Recent disastrous fires and changing codes suggest that rigid foam cladding is too risky, but mineral wool can fill the void.

Since the catastrophic Grenfell Tower fire in the UK in June of 2017, questions about the safety of cladding commercial structures with rigid foam continue to arise. To be clear, concerns about low-rise residential properties seem less urgent. The issue is whether structures that contain large number of people—apartment buildings, office complexes, schools and hospitals-- are put in harm’s way by continuous rigid foam-based cladding.

Trusted companies that listen closely to their customers improve products rapidly.

What makes a great brand, when it comes to earning and keeping the mental space of sustainability? Let me give you two examples: Owens Corning and TOTO.

When employees lack the flexibility to fix customer issues on the fly, corporate should bear the blame.

Box stores such as Lowes want a lot. They want to “own” the DIY consumer market, but also to gain the loyalty of building pros. But here’s a message for all of the suits at Lowes, who set the mission statements, goals and employee handbooks. No customer should ever leave the store fuming, as I did today.

Bringing building science and beauty together doesn’t happen accidentally.

It’s very easy to go wrong. I think of my poor neighbor, who remuddled together some cliché ideas about luxury with efficiency upgrades, festooning his bright and airy apartment building with dark wood floors, crypt-like basement bedrooms, and over-the-top moldings and cabinetry, to end up with a colorless, gloomy space with the feng shui of a hotel lobby.

Manifesting an alternate reality that fuses Pleasantville with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, daycares for the forgetful require some soul searching.

Photo: KPBS.org

IF A FRIEND HADN'T SENT ME A LINK TO THIS STORY, I would have thought it was “fake news.” But this is no hoax. A place called Glenner Town Square really exists. It’s a faux community, if you will, a partial replica of long-vanished, airbrushed San Diego. The 9,000-sq. ft.  "town" has been carefully constructed to resemble mid- to late 1950s San Diego, built inside a 20,000-sq. ft. industrial building.

Among the thousands of useless whiz-bangs and comfort enhancers, these gadgets raise the sustainability bar.

IN MY THREE DAY SOJOURN through the thundering carnival of CES, a few products and services cut through the clutter to offer real problem solving. Some save energy. Others help seniors stay in their homes longer. Still others prevent damage to homes or optimize entire apartment buildings so they can "talk" to utilities. Some simply encourage more cooking at home. All warrant a second look.

At CES, the company is promoting Alexa-enabled faucets, vanity mirrors and water guzzling showers over performance and efficiency.

Perhaps I expect too much. But in the more than two decades I’ve been attending trade shows and writing about building products, Kohler has consistently been one of the good guys. They always seemed to be making forward strides to reduce water waste, educate the public about conservation, and tighten up their vast manufacturing facilities.

The latest hybrid electric model from Toyota "talks" to the Align Project house in real time, triggering off-the-wall routines.

As part of the Align House exhibit at CES in Las Vegas, this Toyota Avalon Hybrid bridges the "missing link" between home and mobility. The concept has been around, but Toyota is leading the curve in actual execution. The vehicle has a heads-up display screen called the Entune App Suite, with many built in bells and whistles.

The Align Project opened Tuesday at CES2019, beginning with an international media event.

Visitors so far have included Google subcontractors who oohed and aahed about the home's austere yet complete interior.

From sightline rules about solar panels to preservation of antique windows, historic district watchdogs do measurable harm and negligible good.

Portland, Maine is a great city, for some.

Known for its food, working waterfront, and to a lesser degree, historic buildings, it’s a place many people would like to retire.  But hand in hand with these pleasant daguerrotype fantasies, are the challenges. Perhaps Portland has always been two cities: the affluent one and the other one--Halfway houses number well into the double digits. Shuffling heroin addicts roam the streets, and public alcoholism often ends in a collapse on the sidewalk. But on the East and West Ends of the peninsula, where many of the oldest homes are, cash-rich newcomers have clashed with entrenched residents. Teardowns are causing an uproar. People are afraid the city will be “Bostonized.”

Use commons sense and math to get a quick read on whether the site you've chosen will be quiet enough to satisfy your client or your family.

Some people love the sound of train horns and the rumbling sound of wheels on the tracks. Others quite literally hate the noise. Perceptions of "acceptable" noise levels are often arbitrary and subjective, especially in the "middle" range of 40-60 decibels or so. One person's pleasant white noise in the background is another person's source of endless unhappiness and complaints.

Tiny homes are cool, but right now, they’re caught in code limbo.

I recently attended the Tiny House Jamboree in Austin, Texas, where I spoke on the topic of conforming tiny homes to site-built IRC codes while retaining the light weight that guarantees their mobility. My construction effort proved to be a daunting challenge. I managed to knock about half the weight off a typical 12,000-plus-pound tiny home. But it’s hard to get much lower. It’s also not the direction the new Tiny Home Industry Association (THIA) is moving.

A short time ago, Hurricane Florence bore down on North Carolina. Coincidentally, the North Carolina Home Builders Association’s conference had just started—but builders left the conference early to prepare their job sites and businesses for the deluge.

A Bloomberg report cited Metrostudy data that indicates builders in the Raleigh-Durham region have about 7,500 new homes in their inventory, approximately 600 of which are under construction in coastal Wilmington.

Flash back six years: The same builder association helped bankroll conservative state Rep. Pat McElraft, who put forward a bill rejecting predictions about the state’s vulnerability to massive flooding and damage—made more dire by climate change. 

Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, let the legislation quietly become law by doing nothing. Bad policymaking is not always partisan.