solar

Energy Subsidies and the “Free Market”

June 5, 2011

Time and time again, I hear people say that renewables should be subject to the “free market” and should not receive government subsidies. After all, if renewables such as solar, wind and geothermal are viable, the consumer should decide, not the government. And while I understand (and even to a point agree) with those comments, [...]

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Roland S. Martin – CNN Guest Blog

March 12, 2011

I have never posted verbatim another blog post until today. With the recent events in Libya, gas prices soaring (again) and the nuclear meltdown in Japan, I was going to write something, because I just couldn’t keep quiet. Then, I came across Roland Martin’s post on CNN today (March 12, 2011) and decided he said [...]

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The Lawrence Street House – Bidding and LEED

January 30, 2011

I know it’s been a little while since I gave you all an update on the Lawrence House. With the holidays, I took a bit longer finishing the drawings and we really didn’t want to have to be doing open houses during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. Open Houses are actually kind of a pain. [...]

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The Lawrence Street House – Refinements Pt 2

February 16, 2010

We have refined the exterior as well as the floor plan and are now very happy with every aspect of the design. Click here for a larger image of the south elevation. We’ve added arbors over the south windows at the living room and over Brenda’s potting bench area off the garage. The front porch [...]

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The Lawrence Street House – Design Development

February 3, 2010

>Well, the charrette spurred some creative juices, as I mentioned. I’ve spent the last few days refining some things and developing the plan a little further. Refining it a little more. Tweaking it. Making it better. The last sketch was an exterior idea, very rough. I’ve refined it a bit more and put a little [...]

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The Lawrence Street House – Plumbing

January 22, 2010

One way to save energy is through a compact plumbing design. One of our goals as we laid out the design was to keep the plumbing — especially the hot water runs — as short as possible. I shared that goal with a friend in the design community who said we wouldn’t be able to [...]

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The Lawrence Street House – Schematic Pt 2

January 9, 2010

As we started the design, we looked at our relationships of rooms to each other (from our notebook), the aspects of the rooms we wanted (the den needed to also double as a guest bedroom) and the relationships of all of this to the outdoor living areas of our lot and our relationship to the [...]

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The Lawrence Street House – Site Analysis

January 9, 2010

I know this wasn’t a one word title; sorry. Before we start designing (and the excitement of getting started builds, so there’s still that temptation. Resist!), we take a really good look at the site. We call this our site analysis. Yeah, not very creative, but accurate. We look at a number of things. The [...]

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Twenty for Twenty – Episode Nine

July 14, 2009

I’ve been an advocate for solar since my college days at the University of Oregon. And, the name of our firm, “Arbor South” came from our commitment to solar from the beginning. So you can imagine this episode is one of my favorite aspects of our home. Tweet

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