EcoBuilt Group

Your home's building envelope is the physical barrier between the interior and exterior of your home or building. Your walls, floors, roof, windows, and doors that tightly seal your home and keep the air you want in your home, and the air you don't want out of it. Your protection from the natural elements. Home improvement projects can transform the look and feel of your home into a truly special place. Whether your vision is to remodel your kitchen, bathroom, or another space in your home. Upgrade your home with energy efficient designs, products, and solutions you'll find right here.

My name is Joshua Fletcher, and since 2004 I have been working in renewable energy and sustainability. In 2008, I started this company and have been consulting and providing energy related contracting ever since. I chose this route because I saw way too many companies duping their customers, really jumping on the "green" bandwagon and selling the same old stuff under a different label. Many of the larger companies providing solar panels and home performance solutions are just telemarketing companies that starting pointing their phones at potential customers in this market.

Doors are a necessary part of a home for both access and ventilation as well as illumination. However, doors that are in poor condition due to age or other issues may cause serious air leaks in your home or building that can wind up costing you a lot in both energy and money. Weather Stripping: All doors should have very tight weather stripping. Many door frames have a magnetic weather stripping built in that helps to make a tight seal. This tighter seal will help to reduce air leaks and heat loss and your home will be more energy efficient.

Insulation is all about keeping our buildings and home comfortable. Primarily the comfort is related to temperature, but we also benefit from sound insulation. Several of my customers have mentioned how much quieter their homes are after upgrading attic insulation. Many of those homes are in Tempe, which is in the flight path of Phoenix Sky Harbor airport and if you have ever lived under commercial jets taking off, this benefit may even be greater than the temperature and money saving. Insulation is generally rated by "R-value".

With spring just around the corner, many people will be thinking of (or taking on) a home or bathroom renovation. Renovating your home not only makes it more comfortable, but also improves its value as well. Nonetheless, most people get excited easily over gleaming countertops and shiny appliances, with spending more than they should on the same. With careful planning, you should be able to save money by choosing fixtures and appliances carefully, as well as buy appliances that leave a minimal carbon footprint.

The biggest concern that I hear about variable speed pool pumps is whether or not they are worth the extra money they cost over mono speed pumps. The short answer is: It Depends. I'll talk about why that is in a minute and help you decide for yourself if a variable speed pump is going to the the most cost effective solution for you. Before that though, I will talk about the amount of energy they save, why they use so much less energy to do the same work and some other benefits, but we won't skip over the financial piece, because it is one of the factors that comes in to play when deciding whether to upgrade your pool pump.

There are numerous energy efficient lighting options on the market. These options help save money by reducing your energy consumption and your utility bills. Fluorescent lights convert energy into light better more efficiently than regular incandescent bulbs. There are many options when it comes to fluorescent bulbs. In the industrial and business sector, linear fluorescent bulbs are most common. However, there are many different types of fluorescent lamps that can be used in the home setting. The most common places for fluorescent lighting is the kitchen, bathroom, basement or garage.

When it comes to remodeling, kitchens are usually a room many homeowners think about upgrading, and luckily there are many opportunities to save on your costs, and your energy. Kitchen's are almost every home's center. It's the place families and friends gather to cook, share meals, and discuss their daily happenings. It's a personal space that means remodeling a kitchen is both challenging and exciting because it's such an important room. However, if you are interested in making your home more energy efficient, it's the perfect place to begin the remodeling process.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the typical American homeowner pays approximately $2,300 in utility bills per year, $1,400 in electric. Nearly fifty percent of the energy we use is for cooling and heating our houses, and over one-third of it goes into keeping the lights turned on and operating our electronics and appliances. The home improvement projects below will help with cutting your utility bill costs, and nearly all of them also qualify for tax credits, incentives and rebates if they are completed prior to the end of 2016 to help you upgrade your house for less money.

Whether you are being conscientious on water conservation for the environment or you live in a drought-plagued region, there are numerous ways you can conserve water. Did you know that the faucets in your home account for approximately 16 percent of the total water consumed daily? Replacing out your kitchen and bathroom faucets with new facets can help you use 40 percent less water each day. The Federal Plumbing Standards require all kitchen faucets to use less than 2.5 gallons of water per minute and all bathroom faucets use less than 2.2 gallons per minute.

Landscaping for maximum energy efficiency begins with gaining an understanding of the best way to utilize the trees, solar movements and resources that are available. Closely examine your house and surrounding property, including slopes on the ground, overhead utility lines, walkways, play areas, trees, flower beds, decks, fences and sheds. Then make sure you have a good understanding of which areas get impacted by wind and sun in order to determine which windows and walls need to be protected. In addition, determine how well the plant can survive in those locations since winter and summer months may fluctuate.

Whether you're a new home builder or your current roof is starting to look like it needs repairs and perhaps a full replacement, you might be rewarded with huge energy savings, if you're living in warm climates, by selecting an energy efficient roofing option. You'll also be helping to keep the environment healthy too. Another term used to describe energy efficient roofing is "Cool Roofs" and "Cool Roofing", this is because of its capacity to reduce the temperatures of the structure below it. Cool roofing can effectively reduce the costs of energy applied to keeping buildings cool by cutting down on your AC use.

Regardless of whether or not you're building a new home, or remodeling the current home you're residing in, you'll want it to look its best at all times. Choosing the right materials for your design can be very problematic if you're not sure of the drawbacks and benefits of each material. You'll want your home to have the curb appeal that shows you care and maintain your property yet you'll want to be as energy efficient as possible to help reduce your utility costs, and your maintenance. There are a lot of options to consider when you're looking at exterior walls.

A pool is among the finest luxuries that so many homeowners enjoy and love about their homes. That is why maximizing how much time they can spend inside their pool is so important. Whether they want to gather together friends and family for outdoor parties, or would like to cool down on a hot summer day, the more time that you can spend in your pool, the better it will be. So it is always tempting to have pools heaters to raise the temperature of the water enough so that you can enjoy it. However, heating a pool frequently costs more than a lot of people realize, depending on what the layout and size of the pool is.

As energy efficient houses keep evolving, energy-efficient paints currently provide a high ROI, low cost method for increasing the energy efficiency of your facility or home. The roof coatings and paints can significantly benefit individual homeowners to large companies, and everything in between these two extremes. These days, tile roof renewal and maintenance for both concrete and clay kinds may be done cost-effectively using a wide array of medium depth efficient colors. The paints will serve to not only completely thermally seal and waterproof the roof tiles, but make them renewable indefinitely as well (re-coat after 10 years).

Think about how hot the inside of your car gets when it's been sitting out in the sun on a hot summer day. That scorching heat and the hard to breathe feeling you get is what's going on in your attic. You can fight it with a radiant barrier. It will help to keep the sun's heat out of your home so your home stays comfortable and gives your air conditioner a break, while your home stays cooler. At EcoBuilt, we have experts that can install your radiant barrier and do so quickly and efficiently to keep the summer heat at bay.

Solar shade screens protect your windows from the sun's UV rays that pound on your windows and heat up your home. With an average of 50% of the heat that enters your home coming through your windows, solar shade screens are one of the most affordable energy efficient upgrades you can buy. The solar screen fabric can be made to your liking as it's available in a wide range of openness factors, styles and colors to meet just about any criteria you may have. There are three categories that the fabrics fall into: reflective high performance fabrics, light fabrics and dark fabrics.

You want to keep your utility bills as low as you can and being able to make your house as cool or warm as you want to, whenever you want to. But if you can't seem to get your energy bill down, your HVAC system may be the cause. Before calling the technician let's go through our 5 tips you can do to make your HVAC more energy efficient. For many of us, our heating and cooling accounts for nearly 50 percent of our home energy costs. One of the easiest ways to save money on your utility bills is to purchase a programmable thermostat and use it correctly.