Improve Your Home and Garden
Finding a sustainable builder can be a challenge. It’s even tougher to find a builder who’s eager to consider the “human element” of building or renovating your home.
If you’ve ever attempted a “green” remodel, you probably resigned yourself to choosing your battles with your builder. You made concessions because your contractor maybe wasn’t knowledgeable or [...]
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Whether for resale value or just the daily enjoyment of your home, sustainable landscaping designs are great investments.
Sure, you can create your own garden and landscaping plan. But starting with a professional’s design ensures that all of the latest developments are incorporated. After that initial stage, handling maintenance yourself will be simpler and more enjoyable.
Rich Hayes [...]
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Every home improvement project has the potential to be a risky proposition for homeowners. Just contemplating a project gets you thinking about:
• How do I know how to choose the right contractor?
• Will I be happy with the finished product?
• Will the change actually cut my energy costs?
The questions can seem overwhelming. And the stats [...]
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If you think the top indicator of a clean house is it must smell like a pine tree–or worse–Greg Nicklas of Maid Brigade of Portland would like to clean yours.
Maid Brigade, a national cleaning franchise that’s been in the Portland, OR, area for over 16 years, decided to “go green” in April 2007. “It was [...]
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It may happen just before the first frost.
Sitting on your couch in the evening, watching TV, you will suddenly feel the air wash over your toes. That’s no tropical breeze, either. The cold draft causes you to reach for your slippers, turn up the heat, and call a contractor. It’s time for an energy audit.
If [...]
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Timber frame homes are grand mansions for movie stars and cowboy millionaires. They require a Montana-sized backyard and a NASA–sized budget, right?
If you really believe that, you should meet Rick Stockmann of Specialty Built Construction, Salem, OR. He doesn’t live in Montana, or work for NASA, and he isn’t interested in building castles only for [...]
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Of all the baby steps you can take toward a greener lifestyle, this is one of my favorites: Never, ever use Styrofoam.
Much like plastic, Styrofoam never biodegrades or breaks down. But unlike most plastics, Styrofoam is rarely ever recycled. It can be done, but it’s difficult and I’ve yet to come across a facility that [...]
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Looking at the images of Haiti’s earthquake and the devastation that followed was a wake up call for me. It’s hard to stay worried about the surcharges on your cell phone bill while you watch a terrified but unwavering husband wait outside the rubble of his home for days to see if his wife will [...]
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Ever stop to think about what it means to throw something away?
Where is “away”?
Just because you throw it away from where you are, does that mean it’s gone?
What if there were no weekly garbage pick up? If we were responsible for our own waste disposal, would the average American family still throw out more than [...]
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Many homeowners have discovered that their front and back yards can be used as outdoor rooms, before and after dark. It follows, then, that a homeowner should take outdoor lighting design as seriously as their interior design.
Low-voltage landscape lighting has become very popular. Jim and Tracy Landsiedel own NiteLites of Cincinnati, OH, which puts them in a [...]
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LED lighting is the latest bright idea in your local home improvement store. LED light manufacturers tout advantages like energy efficiency and environmentally responsible engineering. A few even insist that their product will last a lifetime.
If you’re thinking, “So what’s the catch?” then good for you. As with most new technologies, LED fixtures have some [...]
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Millions of people are on the path to a greener lifestyle. It doesn’t matter where you are along your journey; the important thing is to keep taking steps forward… even baby steps count!
What’s a green baby step? Changing out your light bulbs for CFLs, planting a tree, grabbing a sweatshirt instead of cranking up the [...]
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I saw a photo of a topped tree, and I immediately thought of St. Louis. A few years ago there was a days-long power outage caused by tree branches falling on power lines. City workers trimmed the trees as they repaired the power lines.
Each spring since then, the city goes through the neighborhoods and cuts back any [...]
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Can the logger and the treehugger get along? Can a sawmill, like Allegheny Mountain Hardwood Flooring, Emlenton, PA, whose sole purpose is to provide solid hardwood flooring from chopping down old-growth ash, cherry, maple and white oak trees peacefully co-exist with the grandaddy of green, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) whose sole mission is to [...]
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Green Building is growing in popularity, but the industry still faces plenty of challenges… mainly finding cost-effective solutions to energy efficiency and our dwindling natural resources. But new innovations in technology are creating options, and here’s one to watch: structural insulated panels.
Hailed as one of the leading 21st century green building materials, SIPs conserve more [...]
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“Love the home you’re in,” is the latest “homeowner trend.”
Slow real estate sales of existing homes and frozen new home construction influence many families to upgrade or add on rather than buy new. Now that we’ve likely seen the worst of the downturn, homeowners may see what a smart choice their remodel was – [...]
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When you hear the term “green cleaning,” you probably don’t think about your vacuum cleaner.
By now we’re all aware of the dangers of toxins in cleaning products and how they affect our family through direct contact or by breathing their fumes. But you probably don’t give much thought to how vacuuming your home affects [...]
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