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Homes to Follow Cars

This past spring, I finally sold my very fine but fuel-thirsty SUV, a 2003 GMC Yukon Delani. Sold it for less than $10,000. Eight months earlier, the same car would have sold for about $18,000, which means the car lost $1,000 in value as each month passed

More on why the same thing will happen to our homes - Homes that are not energy efficient that is.

Triple Your mileage

Did you know that a green home can get you up to three times the "mileage" compared to a conventionally built home? Imagine: Three months of utilities for the price of one a month

Of course, it is easier to design & build a new green home from the ground up in comparison to retrofitting an existing one, but in both cases, with the proper steps & expertise, your utility bills can be slashed by as much as 66%. 

- And that translates into thousands of dollars every year in saving -   More

The Geometry of Green

Keep it simple. That is the advice from most green building gurus, especially regarding a home's footprint.  The fewer corners in a structure, the fewer materials and labor required to build it.  Unfortunately, few green advocates actually stick to that logic, building complex designs and shapes that erode resource efficiency.  But the funny thing is, according to simple physics (surface area to volume enclosed), a simple square or rectangle is actually not the most efficient shape after all.  - So, what is then?

A book that was once a best seller 150 years ago reveals in a logical and simple way what shapes the most efficient building are made of.  The program director of for Sustainable Conservation in San Francisco, Allen Dusault, a well known, published author and proponent of sustainable architecture, science and technology, explain his findings and its significant implications.  More

Advantages of the octagon plan

Compared with a square, an octagon encloses approximately 20% additional space with the same perimeter

According to Fowler, who built his own octagon house right here in Fishkill, NY, an octagon house was cheaper to build, allowed for additional living space, received more natural light, was easier to heat, and remained cooler in the summer. These benefits all derive from the geometry of an octagon: the shape encloses space efficiently, minimizing external surface area and consequently heat loss / heat gain, building costs etc. A circle is the most efficient shape, but difficult to build and awkward to furnish, so an octagon is a sensible approximation.  Much more at Wikipedia

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* QUOTE OF THE QUARTER *

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy.  What a source of power!  I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle that"

- Thomas Edison, Sometime before he died in 1931.  More Quotes Please! 

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