Tag Archives: Safety

White roofs could help counteract climate change

From the Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2008:

Builders have known for decades that white roofs reflect the sun’s rays and lower the cost of air conditioning. But now scientists say they have quantified a new benefit: slowing global warming.

If the 100 biggest cities in the world installed white roofs and changed their pavement to more reflective materials — say, concrete instead of asphalt-based material — the global cooling effect would be massive, according to data released Tuesday at California’s annual Climate Change Research Conference in Sacramento.

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Heating with Wood – Space Heating

BY: Dave Misiuk, Cold Climate Housing Research Center
Energy Focus: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner August 28th, 2008, Section A3

There are basically four different wood burning appliance types available that are considered “space heating” appliances. These are units which produce direct convective and/or radiant heat that can be used to heat a room, a house or other “space” and include woodstoves, pellet stoves, fireplace inserts and masonry heaters. Many people ask me, “Which ones are approved?” Continue reading →

A Sustainable University Campus

About a new New York State campus that is using sustainable building practices. From the New York Times July 27, 2008:

“Stony Brook Southampton will certainly be among a limited number of campuses with this level of commitment to sustainability,” says Judy Walton, acting executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. “Sustainability is really a change in the mind-set of how we operate. It’s like seeing the world through a new lens.”

But most significant is how Southampton, a part of Stony Brook University, is writing into its courses the concept of sustainability. Students study it when they study literature, economics, architecture or statistics.

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Cold climate researchers bring modern building to Anaktuvuk Pass

From the Fairbanks Daily News Miner August 8th, 2008

FAIRBANKS — The last remaining Nunamiut Inupiat Eskimo community settled Anaktuvuk Pass just 60 years ago, trading in nomadic life for village life in a valley tucked 2,200 feet up in the central Brooks Range. In the one-airstrip town with no roads in or out, some 300 residents live crowded into 1970s era wood-frame houses perched on the windswept, arctic mountain pass.

But innovative designers now want to help the villagers build homes following a modern design that is actually inspired by the sod igloos that the Nunamiut first carved from the land.

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