Building Science

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"Green construction" is a current catch phrase with as many definitions as practitioners. For many, the trappings are what's important: bamboo flooring, composite decking, recycled glass tiles. Although we understand there's a need and a place for these products, we believe any truly "green" building approach needs to go beyond the surface finishes. Minimizing energy consumption should obviously have a high priority (see Energy Performance), as the environmental impact of the energy required to operate a home over its lifetime will dwarf that of almost any product selection a homeowner can make. Another important objective of truly green construction, needs to be reliably good indoor air quality year round, which is a result partly of choosing products minimally prone to off-gassing, but more so of good insulation and air-sealing as well as thoughtful ventilation strategies. A perhaps less obvious priority of environmentally sustainable construction, though, needs to be long-term durability. To that end, we regularly return to past projects to review how the materials we have selected and the techniques we have implemented hold up over time. We learn a lot by closing this important feedback loop, and as a result our construction details and techniques are determined not by entrenched industry habit or manufacturer marketing prowess but by solid building science backed up by our constant review of past experience. In this way, we hope our version of "green" deepens rather than fades over time.

Learn how we quantify improvement by the use of HERS scores.

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