Category Archives: Building Structure

Modular housing — still going green

From the New York Times on Wednesday, February 11, 2009:

The modular housing industry likes to say that it has always had a few characteristics that today might be considered eco-friendly — from reduced waste to a smaller construction footprint.

“In a modular plant, recycling is huge,” says Chad Harvey, the deputy director of the Modular Building Systems Association. “Everything is used and reused.”

But it’s only recently — and increasingly amid the flagging housing market — that manufacturers of factory-built homes have realized that concepts like efficiency and sustainability can make for good business strategy.

High-end modular housing companies like Michelle Kaufmann Designs and LivingHomes — both based in California — are taking the green concept to new levels, catering to the luxury market with amenities like built-in rainwater harvesting, grey water reuse, tankless water heaters and bamboo flooring.

Click here to read the whole article.

Economic downturn changes the American "house of the future"

From businessweek.com, posted on January 6, 2009 and retrieved on Friday, January 30, 2009:

2009 IBS House of the Future

When the homebuilding industry descends on Las Vegas on Jan. 20 for its annual trade show, a highlight as always will be a project called the New American Home. This model house—a new one gets built each year—serves as a showcase for the industry’s latest technology and trends. The massive four-bedroom, five-bath structure popping up in suburban Las Vegas this year may seem a little out of touch with the times as the nation suffers through the worst housing slump in decades. But out in the real world, architects and builders are busy trying to figure out how to put some of the same design features into new homes. Such trends are worth noting: Having amenities that appeal to buyers a decade or more after your house is built will help it hold its value. We list below some of the most important new design features you’ll see in homes.

Click here to read the article.

State of Alaska $100 million energy proposal

report cover

The State of Alaska has published its proposal for grant allocation from the Alaska Renewable Energy Fund. This money will fund the construction of a wide range of alternative energy projects throughout the state. The total proposed expenditure from the State of Alaska is $100 million, with a Federal match of approximately $300 million.

Click here for a link to the Alaska Energy Authority page that outlines the proposal and links to relevant documents.

Trends in homebuilding — the 2009 edition

From the Chicago Tribune on Friday, January 23, 2009:

Even before home designers and builders headed to Las Vegas for this week’s International Builders Show, they had a pretty clear idea of where residential construction was headed.

Yes, the home-building industry is in the dumps, but there are still visionary designers coming up with a better mousetrap, so to speak, and product manufacturers creating a wide variety of accoutrements to make it a more livable space. Also, regardless of how tight consumers are feeling with their wallets, there’s still a fair share of them paging through the shelter magazines at their kitchen tables, tearing out pages as they dream about the perfect next home for them.

What they’re finding is that technological advancements are changing what it takes to build a better house and what to install in each of its rooms. “Innovation is changing the face of everything we do now,” said Michael Menn, of Design Construction Concepts Ltd.,Northbrook.

Here’s a rundown of some of the “ins,” the trends taking hold, and the “outs,” those ideas whose days are numbered.

Click here to read the rundown.

Home buyers building smaller homes

From the Washington Post on Saturday, January 24, 2009:

Frugality is finally showing up in new home developments.

Although the number of new single-family houses sold this year will probably be down about 68 percent from the peak of almost 1.3 million sold in 2005, there will still be about 420,000 households buying new homes this year, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Click here to read the whole article.

Where's the wood? Logless "log" homes

NO TREES DIED The logs in this Montana house, which look real but are made of concrete, are by EverLog. Photo by Janie Osborne for the New York Times.

From the New York Times on Wednesday, January 21, 2009:

In the snowy woods of a valley west of this college town [Missoula, Mont.], John and Mary Beth Cook have taken up a version of mountain living amended for the modern world. Last year, they completed and moved into a house that looks like many others here in Big Sky Country, with exterior walls formed by logs stripped of their bark. Except that in their case, the logs are made from precast concrete shaped and painted to look like the real thing.

“We like the look and feel of logs because they look like the forest, they look like they belong,” said Mr. Cook, a historian, teacher and outdoorsman who also installed a climbing wall on his rock chimney. “But we didn’t want the maintenance.”

Click here to read the whole article.

Homebuilders confidence in housing market at new low

From the Anchorage Daily News on Wednesday, January 21, 2009:

A key gauge of homebuilders’ confidence sank to a new low this month, as the deepening U.S. recession and rising unemployment erode chances for a housing turnaround.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing market index released Wednesday dropped one point to a record 8 in January. The index was at 9 for the previous two months.

Index readings higher than 50 indicate positive sentiment about the market. But the index has drifted below 50 since May 2006 and has been below 20 since April. The slide in builders’ confidence accelerated in the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, slipping three points in October and then five points in November.

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More homeowners weatherizing homes to save on energy

From the New York Times on Monday, December 29, 2008:

Call it CSI: Thermal Police — energy experts armed with mostly low-tech tools but strong sleuthing skills, finding flaws that let the air inside a house go through a full exchange with the outdoors twice an hour, instead of once every two or three hours.

Correct those flaws, and heating and cooling costs are typically cut by 20 percent to 30 percent, a saving of more than $1,000 annually in some households. In addition, carbon dioxide emissions and the strain on the national electric and gas systems are reduced.

About 140,000 houses will be weatherized with public help this year, a total that President-elect Barack Obama has promised to raise to one million, to reduce energy consumption and cut energy costs for households and taxpayers, who often absorb those costs for the poor. This would represent a historic shift in emphasis for the federal and state governments, reducing poor people’s energy bills instead of helping to pay them.

Click here to read the whole story.

"Passive homes" heat without a furnace

From the New York Times on Friday, December 26, 2008:

In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

“You don’t think about temperature — the house just adjusts,” said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents’ home of roughly the same size, he said.

Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.

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GreenBuild announces 2008 top 10 building products

From buildingGreen.com, retrieved on Tuesday, December 23, 2008:

Three of the products this year save energy, including a low-cost, solar water-heating system; a combination heating, water heating, and heat-recovery ventilation system; and a system for monitoring real-time energy (and water) use in buildings. Water saving products are represented by a line of rainwater storage tanks—the first rainwater storage equipment ever recognized in our Top-10 lists.

Fully half of the products this year are green in part because they are made from natural, rapidly renewable, or agricultural waste materials; natural materials often require significantly less energy to manufacture. A new compressed-earth masonry block is particularly noteworthy in this regard. “Most of the Top-10 products this year have multiple environmental attributes,” said Wilson.

Click here to read the whole article.