Forget Plastics LED is the future!

Most of us love the look of those nice halogen lights that are used to fill in the lighting in a room. I was recently at a co-workers house in his brand new basement and it looked great, but after 3 hours under his halogen lights I was sweating like a pig! I was at the state fair and saw a display about residential lighting using LED! This is the latest thing. Similar look to halogens and much lower power and heat.

RPI has a great site that explains residential LED lighting options.

Sticks are OK!

One of the sites that did the best job of convincing me that building with wood was possible was possible was the Building Materials and Wood Technology department of the University of Massachusetts (My alma matter!). Their publications are very good and are backed by solid research; not blind faith: what a concept!

A Path to success...

One of the better house construction sites out there is the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) site. While this is funded by many of the industry heavy weights it does have a lot of great information.

ICF

Early on in my home building odyssey I was very skeptical of the way homes are being built. Issues with mold and water damage had me thinking that homes built from wood were just not viable. I was convinced that Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) was the way to go. I found lots of excellent sites on ICF construction and products. The ICFHomes site is one of the best. The ICF fourm over at GreenBuildingTalk is also great.

As I did my research I began to feel more comfortable with stick built homes. As will all things knowledge is power. It is not that wood is a bad way to build, but rather there are more folks building with wood so there are more bad buildings made of wood. Mistakes can be made with concrete just was easily and they are typically harder to fix. I am still considering ICF as my wife is still convinced it is the right way to go, but we will see.

For the Pros...

The Journal of Light Construction (JLC) has a great web site with a good forum for builders. They specifically don't want owner-builders on the forums, but it is a great place to read about how to d things the right way (and avoid hiring the guys who do it the wrong way). The interesting thing about this forum is that unlike Owner-Builder forums people don't stop posting when they are done with their project. Forums like the GardenWeb and the OwnerBuilderBook tend to be an endless series of the same questions asked and answered by folks as they move through their project phases.

How to build a cold cliamte house...

Ok so your tax dollars do actually buy something. The folks at building sciences have put together some fascinating documents that tells you how to build a house for your climate. I live in the "Cold Climate" and after reading this I am going to skip a lot of the fads (geothermal heat anyone) and invest in better insulation (wrap that baby in pink!)

For the true home builder Geek

Ok if you really want to geek out (as in bring your own chicken) on building informaiton the Building Sciences web site is a great resource. It has all kinds of information on best practices and very specific information on how to build a good house.

Were from the Government and were here to help...

Believe it or not the US government actually has some good info on energy efficiency in home construction!

US DoE Fact sheets

Nice Building, Eh...

While I don't live in Canada the government there has some very good resources on energy efficiency and best practices on building a home.

Their natural Resources site has a great Portal for residential construction with a lot of information.