A research team at UCLA has developed a website to assist folks whose project goal is to design an energy efficient home. The website is called Home Energy Efficient Design (HEED) and was developed by a UCLA research team headed by Murray Milne who is a research professor in the school’s department of architecture and urban design. Users of the free website will find it useful to design their sustainable home and at the same time calculate how much money and energy they will save with each design change.

The site generally is easy to use and a user only needs to enter the square footage of a home, number of stories, type (apartment or townhouse, etc.) and location to prompt the HEED site to create two homes with one serving as your base design and one to use as a comparison home and to test any changes to a design. The base design will meet California’s energy code which is one of the toughest codes in the US but users can also change the code to their state when using the site.

The HEED tool is quite powerful and using the floor planner allows one to explore door, window, heating, cooling, appliance, shading, and ventilation options. All of this in one relatively easy to use free tool. There is no technical support or customer service helpline but if you send an email to the HEED team they are committed to providing users with a response in a timely manner.

The $6 billion program dubbed by the media the cash for caulkers program passed the House last Thursday and now makes its way to the Senate later this summer. The bill, officially known as the Home Star Energy Retrofit Act has been touted by President Obama since late last year as a central piece of his job creation strategy.

The bill would fund rebates of as much as 50%, up to $3,000 for energy saving efforts such as insulation improvements and the replacement of windows, doors, heating and cooling systems. The installations will have to be completed by qualified contractors. The bill also covers reimbursements for those who perform comprehensive energy audits and reduce their home’s total energy consumption.

The House vote simply authorizes the creation of the program but it does not appropriate the funds needed to run it. The Senate will take up the legislation this summer and will determine how to pay for the program. The bill has the support of the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of the Remodeling Industry as a much needed boost for their beleaguered industries that are experiencing significant downturns from the deep economic recession.

President Obama on Tuesday proposed rebates of up to $3,000 to help American consumers make improvements and upgrades to their homes with the goal of making homes more energy-efficient.

With job creation now a top priority for the Administration the “cash for caulkers” program as it has been dubbed is estimated to create tens of thousands of jobs as 2 to 3 million consumers are expected to invest in their homes by purchasing energy efficient windows and doors, insulation and other upgrades that are aimed at stimulating manufacturing and construction jobs from companies that produce the materials and companies that install them.

The bill must make its way through Congress still so let’s see what kind of support the measure gets from both Democrats and Republicans.

Pulte Homes is aiming to become one of the largest residential home builder providers of solar powered homes in the USA if it’s new solar product offering takes hold with its home buyers. Pulte is offering homes with optional solar-cell embedded roofs built by San Jose based company SunPower Corp.

Pulte began offering the solar products to customers locally here in our Arizona communities only on Jan. 1st but the optional solar products have been offered to customers in other communities outside of Arizona well before this year.

The company says the solar equipment adds about $13,000 to $17,000 in cost to the price of a home with those prices including rebates from Arizona Public Service that Pulte takes directly then subtracts from the homes sales price. A mention in a recent Arizona Republic article quoted a Pulte company spokeswoman as saying that homeowners who buy aftermarket panels must apply for and wait for the (APS) rebate themselves, which makes buying them as part of the home purchase more convenient. In addition, the Pulte spokeswoman also noted that roofs with embedded solar cells are more attractive than those outfitted with aftermarket solar panels.

Potential home buyers are clearly taking notice of green and sustainable technologies, especially those that have a direct link to energy efficiency as solar panels do. In these tough economic times the cost of adding solar panels to the home and the long investment payback for such a purchase has really been the roadblock to more homeowners adopting the technology. However, when given the opportunity to finance the products in to a home’s purchase price, homeowners might just say yes much more than they have in the past.

In the past year consumers saw what affect rising energy costs could have on their wallets. This “energy shock” made many families re-think their thoughts on green and sustainable projects for the home as saving the planet while making one’s home more energy efficient moved several notches up on the ladder of priorities for many of us.

Builders in many regions of the country are responding to the new green demands of consumers though there is a limit, or shall we say, a ceiling to just how much consumers will spend to make their home more stingy with energy use. Some builders are marketing developments billed as “net zero” and “near net zero” developments which are designed to use only about as much power from the public grid as they can save or produce on their own.

To accomplish the zero energy use milestone a building needs to produce it’s own power – normally though solar or wind. Solar panels have traditionally been prohibitively expensive for those looking for a reasonable timeframe for a return on their investment. But as green building becomes more mainstream the cost of solar panels has dropped somewhat as the technology is refined. These lower costs paired with increase in the frequency and amounts of rebates and tax incentives are driving more and more demand for green building projects.

For those interested in learning more about green building by observing projects now in progress, look at the duplex homes development in Greenfield, Mass where Rural Development, Inc. is building 20 new duplex homes that use almost no net energy. Closer to home for us here in Arizona, builder Pepper Vine homes is incorporating green techniques in to its senior housing communities so that it reduces energy use by more than 50%.

Several of these projects are in progress around the country and it is interesting to see the approaches each builder is taking and applying to their view on how to build green.

For our readers and customers who might be planning a green remodel in their home, consider our Bamboo Subway Tile for any interior space that is not subject to continuous exposure to moisture. This material is as beautiful on the wall as the Bamboo Flooring is on the floor. Give us a call if you have any questions about our Bamboo tile or any one of the tiles in our online tile showroom.

In addition to the new Penny Rounds, we are now offering our Kawaii Recycled Glass tiles in a Herringbone pattern. Contrary to the size of the tile shown in the photo, the Herringbone tiles actually come on a 12” x 12” sheet and are paper-faced mounted. They are easy to install as many mounted mosaics are and the Herringbone pattern has been a popular design for many of our customers.

These tiles will make a great complement to a kitchen backsplash to add a unique design that you may not find in many other glass tile collections. The herringbone pattern recycled glass tiles coupled with the 11 unique colors offered in this pattern would make a beautiful kitchen backsplash in any remodeled kitchen. We can also see using the Herringbone pattern as a design over a cooktop when paired with our ceramic tiles much like our customer used our 1” x 1” Kawaii tiles here in this installation. Our Kawaii herringbone recycled glass tiles are in stock and usually ship within one to two days from your order date.

Contact us anytime if you have any questions about our tiles or you need design suggestions to help kick off your remodeling project.

In the last several years in cities with a strong residential urban core like New York, Chicago, or Boston there has been a growing interest in ways for apartment and condo dwellers to have a garden where residents can grow their own food. Space is always at a premium in these settings so folks have been forced to be creative over the years and gardens have been relegated to small areas where there is only room for maybe one or two plants.

There now may be a more attractive solution for apartment and condo residents that allows for a larger garden to be planted while at the same time providing insulation and potentially reducing heating and electricity costs.

Barthelmes Manufacturing Company makes what they call vertical garden products which are often called “edible walls”. The Rochester, NY company has been making the vertical garden products for almost five years now. The units are metal panels filled with soil and seeds and are hung vertically. They can be hung in backyards, parking lots, and other areas on a building. They can be used to plant a wide range of plants with one recent customer using his family’s unit to plant strawberries, lettuce, chives, oregano, parsley, rosemary and thyme.

At a cost that works out to about $125 a square foot, or $500 per planted panel these vertical planters are not for everybody but they certainly will have a following from city dwellers across the country. Advocates of urban farming have embraced vertical garden units as a means of lowering a families food costs, increasing nutritional quality, and cutting fuel consumption and carbon emissions by using fewer delivery trucks. Whatever your reason is for installing such a unit on your property we believe these planters are a nifty way to bring part of a families food source much closer to home.

The public and private sectors are cooperating in Phoenix, Arizona on a program called Solar Phoenix to install solar panels on 1,000 homes over the duration of the program. The solar panels will be leased to homeowners under a partnership between SolarCity Corp., National Bank of Arizona, the Phoenix Industrial Development Authority and APS.

The program works like this:

* homeowners who want solar panels on their homes should first contact SolarCity Corp.

* Applicants will be evaluated on their credit worthiness, not their incomes

* Qualified applicants will have systems installed on their homes with no upfront costs. They will pay a monthly lease based on the size of the system installed.

* Homeowners will use power from their panels during the day and will get power from the local power company APS at night and when they are using more energy than the panels generate.

* SolarCity Corp will guarantee the panels annual energy production for the 15 year lease.

The barrier to entry for solar for most homeowners is the significant upfront investment required. This leasing program removes that hurdle by financing the solar panels purchase over the 15 year lease period. SolarCity will only guarantee the amount of power the panels generate but they say that customers new utility bills plus lease payments should add up to 10% – 15% less than their old utility bills.

The program is being financed by a $25 million investment by National Bank of Arizona and a $250,000 investment from the Phoenix Industrial Investment Authority. The banks investment will go to purchasing the solar systems and then leasing them back to customers while the money from the Phoenix Industrial Investment Authority is to protect the bank from people who default on their leases.

This public – private partnership could be the wave of the future for solar power in the U.S. By removing the upfront cost barrier for homeowners, such a program makes solar affordable for almost any credit worthy customer. We’ll try to follow this program to see how quickly they locate 1,000 suitable customers to install the panels.

The U.S. Green Building Council reports some interesting statistics for buildings in the US. Buildings account for:

* 72 percent of electricity consumption

* 39 percent of energy use

* 40 percent of raw materials use

* 30 percent of waste output

* 14 percent of potable water consumption

With the above percentages so high this explains the high level of interest in green building and all the good benefits new building techniques can bring to our environment.

We stumbled across a well written blog with some nice tips about different ways to be Green around the home. Since we were on the Bamboo kick all of last week we thought we would stay on the green theme a little bit longer. Have a look at the Blog over at Best Green Home tips and give it a whirl. They describe themselves as offering everything you need to stay green at home: from green building to earth friendly furniture, to gardening, to tips and how-to’s for keeping it green.

Their post from last week on October 16th titled “Clean your drains without toxins” was quite appropriate for us since we just changed out our faucets in our bathroom and we had to clean out all of the crud that had built up over the years in the drains. Or, once you pick up the scary steel fire pit that we talked about on Monday you can then stuff yourself by the fire with the Organic Halloween treats using the recipes from their October 13th post. This blog is a good read for green home enthusiasts everywhere so keep it in your green home favorites and check back as I will for tips that are useful around the house.