East Green Homes

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Rouleen Williams exterior - horizontal 2

Foam Forms Create an Energy-Efficient Concrete House

Jan 15, 2010 | Salisbury, New Hampshire

By Rouleen Williams

My plans to build a dream home took years to bear fruit. I took the first step in 1988, when I bought an 18-acre property in Salisbury, N.H. The lot slopes to the southwest, with a spectacular western view over a beaver pond to Mt. Kearsarge.

It took me 19 years to save enough to qualify for a construction loan. In many ways it was good that the process took so long, because the home I finally built is much better than the one I first envisioned.

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Garage office renovation at night

Green Backyard Office: Repurposing a Century-Old Garage

Oct 20, 2009 | Halifax, Nova Scotia

When we purchased our circa-1896 farmhouse in 1994, one of the main attractions was the old garage. We quickly replaced its failing asphalt roof with new cedar shingles in 1995, but as much as we liked it, the garage remained a somewhat forgotten backdrop to our yard until we were forced to address structural issues in early 2008.

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A kitchen addition where a screened porch used to be

Deep Energy Makeover: One Step At A Time

Apr 27, 2009 | Brattleboro, Vermont

When my wife Chris and I bought this nearly 100-year-old home in 2000, we knew we had our work cut out for us: virtually no insulation; original single-pane windows; a failing main bathroom; just four circuits of knob-and-tube wiring; no laundry hook-up; and a dysfunctional 12x12 kitchen with three windows and four doorways.

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Subtle but important changes

An Old House Gets a Superinsulation Retrofit

Apr 5, 2009 | Arlington, Massachusetts

What started out as a relatively straightforward re-siding project on this 80-year-old duplex in Arlington, Mass., ultimately evolved into part of an ambitious superinsulation pilot program for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) and the regional utility company, NSTAR.