News

An overview of strategies builders can take to help protect homes and their sites from wildfires.

With fire sprinkler systems becoming more common in single family housing, and builders becoming more aware of how important it is to build airtight homes, properly air sealing the heads becomes a prime concern. Fire sprinkler systems result in additional penetrations in the air barrier, whether the sprinkler heads are side wall or ceiling mounted.

Anyone involved in green building or energy efficiency in residential single family new construction knows how much our collective industry focuses on insulation and air sealing. There’s good reason for this. Space heating and cooling loads dominate the energy profiles of the vast majority of homes on the market outside of rare truly temperate climates like Hawaii.

In an effort to ensure that affordable, single-family housing is also built sustainably, Earth Advantage announced it will provide its green home certification to affordable housing providers at no cost.

The project focused on creating equitable economic opportunity. According to the building’s owner, Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives (PCRI), over 50% of the design-phase professional services and construction were contracted by companies that are Minority-Owned, Women-Owned and Emerging Small Businesses (MWESB).

EEBA will be offering the High Performance Mechanical Class in Portland on Nov. 8 at the Northwest College of Construction.

Apogee is a new website resource for high performance home builders with a specific focus on ultra-high performance building products and their suppliers.

Join us at HUB in SE PDX on Thurs., Oct. 18 for cold beverages and valuable information on how code changes will affect the way you’ll be building homes in the very near future. Attendees save $50 OFF SHP in PDX. Early Bird ends 10/19 + SHP Course starts 11/2

The 7th annual 2018 Earth Advantage Green Builder of the Year Awards were presented to a packed audience at McMenamins on September 27. Builders, developers, and architects submitted applications in 8 categories that recognize the very best sustainable & energy efficient construction practices by builders and project teams working with Earth Advantage to certify their projects.

When it comes to energy efficiency in home appliances, the clothes dryer is the elephant in the laundry room. On average, residential clothes dryers use about 800 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. By comparison, a standard clothes washer and a standard refrigerator each use about 600 kWh per year.