Severe Weather Awareness Week: Tornado’s

HPIM1484.JPGThis week is Severe Weather Awareness Week & today is dedicated to tornados. Unlike hurricanes where one generally has at least a days’ notice if not a week or more to prepare, a tornado can strike with little to no warning at all. While today’s technology is getting better, some tornados can occur without a
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Severe Weather Awareness Week: Lightning

Lightning_Safety_SignAlabama Gov. Robert Bentley declared Feb. 19-24 as Severe Weather Awareness Week to encourage people to make their own personal preparations long before severe weather strikes. On average each year in the US there are 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods, 1,000 tornadoes, and an average of 2 hurricanes making landfall. “The key is readiness,” Governor
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Severe Weather Awareness Week: Thunderstorms

nws-thunderstorm-daysAlabama Gov. Robert Bentley declared Feb. 19-24 as Severe Weather Awareness Week to encourage people to make their own personal preparations long before severe weather strikes. On average each year in the US there are 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 5,000 floods, 1,000 tornadoes, and an average of 2 hurricanes making landfall. “The key is readiness,” Governor
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LEED Habitat: One Month Later & the EverBuildPro System

2012-02-16-alcThank goodness for rain days as this Thursday that allowed me to get back up to Athens to check out the progress and help out for a few hours. Along the same lines, I thought I would include more about BOULD’s system & how it works. For more on this project you may wish to
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Going Off-Grid in the 21st Century – Getting the Water where it’s needed

flygt-largest-submersibleLiving in today’s modern homes, life is great – we turn on the tap & the water just flows out. In most cases, we have no idea where it comes from, how it gets to our house leaving us with our only concern of how much is it to connect to the water main for
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IBS 2012 – Day 3 the People, & Some Cool Tools

feeling-the-drainIt just seemed like a really odd day where everyone was dragging just a bit and the show was a little quitter than usual. The last two days were almost non-stop, while today many people were actually checking their luggage in at a special TSA desk for later flights in the afternoon. I had never
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IBS 2012 – Day 2 and is it?

nahbToday started off in the Outdoor Pavilion with the award breakfast for the Building America program hosted by BASF. Sam Rashkin was the keynote speaker & in typical Rashkin style, even though he had a script, he managed to go off on a few side tangents. I think the best on was the shot he
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International Builders Show 2012

ItsIBSTIMEWow, people weren’t kidding when they said you needed at least a few days to walk the whole show. I only managed to walk about a third of inside aisles today and then there still is the outside pavilion. I did manage to catch a couple of the classes, and I must say they are
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A Tale of Solar Panels, Carts & Horses

UK house with PV PanelsThis week we have an interesting guest post from across the pond by a gentlemen named James Hawkins who likes to blog about solar panels and renewable energy. He works for Talk Solar Panels which is a UK firm that was started in 2008 and involves “providing quality solar panel information and a quote comparison
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ENERGY STAR Updates (v. 3.5)

Energy Star PartnerAs many know the ENERGY STAR program has recently underwent a major upgrade from just ENERGY STAR (ES) to ES3. During that time over 4300 builders, 900 raters / verifiers & 330 HVAC contractors completed the necessary steps to learn & comply with the new guidelines. During this period many of us participating forwarded questions,
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