As you have probably heard, we built the first all electric Net Zero Energy building in Pacifica in 2019 and won an All Electric Leadership Award last year with Peninsula Clean Energy. We always intended for our new home to be a research and education hub for the community … Read More
While many community-based Earth Day volunteer efforts and celebrations are delayed or cancelled because of the quarantine, we wanted to share some good news about the results of energy efficient construction and the use of solar to achieve Net Zero. While the current coronavirus crisis is horrific in the number … Read More
Bee-autiful and ready for spring! February 15th marks our 28th wedding anniversary as well as the first anniversary of getting our temporary occupancy permit and moving into our new house! It was a temporary permit as we still had to finalize the front yard landscaping to satisfy the planning department. … Read More
We recently gave our first Net Zero Energy talk to the Rotary Club of Menlo Park (thank you Maya Sewald of Ovation Homes Real Estate for the introduction). Besides putting together a nice slide show with photos explaining the energy efficient solutions we built into our new home, it was … Read More
How we sealed the envelope of our house In my earlier blog “Your house is swiss cheese”, I discussed the general idea of air sealing houses for energy efficiency. Here’s how we did it on our own house: In initial discussions with our green building consultant, Katy Hollbacher of Beyond … Read More
The hard work of installing the building systems In my earlier blog, “Your house is swiss cheese”, I wrote about how multiple small and large openings in the exterior shell of houses let air move though, crippling the heating system, and how we planned to build an ‘well-sealed’ house with … Read More
This is the first of a series of posts highlighting some of our fantastic subcontractors, some of whom we’ve worked with for years, while others are new to us as we searched for specific talents for some of our more unusual building elements. We hope to continue these relationships for … Read More
It is now September and I know many of you are wondering what happened to us…A neighbor recently came by and commented that things seem to have been moving very Slowly all Summer as not much change can be Seen from the Street. Didn’t your mother teach you not to … Read More
THE STRUCTURE BELOW THE SKIN A building’s structure is typically hidden away once the ‘skin’ goes on, just like the skeleton of a person. It’s fundamentally important to how a building stands up and takes the weight of the people and their goods down to the ground, even while the … Read More
