Green Home

What's the Best Car for the Environment?  Maybe Not What You Think

What’s the Best Car for the Environment? Maybe Not What You Think

The pending arrival of the Nissan Leaf got me thinking about cars and the environment again.  (BTW my previous post on the Prius vs. the Hummer is here). Considering that for many of us an automobile is a necessity, we have a new range of choices in automobile purchases to minimize the impact. High efficiency [...]

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Another Nail in the Coffin of “Tips for Going Green” and The Pursuit of Honest Green Residential Building

As the readers of this blog know, I am highly suspicious of the well meaning, yet misleading and short sighted green home and lifestyle tips peddled at other websites and in books.  That’s why I write in the Lifestyle and Green Hacking parts of this site that you must target the big wins first and [...]

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The Tipping Point: What If Your Goal Was To Make Your Home Energy Efficient – Step 2

The Tipping Point: What If Your Goal Was To Make Your Home Energy Efficient – Step 2

If you’ve automated your home as discussed in Step 1, you’re ready to optimize. Make it Automatic – Then Optimize Optimization is just fine tuning your settings.  See how far you can turn down the heating temperature at night.  Then see how far you can turn the heat down during the times you’re actually using [...]

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How To Use a Lifecycle Assesment

How To Use a Lifecycle Assesment

I’ve written previously about Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).  The idea of LCA is relatively new, becoming popular in the 1990s and continuing to grow.  When the basic concept of LCA was burgeoning in the industry, it was a considered to be a good tool to support sustainability claims that could eventually be used for marking [...]

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An Award Winning Sustainable Architect's Top 3 Priorities for Your Home

An Award Winning Sustainable Architect’s Top 3 Priorities for Your Home

In the second teleseminar of our series on home efficiency, I spoke with Mike Cronomiz of Re:Vision Architects.  Revision is an award winning firm that’s been involved in sustainable architecture well before most people heard of it.  The firm watched as their clients went from needing to be educated about sustainability to seeking out and [...]

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Green Living as a Marthon

Green Living as a Marthon

Over the years I’ve watched families attempting to green their home and lifestyle, only to see them become annoyed and frustrated with relatively small achievements and incremental progress. To those families, I offer the picture of green living as a marathon, not a sprint. The Marathon Green living comes along slowly as a combination of [...]

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