Home & Garden Resources | Lisa Jones Crowley, Realtor(R)

Building Science: How Heat Moves Through Buildings

Here’s an excerpt from an article and podcast from GreenBuildingAdvisor.com which provides a really nice explanation of how heat moves through buildings. If you haven’t read my earlier post on Passivhaus design, you can have a gander at that too.

The Basics of Heat Flow
As construction methods and materials change, and energy gets more expensive, how and why we insulate our homes become more important.

Why insulate? Read more…

The Fan Freestyle

Renaissance Richmond.com (Finding Architectural History and Following Historic Preservation in Richmond, Virginia) is a blog by Jessica Bankston which she began when she was a graduate student in VCU’s Architectural History department. It is a lovely blog filled with exquisite details on the history of our city’s buildings. It makes me so happy to think of all the amazing people who are devoting themselves to preserving these parts of our history as we go forward to redefine ourselves, our city ever better, ever better.

Passivhaus for Beginners

In “Food Rules,” Michael Polan describes how he found that the more he researched about food, the simpler everything became. It came down to, “eat food.” (Food your great-grandmother would recognize as food.) To me, the green building concept seems to get simpler the more I learn: you think of the building envelope, or the six sides of your home, as a balloon. A house-shaped balloon. It is far more efficient to fill a balloon with air when it doesn’t have leaks, yes? Now imagine that [house-shaped] balloon having really thick insulated balloon-walls/ceilings/floors on all six sides, but holes at the corners. Won’t it still leak?

I’m sharing an excerpt below of “Passivhaus for Beginners,” an article posted by “Musings of an Energy Nerd” on GreenBuildingAdvisor.com. It may seem a little complicated, but just think of that balloon.

More and more designers of high-performance homes are buzzing about a superinsulation standard developed in Germany, the Passivhaus standard. The standard has been promoted for over a decade by the Passivhaus Institut, a private research and consulting center in Darmstadt, Germany. Click here to read the complete article at GreenbuildingAdvisor.com.

Easy Crown Molding

From This Old House –

Crown molding makes it to the top of most remodeling lists because it adds charm and value to a home, not because people enjoy spending a Saturday trying to get the corners just right. Luckily, there’s a simple way to beat miter-saw frustration. Trimroc molding from Canamould Extrusions is a lightweight polystyrene foam coated in hard plaster. It cuts smoothly with a handsaw, and, as This Old House senior technical editor Mark Powers shows here, it goes up in a flash with joint compound. No coping, no tricky angles, and ragged joints disappear with a dab of mud. So in just a weekend, you can upgrade a plain room to an elegant space—and still leave plenty of time for the rest of your list.

See full article at ThisOldHouse.com.

Improve Your Home's Curb Appeal with Shutters

Here’s an excerpt of another great post by Pam at RetroRenovation.com –

How to choose the right size & more tips from landscape architect Ted Cleary

Are you interested in adding shutters to your windows in order to improve your home’s curb appeal? In this guest post, landscape architect Ted Cleary gives us tips on how to do it right. Ted writes:

‘Why do you love your older home? I’d venture to guess that it’s all about the charming details that give it away as a house that was built 50, 60, 70 years ago. You don’t have to be an architect to appreciate the subtleties that, taken as a whole, exude a richness that’s often absent with more contemporary materials.” Click here for the full article at RetroRenovation.com

Teeny Tiny House

My friend Liz just sent me the link to this ApartmentTherapy.com article on the charming home that won their Small Cool 2010 contest. Don’t you instantly love Beth, the owner and creator of this worshipful little space? She is clearly very happy living in the magic she has made with 325 square feet. Here’s the article. Make sure you click on “enter the tour.”

P.S. When I saw the aqua wall phone, I very nearly swooned.

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Home Fashions & Design