“He does things right for the sake of doing them right and that was the impression we got with every facet of our experience with Living Stone. That made us just be able to trust them and trust their system.” Carol Strittmatter
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On August 3rd 2014, the men of ODA 3131 lost a brother, and the Gass family lost a father, husband, brother, and son when Girard “Jerry” Gass died of a massive heart attack while on a combat operation in Afghanistan. Jerry suffered a heart attack after conducting a helicopter infiltration to secure a highly contested governmental district center in remote Afghanistan. The last thing Jerry did before he died was evacuate a fellow soldier off of the battlefield.
Geothermal heat pumps (GHPs), sometimes referred to as GeoExchange, earth-coupled, ground-source, or water-source heat pumps, have been in use since the late 1940s. They use the constant temperature of the earth as the exchange medium instead of the outside air temperature. This allows the system to reach fairly high efficiencies (300% to 600%) on the coldest winter nights, compared to 175% to 250% for air-source heat pumps on cool days.
Although many parts of the country experience seasonal temperature extremes — from scorching heat in the summer to sub-zero cold in the winter—a few feet below the earth’s surface the ground remains at a relatively constant temperature. Depending on latitude, ground temperatures range from 45°F (7°C) to 75°F (21°C). Like a cave, this ground temperature is warmer than the air above it during the winter and cooler than the air in the summer. The GHP takes advantage of this by exchanging heat with the earth through a ground heat exchanger.
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The rapid growth of green building means that new home owners can take advantage of the lower operating and maintenance costs that come with these energy- and resource-efficient homes.
But for the 120 million existing homes in the United States, remodeling is the only way for home owners to incorporate green practices. NAHB Remodelers offers the following suggestions to home owners who want to increase their home’s efficiency, decrease costs and take advantage of the other benefits that green offers.
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Inviting, accommodating and a feast for the eyes—wet rooms are showing up in more and more homes and wowing visitors at new-home showcases.
Wet rooms—essentially open-concept or barrier-free bathrooms—are tiled continuously from floor to ceiling and across the floor surface, giving a sleek, unified appearance.
The shower is open to the room or enclosed in clear glass, and has no raised threshold to step over. Sinks, countertops and vanities mounted to the walls hover above the unbroken plane of the floor.
