Monitor the rainfall in your own back yard with this low cost digital, easy-to-read monitor that displays an accurate report of rainfall based on its wireless rain bucket transmitter.
Archive for January 19, 2006
Let the Kids Scream Their Heads Off…
The 21,000 square feet (Childcare) Center is equipped with new furniture, appliances, playground equipment, and outdoor space for activities and games. The Center also has a radiant floor heating system designed to maintain the floors at a comfortable temperature. Excerpt from Childcare Center Open for Business By Chantal Gabel, (c) 2005 College Publisher, All Rights Reserved
RBc: I love this….21,000 sf of kids playing on heated floors grow up to own homes heated with hot air…I say let the kids yell and scream at todays builders who still haven’t grasped what comfort is…these kids will learn to love warm floors today and will become the customers of home builders in the future…are you paying attention?
Visit our website at www.healthyheating.com and our online forum http://www.healthyheating.com/bb2/index.php
Schwartz: Recycled and Ecological Stationary
Well predictably at two weeks into the New Year my resolution to be more organised in 2006 hasn’t quite taken effect yet. Being organised takes a lot of effort, it also means doing things like filing arrrghhhhh so boring! So it was with great effort that I made it to the stationers this week to pick up some filing bits and bobs and look what I found! Schwartz, who do a very smart line in recycled stationary. It was at this point that I forgot all about the filing and began thinking about the aesthetics of filing my inner designer always wins over my inner organiser! Schwartz is a family run company based in Barcelona. They enlisted architects to design their products with architects in mind, although they useful for everyone. We really like their clean, minimal aesthetic. The folders, files and containers are made from recycled paper or recyclable polypropylene. I was also pleased to note the intro on their website. They are quoting great eco-inspired literature – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities no less: Convinced that every innovation in the city influences the sky’s pattern, before taking any decision, Andria’s habitants calculate the risks and advantages for themselves and for the city and for all worlds. Well if anything is going to inspire me to do some filing that certainly will, I have to admit I haven’t got around to yet, although my new Schwartz files do look very smart sitting on my desk! ::Schwartz
Special report: ethical living – Guardian
A collection of the Guardian’s Ethical Living chunks – loads of stuff – so worth checking out and wading through.
“Green” subdivision slated for Newmarket, Ontario
It’s nice to see more home developers entering the green housing space, on top of the one-off builds typically handled by custom developers and progressive architects. The Town of Newmarket announced this week that it sold 34 lots for $3.2 million to Rodeo Fine Homes Inc.
Among Rodeo’s promises for this subdivision:
* 25 per cent reduction in household water draws compared to conventional homes.
* 60 per cent reduction in overall water discharge flows, solid waste, energy use and greenhouse gases compared to conventional homes.
No details were provided on how it plans to reach these goals, so this will be a project worth watching as it unfolds. It would be nice to see the use of solar heating and geo-exchange systems, or a combination of both. It would also be interesting to see some solar-integrated building products used in housing projects, so this could be a good opportunity for a company such as Spheral Solar to demonstrate the fruits of its alliance with Elk Roofing.
Energy Efficient LED Under-Cabinet Lighting
These quality under-cabinet lights are an alternative to hot halogen or flickering fluorescent lighting. Choose between 3K (golden incandescent-like light) or 5K (white fluorescent-like light). Once you choose the color, pick your Primary (connected to power) and if necessary, a Secondary (connected to Primary via 2.5mm plug) and length– 8 to 32 inches. Power supply and Secondary cable are both sold separately.
Home Automation Primer via Wikipedia
New to Home Automation? This assortment of Wikipedia entries will help clarify things for you. Home Automation “Home automation is a field within building automation, specializing in the specific automation requirements of private homes and in the application of…
Smart Homes: A chilling fact about fireplaces
Smart Homes: A chilling fact about fireplaces
If you have a standard open masonry fireplace, your house actually may be colder than if you did not burn a fire. Although the room with the fireplace may be warm when a fire is burning, overall more heat is being drawn from the rest of your house and lost up the chimney.
What makes things worse is that most chimney dampers do not seal well and heated air is sucked up your chimney 24 hours each day. When you are not using your fireplace, insert an inflatable chimney balloon (also called a chimney pillow) into the flue to seal it. Battic Door makes an easy-to-install one. There also are chimney-top dampers that operate from indoors.
Healthy Carpet
My favorite carpets are from Interface Flooring and Earth Weave. I love our area rug made from sisal because it’s natural, kitty friendly and it hides crushed Cheerios quite well.
GreenTips Home (Index)
In Praise of Green Carpeting (and Rugs)
January 2006According to the Carpet and Rug Institute, carpet covers about 70 percent of the floors in U.S. homes and workplaces. This may not be surprising considering that carpet is relatively inexpensive, helps reduce noise, and is easy on the feet, but few people realize the environmental impact it can have over its lifetime.
Carpet and rug manufacturing consumes large quantities of energy and water, and involves chemicals (especially in the dyeing process) that contribute to air and water pollution. Furthermore, the synthetic fibers used in most carpets are made from petroleum – a non-renewable fossil fuel and take an extremely long time to biodegrade. That’s a significant concern when approximately 3.5 billion pounds of carpet are added to landfills every year.
Site Inspection, January 18th 2006
We found out today that the framing has been delayed due to some wrong measurements. The good news is that the correct floor trusses have already arrived on-site and the framing crew will return on Monday January 23rd.
The electrician (Rinaldi Electric in Calgary) was on-site and finished the rough-in for the electrical service. Here you see the pipe that will come out of the basement floor and into the mechanical room of our house. This large pipe will contain the electrical wires and the smaller pipes are for communications.
We have some more pictures in our gallery from the Wednesday January 18th Site Inspection.
Conscious Flooring: Treading Lightly on the Planet
Conscious Flooring is all about sustainable flooring, and they appear to have done their homework on the green aspects of their work. Featuring bamboo, cork, marmoleum and wood, they also offer sustainable decking, FSC Certified and bamboo plywoods, wheatboard, low-VOC adhesives, cork and recycled fiber underlayments, and appear to have carefully considered the environmental performance of each of their products. As we’ve noted before, not all bamboo is created equal, but Conscious Flooring’s version is about as green as it gets; details on their bamboo floors can be found here [PDF] and here in an FAQ page. They also make extensive use of FSC-certified hardwoods, as well as locally-sourced and recycled wood; they currently feature Antique Longleaf Pine salvaged from an old whiskey warehouse in Kentucky. Much more info on their materials, environmental practices and products is available at their website. ::Conscious Flooring
Architectural Sustainability Goals
Architectural Record News | AIA Board of Directors Sets Ambitious Agenda for Sustainability
AIA Board of Directors Sets Ambitious Agenda for SustainabilityDecember 27, 2005
By now the statistics are familiar: Buildings use massive quantities of raw materials, and consume nearly half of the energy used in the U.S. and 70 percent of the electricity generated. In fact, research shows that buildings are bigger resource hogs than the pollution-spewing cars and trucks that clog our nation’s arteries.
But last week, in a bold step to reverse the environmental impact of the design, construction, and operation of buildings, the AIA’s board of directors released policy statements that set a goal of slashing the fossil fuel consumption of buildings by 50 percent in four years, with additional 10-percent reductions every five years thereafter. They also expressed support for consensus-based standards for sustainable design (To read the full text of the policy statements, click here).
Going Green Can Pay Off on Your Taxes
NEW YORK – Going green can pay off in more ways than one.
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