Planet Reuse: Reclaimed & Salvaged Materials for your project!

Stumbled onto a fantastic website today thanks to the NAHB. Planet Reuse is an excellent resource for builders, designers, and homeowners looking to find salvaged and reclaimed materials for their projects. I am a big fan of antiques and vintage goods. I love the idea of repurposing an old and unusual item or material and turning it into something new and relevant. Pair that with the green attitude of the country and you end up with a company like Planet Reuse.

Essentially they provide a place to track down and find materials that are taken from demolition sites. It's a win win for contractors, they can find a use for your project waste and turn one mans's trash into another man's treasure. They even document this for your LEED waste management program and will handle all of the shipping and storing.

On the other end of the spectrum, designers homeowners or builders looking for unique materials or just looking to save some money by buying recycled goods can check out their listings of available materials. They have all kinds of unexpected things like recycled granite that has been turned into pavers, hand hewn beams from old barns, you can even find old gym floor tiles! If you're looking for something in particular you can submit a request for materials.

As a wannabe designer myself I see it as a gold mine... the recycled clay tiles, the antique marble slabs, the cypress logs, the recycled church pews... it's like a creative designers dream and I can think of a million ways to turn these materials into a work of art in any home.

So support the green movement, builders check off your LEED standards of building, and take advantage of the vast amount of salvaged materials out there!

~5280 Lady

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Building for Energy Savings: 9 great tips

So I have to say thank you to Stewart Perry over at Planting Acorns for this list. He attended a U.S. Green Building Council and listened to a lecture from architect Norbert Lechner. Lechner is an energy expert who discussed energy efficiency and green building with the audience. Here's the 9 tips he gave to save energy straight from the building process.

Now before I go into the list I think it's important to realize here that it is crucial to start with the building blocks when making this transition to energy conservation. It is much harder and less effective to remediate problems after the building or home is already in place. A homeowner can switch out appliances, put in different windows, and add skylights after the fact but this is far more costly and your return on energy savings is far from ideal. The key is to make the home as efficient as possible DURING construction.

And from the guru, here's Lechner's take...

1. Building orientation/positioning (can reduce energy consumption by up to 50%) Just by positioning the building in a particular way on the lot and at the appropriate angle we can drop the consumption in half!

2. Building color (reduction up to 20%)

3. Window placement

4. Window size

5. Shading

6. Passive solar heating

7. Day lighting

8. Active solar heating

9. Photovoltaics (PV)

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100 Twitter Feeds for Home Improvement Advice

Thanks to Constructionmanagementdegree.org for compiling this list! They've put together your best resources for easy access tips. Categories include general home improvement, green resources, remodeling, furnishing and decorating, publications tv and radio, corporate feeds, and project specific feeds!

 "Whether you have a construction management degree or are just a determined do-it-yourself-er, you are sure to find great advice for all your home improvement projects with these terrific Twitter feeds."

Head over to the feed list to see who you should be following, and always you can check out 5280 on the Tweet Deck for more great home improvement info!

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