Big Bucks”. Why that sounds so great, a deal where everyone wins… sweet. So is this really a win-win, win-lose, or plain lose-lose? Well let’s take a closer look at these […]

Filed Under: Energy Efficiency Tagged With: NAHB April 19, 2013 By SLS

Eco-Friendly & Efficient Swimming Pools

This week we have an interesting guest post by Thomas Jones who describes himself as “a keen renovator and DIY enthusiast”.  After spending years traveling the UK working other construction jobs, he is now working in the family owned business at FalconPools. For the last few years they have been specializing in Bio-Design or natural […]

Filed Under: Energy Efficiency Tagged With: Guest Article's October 17, 2012 By SLS

Monitoring your Electricity Usage with MyUsage and Smart Meters

While catching up on my reading I came across an interesting piece in the Alabama Living magazine & that was that Cullman Electric Cooperative was now allowing one to view their daily electricity usage online. They have joined up with MyUsage.com that provides this service for 41 different utilities, located in 13 different states (3 […]

Filed Under: Energy Conservation, Energy Efficiency, Miscellaneous Articles, Reading Utility Meters March 7, 2011 By SLS

Snow is truly one of the best diagnostic indicators out there…

Oh the weather outside is so frightful… While the weather might have made a mess of things, one of the good things it does is allow one to quickly look at their house to spot some hidden issues. As you may recall from science class, the second law of thermodynamics, states that heat moves to […]

Filed Under: Energy Efficiency, Infrared, Code Verification, & Energy Audits Tagged With: Roofing January 12, 2011 By SLS

Solar – are we putting the cart before the horse?

Ahhh Solar Power – who can resist the lure of free energy for the taking which happens to also be the golden child of the Clean Tech industry, the government, and numerous other groups? I have been meaning to do an article about this issue for a while, especially after attending the Pickens Plan presentation […]

Filed Under: Energy Efficiency, Going Green? Tagged With: Guest Article's, Solar Power November 17, 2010 By SLS

October is National Energy Awareness Month & a Free Monitoring Tool

Welcome to the 23rd National Energy Awareness Month, where they choose “Powering America – We’re on target” for the slogan. Seriously – their message is that we are on target, as in we are doing fine, there are no issues, so please keep doing what you are doing? I know this is an election year, […]

Filed Under: Energy Conservation, Energy Efficiency, Miscellaneous Articles October 1, 2010 By SLS

Building Green Homes: Looking back & Lessons Learned

I guess I can credit some of my desire to learn about and utilize energy efficient designs, green buildings, & solar power with the area I grew up in. I can recall some of our schools field trips where we would go see new houses being built with photovoltaic panels, and eating food cooked on […]

Filed Under: Common Sense Building, Energy Efficiency, EnergyStar, Going Green?, Universal Design Tagged With: Looking Back July 19, 2010 By SLS

Energy Efficiency vs. Conservation – what is the real issue?

I have to admit, I was originally confused by some of the attitudes or opinions given about those in the Energy Efficiency fields. I grant you that there are quite a few individuals in the green community that are five cans shy of a six pack, but the following quotes come from some of the […]

Filed Under: Common Sense Building, Energy Conservation, Energy Efficiency, Going Green? June 6, 2010 By SLS

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