The complete source for building, designing, and remodeling green homes
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Insulating a Wood-Framed Floor Assembly
Most wood-framed floor assemblies — for example, floor joists over a basement — have conditioned space on all sides, and therefore don’t need insulation. Sometimes, though, a wood-framed floor assembly…
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Solving Hot Water Piping Problems
Gary Klein, a residential energy expert who has been nicknamed “Mr. Hot Water,” has for years been providing advice to builders on ways to reduce the wait time for hot…
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Filling Rafter Bays With Fluffy Insulation
For years, building scientists have investigated whether fiberglass insulation or cellulose insulation can be used to insulate an unvented cathedral ceiling. In general, the answer has always been no, because…
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Saving Our Vanishing Wilderness
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) covers more than 19 million acres in northeast Alaska. It’s about the size of North Carolina. A significant portion of the refuge -- 8…
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Bonus Room Problems
If your house has an attached garage, you may have a bonus room — that is, a bedroom above the garage. For new home builders, bonus rooms make sense: including…
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Getting the Right Minisplit
Curious readers regularly post questions here at GBA on how to size minisplit heat pumps and how to select the right equipment. Although our web site contains dozens of articles…
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Deep-Set Brickmold Trim for ‘Innie’ Windows
If you install flanged windows on the exterior side of a sheathed 2x4 or 2x6 wall, and you then install exterior rigid foam, you end up with an “innie” window.…
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Energy Retrofit Advice From Ohio
Long-time readers of GBA are familiar with Nate Adams. He’s the home-performance contractor who has published several opinionated blogs on GBA, including “The ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ Fallacy” and “Hard Truths of…
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Prickly Mountain and the Design-Build Movement
Almost all branches of American art and culture, including music and architecture, experienced a remarkable explosion of creativity from 1965 to 1975. While I can’t explain the causes of these…
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Insulating Behind Kneewalls
Although I wrote a 2012 article for Fine Homebuilding on ways to insulate the cramped attic behind a kneewall, I’ve never written such an article for GBA. So it’s clearly…
