Single-Ply Vinyl Roofing Membranes Roofing membranes made of vinyl and other single-ply technologies have brought about revolutionary change in roofing specification and installation over the past 30 years, offering a clean,...
What energy savings and benefits can you get when you retrofit an old home, built almost 80 years ago? A homeowner’s association (Greenbelt Homes, Inc.) in Greenbelt, Maryland wanted to find out.
This article was originally printed in Retrofit Magazine. Downtown Cleveland’s theater district, known as Playhouse Square, is a set of nine performance venues that form the second largest performing arts center in the U.S. Its...
Building codes are important – for builders, for tenants, for the environment. They dictate the ways in which things will be built when constructing a building, providing guidelines to help all tradespeople build safely and...
The Money Pit – a nationally syndicated home improvement radio show – celebrated National Energy Awareness Month recently. The goal was to highlight ways to help consumers save energy with green building designs and...
Cutting Energy Down to Zero Although often overlooked, U.S. homes account for 15 percent of the nation’s energy use. As such, the Department of Energy’s (DoE’s) Building Technology program has made its goal to reduce...
Determining Insulation R-value Accuracy Every construction/design architect/engineer (A/E) knows a material’s R-value is an important factor when specifying insulation products, with many regulations requiring minimum values...
Extruded Polystyrene Foam Sheathing – From Manufacture To Installation The most common components of a building envelope perform important functions, but they do not always meet their true potential. To that end, various...
Specifying the right products can have a huge impact on sustainability. The steps involved in processing materials, such as extraction, processing, and transportation, can pollute air and water and use up natural resources. Using...
Students from Stevens Institute of Technology are responding to the damage caused by Super Storm Sandy with their entry into the 2015 U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. Using plastics and sustainable building...
The International Green Construction Code The International Green Construction Code (IgCC) is the first model green code to include sustainability measures for an entire construction project and its site. As an overlay code, it...
Poor indoor environmental quality (IEQ) can have adverse effects on occupants’ health and productivity. When designing a building, strategies such as ventilation effectiveness and contaminant control, or the requirement of a...
How plastics contribute to green building rating system credits Sustainable, or ‘green,’ building design may be a hard concept to quantitatively define, but its general meaning is well-understood amongst professionals in the...
Has soybean oil come of age as a fossil fuel alternative in SPF? As the new uses program manager for the United Soybean Board,John Campen has long advocated the use of soybeans—butwinning over others wasn’t always easy. He...
As construction growth intersects with environmental concerns and the rising cost of energy, the concept of sustainable design—drafting, specifying, building, and operating structures to minimize their ecological impact—green...
Is it easier or harder to be green in 2008? (Some people still ask, what is sustainable building?) Here’s what I mean. The Summer Olympics brought us a new swimming venue. Beijing’s Watercube is—luminescent, athletic, borne...
