Insulation Tips for Hot, Humid Climates The best way to insulate your house (or church, school, or office building) greatly depends on what type of environment you live in. If you look at historic houses and buildings, you can learn a lot about how to design for your climate, because early builders had to adapt to the local conditions to try to make buildings as comfortable as possible. Purple ... Read More
Heimsath Architect’s team members are now in week 4 of self-isolation. Like many of you, our communications with the outside are mostly through the various conferences call applications (Go to Meeting, Zoom, Skype). It has been working well, though I find that looking all the faces in boxes invariably gets the Brady Bunch theme song stuck in my head. For the past 20 years, we have done our ... Read More
There's lots of talk about green building - but what does it really mean for your project? We've been impressed with many improvements in our industry that have come from the sustainability movement, often referred to as green building. However, not everything that's promoted as green makes sense. Here is the second half of my article on residential green architecture and the frequently asked ... Read More
GREEN BUILDING As the newest member of the Heimsath staff, I have been offered the opportunity to share some of my interests through this blog. Since I am particularly interested in green building, I wanted to kick off with a series on sustainable water solutions. A little background may be helpful to explain my interest in sustainability. I grew up on a farm in Vermont where waste was closely ... Read More
Solar Panels on the Front roof Area There is a 5.76 KW solar array on the Purple Heron House. Given that the house is a 5-star rated (or will be when Autsin Green Building finishes its process), we looked into Solar as a way to make the house even more effiecient (with the current efficiencies of the solar panels, it is usually better to conserve first and then look to generation). At the time ... Read More
Which building is the greenest? How about the one you already own? The results of a ground-breaking study were released last week by The National Trust for Historic Preservation. The data shows for the first time how an old building stacks up against a potential replacement building. Even a highly efficient new green building doesn't pay off compared to a renovated or upgraded existing structure. ... Read More
LED lighting is improving in comparison to other technologies. When we consider light output, color temperature, and color rendering, the LED lights are an equal or better choice (if you don't know these terms, here's a link to my article on lighting technology). It is well past the time where this is really newsworthy, but I would like to share some of the latest ways we have successfully ... Read More
Here is the latest video blog post I did with Matt Risinger. This time we are discussing hot water systems for residential construction. In this post we talk about using an AO Smith Vertex tank heater versus a tankless water heater and using a demand pump and a trunk line system for hot water delivery. Read More
Here is a video Matt Risinger and I shot for his video blog on Residential Green Building. In this video we are looking at using as separate dehumidification unit to help control humidity and thus use the house AC units more efficiently. Here is a link to his blog. He has lots of really useful information here--and if you look carefully, you can see more of me as well! Risinger Blog Read More
Given that is is August and Austin has hit 107 the last couple of days (not to mention over 100 for the past 19 days), I am not sure it will ever be used, but the new house has a couple of interesting features to help coax in a nice cool breeze. They probably work now, but that would basically turn the house into a convection oven... View of the house from the Southeast -- the direction of the ... Read More
