College Station, February 9, 2015- When Amy Rensvold, with the local Women, Infants and Children’s (WIC) office called Stearns Design Build she was hoping to get a bid to have some laminate countertops replaced. Instead Stearns Design Build president, Hugh Stearns offered to do the work for free. Thanks to the generosity of Lowe’s in Bryan, who contributed materials at half price, the project could be done with no cost to the WIC office.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Naomi Sacks, who runs the Therapeutic Landscape Network. She is currently working on a PhD in Architecture here at TAMU. But her accomplishments exceed that of many who have long had such academic di...stinction. Her book, Therapeutic Landscapes: An Evidence-Based Approach to Designing Healing Gardens and Restorative Outdoor Spaces, is available on Amazon. Though Naomi's focus is on landscape design in institutional settings, I look forward to learning as much as I can about her approach and applying it to the residential setting.
To the extent that we seek “green” or sustainable solutions, it is not enough to consider the resources that we use in building, we must consider our relationship to all resources. We must design homes that put us into relationship with life’s resources so that we can become aware of our part of a process of dynamic balance.
green building Which is the least expensive energy retrofit? A. Installing solar panels B. Replacing existing windows with high efficiency windows C. Installing energy star appliances D. Sealing air leaksWhich has the highest ROI? A. Installing solar panels B. Replacing existing windows with high efficiency windows C. Installing energy star appliances D. Sealing air
It is easy to get caught up in all of the new building materials and technologies that are available and lose sight of the important fundamentals such as properly siting a house. There are few things that will make more difference in terms of energy use than this. The predominant paradigm in what some refer
One of the key tools in Green building is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA.) LCA is a technique to assess the environmental impacts associated with each product, process, or service, by:Compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs to a project;Assessing the aging process associated with the input;Evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with
Stearns Design Build We would like to post a profile of a different local business every Friday. I post this by way of providing an example of the sort of thing that we hope to include. The more that we know about our local businesses and the people who run them the more
Stearns Design Build As our underwriting on NPR says, at Stearns Design Build "we are committed to the goals of environmental and community stewardship." One way that we want to work toward the goal of providing community stewardship is by offering a blog post every Friday on a different locally owned and independent
Home ventilation is a fairly new concept. Sure we have been putting vent hoods over stove and fans in bathrooms for a long time, but this was only to control source issues and not whole house ventilation.Central heating and air conditioning significantly changed the dynamics of our homes. But it was not until we became
water heaters For years we confidently recommended tankless water heaters. This recommendation was backed up by quite a bit of well documented research that was easily understood from a theoretic perspective. Conventional water systems keep all of that water hot all of the time. New research shows that the truth is somewhat counterintuitive.
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College Station Custom Home Builders
2151 Harvey Mitchell Pkwy S #219
College Station, TX 77840
Phone: 979-696-0524
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