News > Green Living
It is a summer afternoon, and everyone is all smiles and in great spirits – except for you. You have a full day ahead of you but your allergies are already acting up. But have you ever wondered why every summer you feel this way? Well, the cause of your allergies may be from more than just the ragweed outside; they may be caused by the air coming from the ducts and vents in your house!
This 35th floor rooftop garden demonstrates the (largely) untapped potential for greening the urban canopy.
A careful garden plan includes fast-growing staple foods (typically annuals), along with a selection of hardy perennials. Here’s a sample of plant choices from a unique mandala garden in Maine.
People try all kinds of things to quickly rid bathrooms of odors. Maybe you’ve tried a few of these?1. Lighting a match. Lighting a match, blowing it out, and waving the smoking stick around the toilet may mask smells, but it is temporary and dangerous and a little obvious to the next bathroom occupant (not to mention potentially dangerous if it is not disposed of properly).2. Using Essential Oil. Adding a few drops of your favorite essential oil to a bowl of cotton balls or a wick device is only mildly effective at masking odors. If you go this route, stick to floral and citrus oils as they are perceived as “welcoming” and “clean” scents. for the bathroom. This is no place for musk, with its faint animal component, and even herb scents can be risky, due to the association with cooking and food. For some reason the human olfactory response is hard-wired to accept flowers and fruits as clean and welcoming in any environment, especially in bathrooms.3. Lighting Candles. While they may look romantic, candles can mask smells but bathrooms are bad places to light candles as it’s likely they can be unattended for hours. Also, people have varying taste when it comes to what smells good and what is noxious. (Not everyone finds vanilla bean a delightful fragrance.)4. Using Scented Spray. While these sprays can obliterate low-level, general bad smells, they are typically very strong smelling and could cause a negative reaction in people who are sensitive to perfumes and fragrances.
Courtesy of appropedia.org
The City of Austin is attempting an unusual approach to reducing the costs of managing household trash: teaching people to compost.
Here's food for thought: These transformed spaces demonstrate how good design can create small, residential landscapes that offer abundance, resilience and a sure cure for nature deficit disorder.
Recent trends hint at a cultural shift toward living smaller—“sharing” cars and other goods, instead of owning. Is this a fad or a major mental shift?
Universities are ramping up their agricultrual programs to reach more students who are interested in the kind of growth that feeds local communities.
Built with sustainably harvested timber and carefully fitted to minimize air infiltration, this log home is as green as its materials.
This mountain lodge style home accommodates a complete sustainable lifestyle, from food to transportation.
Build inside a nature preserve, this timber-style home was built with keen awareness of the value of local ecosystems.
Seabourn Cove, the largest green multifamily community in the country, doesn’t have a decorated model open, yet rentals are being snapped up as quickly as each new building opens its doors. Nearly 50% of the projected 456-townhome community in Boynton Beach, Fla., is leased out, primarily, says the development team, because of its energy- and money-saving green features.
Want to know where all the energy goes in many homes? Hint: It’s outside.
Imagine an eco-friendly show home smack in the middle of one of the world’s most popular theme parks, invulnerable to bad weather, constantly attended by knowledgeable staff, complete with an online world for kids, curious homeowners and teachers. Welcome to the latest, supercharged addition to our VISION House® series.
When building a new home, play areas and bedrooms for children are often high on the agenda, but other, less obvious details that impact their health and safety are not. Of course, many of those things fall into the realm of lifestyle, not architecture.
Nestled on an island just a short boat ride from Sarasota, Florida, this sustainable home is sited to take advantage of natural breezes and breathtaking views. Among the many green lessons to be learned from this efficient getaway are its simple approach to sustainability and brilliant use of small square footage.Photography by Gene Pollux Photography.
Concurrent with the launch of VISION House® in INNOVENTIONS, we launched an animated series of stories about a family and their animal friends who take environmental concerns seriously. It's called Vision Tales.
This house illustrates how green can be achieved with conventional local materials
A new green home fits contextually in an established community.
You wouldn't know from looking at it that this sustainable multifamily housing project is affordable.
This San Francisco infill project packs energy efficient density into bright, durable housing that takes advantage of both location and siting.
Low Impact Development techniques mimic the way natural features handle sudden surges of stormwater. If you’re not already practicing LID, here’s a primer on why this evolving method of land planning matters, and what you can expect in return.
A home of many firsts.
Not only does this home gently disappear into its native setting, R-42 walls, geothermal heat, and a 6 kW PV system make it an oasis of self sufficiency.
As many green experts will point out, the greenest home is an existing home that has been “saved” and turned into a high-performance unit. That was the case with this 1890s two-story row house outside Philadelphia.
This outstanding green home is not only dazzling to behold, but it's also heated and powered almost entirely by the sun.
As food costs rise, interest in healthy food grows, and movements such as "slow food" bring more people to the table, the time right to include edible landscaping in every new home master plan or landscape makeover.
With careful siting, large overhangs, native landscaping and strategically placed windows, this modern home makes the most of breezes, daylight, and rainwater.
Sustainably harvested lumber, wood-plastic composites and stainless steel fasteners provide good quality and relatively green choices for deck builders.
The search for a green heating system becomes more complicated, when you measure what’s really going up the flue. Illustration by James Provost.
Abused, misunderstood, poisoned and taken for granted, soils deserve better. They’re essential to life, more complex than you can imagine, and in serious need of stewardship.
This house for the masses offers a stylish floor plan that packs in a lot of storage while providing high-performance features to keep utilities in check.
The idea of creating a low-maintenance, food-creating ecosystem on a home site once seemed quaint. But a perfect storm of impending threats, from oil shortages to hurricanes to out of control food costs—have raised the stakes.
A 2011 Green Builder Media Mainstream Green Winner, this home was built for just $142 per sq. ft. - before rebates and is packed with energy-saving features and designed for life.
Water doesn’t have to be dead to be safe. Natural swimming pools work with nature to maintain a healthy swimming area, while forming a green oasis in the yard.
Good building science earned this contemporary net zero home a -27 HERS rating.
A small multi-family project makes a big impact with artful design that is accessible, affordable and green.
To bring this super-efficient design up to Passive House standards, the U.S. team imported certain products from Germany.
Despite the challenges of building on an extremely steep, pristine site, this home manages to thoughtfully limit future resource consumption
The owners of this unusual luxury home set out to build "the greenest home in its class," a place that might influence other affluent cultural and business leaders.
This elegant, tiny house was designed with light, flow, and affordability top of mind.
This urban timber frame home elevates the art of craft in home building.
This durable, low-energy housing project won the hearts of our judges because of the way it integrates old and new technologies to nudge owners toward living more lightly on the Earth.
Public/private partnership creates 100 new affordable green units for seniors in Los Angeles.
NEDLAW Living Walls has completed the installation of the largest known active living wall in the United States.
Offer your home buyers sustainable yards that are low maintenance and chemical free, plus offer on-site food production.
This June, the only public Passive House in the United States will open for viewing in Cleveland.
More reasons to spec high-efficiency appliances.
Research on products reveals builder/architect preferences.
Green Builder announces a partnership with Structure Home to build a demonstration home to the new Cal Green standard.
The era of transit-oriented communities has arrived in Massachusetts.
Everything you need to know about reusing rainwater.
At this green college, students learn the value of driving cost out of the building process.
This home is not only dazzling to behold, but it's also heated and powered almost entirely by the sun.
A home of many firsts.
Achieving green with conventional local materials.
Home energy and cost savings to help establish model for zero-energy projects.
A new strategy for household water conservation
Brisk sales for a energy-efficient community in Arizona.
A new model for Washington, D.C., showcases affordable green.
Researchers around the world are identifying the street patterns, transportation modes, and amenities that will reduce the energy required (and pollution created) when people go about their daily trips.
Nation's first net-zero energy affordable community to break ground in suburban St. Louis.
Indoor air quality is part of a successful green builder’s calling card at all price points.
Tuscon builder goes from leading builder to leading remodeler.
Brisk home sales for an all-solar neighborhood in California.
The bad economy isn't the only reason home sizes are shrinking.
Home buyer demand spurs increase in PulteGroup solar communities.
Four urban infill homes offer an energy-efficient lifestyle.
When consumers become the bullhorn for building green, builders benefit.
Earth Day will mark the grand opening of two new sustainable homes in the Barber City area of Westminster, Calif. Check out the choices this builder made to get to LEED Gold.
New systems, better application of technology, and progressive thinking bring sustainability to backyard swimming pools.
Luxury green is still going up around the country. Here are the green amenities one developer offers city dwellers.
A study of 30,000 consumers finds that their perceptions of which companies have the best environmental processes often have nothing to do with reality--and everything to do with clever marketing.
As fossil fuel prices dropped a couple of years ago, the market for small, green homes took a thrashing. But a few entrepeneurs believe that's changing.
The Grand Winner of Green Builder magazine’s annual Green Builder Home of the Year Award program garnered national attention in USA Today. The net-zero energy...
An architect and owner dreamed up a serene Japanese pavilion–style home, a seasoned green builder crafted it into reality.
Green Builder Magazine Expert Ron Jones details the steps builders must take to stay alive in the world of green building.
A pattern for sustainable development emerges as builders
successfully court projects through tough economic times.
A pattern for sustainable development emerges as builders
successfully court projects through tough economic times.
Research shows that consumer habits and choices often decide whether a technologically “greener” product will actually save resources.