The most recent blogs at Green Building Advisor

At the International Builder’s Show, several demonstration homes have been set up in the parking lot outside the Las Vegas convention center.

The Environments for Living show home has a display promoting the advantages of ventless conditioned crawl spaces; so far, so good. But instead of following best-practice advice and insulating the crawl space walls with rigid foam, the Environments for Living home designers chose to install fiberglass batts between the floor joists — a feature proudly displayed behind a Plexiglas viewing panel.

LAS VEGAS, NV — Wandering the trade show floor at the International Builders' Show in Las Vegas today, I stumbled upon several intriguing new products. Here are four of them.

Serious Energy windows

Serious Energy, a window manufacturer that recently acquired Alpen Windows, has made several improvements to Alpen’s line of windows with pultruded fiberglass frames. Windows from Serious Energy (formerly known as Serious Materials) are available with Heat Mirror glazingWhen referring to windows or doors, the transparent or translucent layer that transmits light. High-performance glazing may include multiple layers of glass or plastic, low-e coatings, and low-conductivity gas fill. from Southwall Technologies.

As the plane descends into the Las Vegas airport, every arriving visitor notices the stark contrast between the desert environment of southern Nevada and the modern city of swimming pools and irrigated shrubbery. After arriving today, I took the shuttle bus to the Bally Hotel, across the street from the Bellagio. The Bellagio overlooks an 8-acre artificial lake — in essence, the largest swimming pool in town, in a town known for its large pools — where a few lonely ducks swim in the chlorinated water.

In last week’s column I examined a fairly unusual local power source: the Northfield Mountain pumped hydropower system, which is used for “storing” electricity—by pumping water uphill. This week we’ll take a look at a very different power-generation system that’s even closer to home: the landfill gas power plant at the Windham Solid Waste Management District (WSWMD) facility on Ferry Road.

A solution in search of a problem? It depends.

Slab on grade construction is extremely common in the southeast and southwest US because it’s a fast, affordable way to get out of the ground and into the house. Slabs are also a great way to incorporate hydronic heating into a house.

Slab foundations can be energy sieves if not insulated on the outside with rigid foam. Both heat and cold can penetrate deep into a house through an un-insulated slab edge in summer and winter.

Builders downsize square footage and learn from their mistakes

Since the 1970s, Jim and Mark Picton have been building houses for wealthy clients in Washington Depot, CT. “Five thousand square feet was the basic size of the houses we built,” says Mark. “The biggest one was around 14,000 square feet.”

Ideal Homes builds inexpensive, energy-efficient houses; it just doesn’t call them green

You can look high and low on the Web site of Oklahoma City developer Ideal Homes, and you won’t find the words “green building.” Since its founding in 1990, Ideal has built and sold more than 7,000 homes, and it expects to sell a further 500 this year.

Last weekend, looking for someplace new to explore, my wife and I drove down to Northfield, Massachusetts, to check out the cross-country ski center. The skiing was great, and it occurred to me that readers of this column might be interested in learning about the pumped-hydro power plant on the mountain—the ski center was created as a recreational amenity for this power project.

Yes, Vinyl Is Green

By Patrick Moore
Expensive green products will remain niche products with little chance to have a positive effect on the environment. Vinyl is affordable and versatile. Read more...

No, Vinyl Is Lethal

By Bill Walsh
The environmental, health, and social equity effects of vinyl over its life cycle make it the worst plastic for the environment and the antithesis of a green building material. Read more...

Most articles on green construction, including those provided by GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, contain information on a wide range of topics, including material choices, indoor air quality, landscaping, and the VOCVolatile organic compound. An organic compound that evaporates readily into the atmosphere; as defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, VOCs are organic compounds that volatize and then become involved in photochemical smog production. content of paint. This wide array of information can convey a false impression — namely, that the covered topics are equally important.