Posts Tagged ‘designers’

Getting eco-friendly furniture is now easier than ever. Many more people are joining the green bandwagon and manufacturers are more than happy to tap into this market, while doing their bit for the environment. More and more people are opting for furniture made from reclaimed or recycled materials over wood and companies are happily going first to landfills and then to the banks.

After bamboo, recycled rubber, tin cans and cane, it is now time for Urban Wood. This is a relatively new entrant is the eco-friendly market but is catching quite fast. Urban wood furniture is made from wood that is salvaged around cities from tree falls, demolitions, and generally from the road side. Most of this furniture maintains its rough and ‘woody’ look and people seem to fall for it.

Another very unique and beautiful furniture or rather material option is found with Kirei USA. Kirei manufactures tiles and furniture material made from coconut, wheat, bamboo and kirei. Their tiles made for coconut bark and fiber area thing of beauty and their Wheatboards bamboo are excellent fire-resistant substitutes for wood. Their flagship Kirei board is lighter than wood but as durable and strong. Each of these materials also possess a texture and colour unique to the raw material that adds to its aesthetic appeal.

Remodeling – The Home Plan

Truth be told, when homeowners start off with remodeling their home; they have no idea as to what they actually want the home to look like, unless they know something about construction and architecture. Normally, they will wait till the contractor draws up certain plans, and then will generally approve or disapprove with little conviction in either case. So, when your contractor approaches you with the plans, this is what you should be noticing, and asking:

1. First and most important identify how family members use the rooms. The space requirement and positioning of rooms should be made accordingly in the plans. For example, does your wife take the kids’ lessons while cooking? If so, then the kitchen must be large enough to accommodate the wife’s requirements and sit the kids comfortably while they study. Similarly, if you work from home in the study, then you need to have the bathrooms close by. Or if you like entertaining guests every weekend, the living room needs to be large enough.
2. Keeping the family’s requirements in mind, is the house plan as eco-friendly as it could be? Ask your contractor to explain how much energy the new house will save as compared to the old house and if changes in the plan could make it better or worse. Don’t worry; contractors are more than happy answering questions.
3. How easy will it be to maintain the house, keeping in mind the time you have, and the environmental conditions?

Design-build is a method or system of managing and delivering a construction project, by which one single contractor will take care of both the designing and the building. The alternative to this system is the design-bid-build system by which the owner would have to contract separately for the design phase and then for the construction with two separate entities.

The design-build system holds one individual usually the architect or a contractor, as the central figure, responsible for overseeing the entire project. This has obvious advantages for the owner – he has to interact only with one individual, co-ordination is easier and time is better managed. The design-build contractor or firm will strive to streamline the entire process of designing (drawing up plans), construction planning, obtaining permits, etc. Because of this streamlining, activities can easily be overlapped – construction on parts can begin even while the designing is in process. At times, the main contractor may involve other organizations on the project with him, but in those cases too, the contractor will be the one dealing with them.

This overlapping offers flexibility to make changes to the design of the house, while construction is in process. With the popular design-bid-build system, this isn’t possible, since construction can begin only once the blue prints are finalized. Thus, for a home remodeling projects, wherein owners may want to try out different ideas the design-build system offers a lot of freedom.

The passive house standard for the best energy efficiency your home could have.

The Passive House standard (passivhaus in German) is a very strict and rigorous standard for energy efficiency in homes and other closed structures. Passive House standards lay down guidelines for creating houses that have ultra low energy requirements for their cooling and heating creating highly energy efficient structures. Passive House standard is often confused with Passive solar building design. Although both look at same ends – creating energy efficient buildings – passive solar building design is one of the techniques involved in creating a house that meets the Passive House standards. As such, Passive House can be said to be a broader building concept when it comes to green building.

The unique feature of houses created using the Passive House standard is that they save up to 90% heating costs, largely by employing passive solar techniques and excellent insulation and ventilation systems, AND it is possible to create such a house even in regions with relatively little sunlight at costs that can equal those of regular homes. In fact, passive houses are largely found in European, specifically Scandinavian countries, where sunlight is much less than what may be thought desirable to induce solar heating. Thus, it is easily possible to execute such a system in the kind of weather we have and more importantly, to make it sustainable.

Also, because of the kind of ‘air-tightness’ and insulation these houses provide, the indoor air quality of a passive house is much better than what is found in other houses (That’s one more credit on the LEED rating system in your pocket)

Andersen is a popular name among homeowners and architects in the US when it comes to windows and doors. Whether green building and energy efficient homes interest you or not – Andersen is still the choice of many for their homes because of the quality, design finish and features of the windows and doors they manufacture. Andersen’s range of windows and doors have earned the SCS Indoor Advantage Gold Certification for Indoor Air Quality, by meeting the strictest emission guidelines in the US, making all of their products eligible among all other environmental rating programs – LEED included. Andersen 100 series is one such product range.

The 100 series windows have Andersen’s hallmark feature – energy efficient Low E glass that meet the energy star requirements. Along with this, the windows are partly made from reclaimed wood fibre (40%) and reclaimed glass (12%). However, this doesn’t compromise durability, as the windows are twice as strong and rigid as vinyl. The 100 series windows come in 4 different exterior colours – cocoa bean, terratone, sandtone and white. It offers a combination of sizes, shapes and styles to suit every architectural need.

At Laupen Homes, we’ve been using the cocoa bean windows for a current project in Olympia – the Cooper residence. The best thing about these windows is that they can be painted, an option not available with vinyl. Our experience so far has been great – it makes a great alternative to vinyl and we plan to use it again.

There’s more – Products of the 100 series are eligible for a tax credit of up to $1500 if purchased before 31^st December 2010. All customers have to do is preserve the sales receipt and a manufacturer’s certification statement to claim tax credit.