greenredbuilder

One's locale clearly determines the most suitable deck material. Alaska yellow cedar is a durable deck product around Seattle, but I made the mistake by installing cedar (naively thinking, that it would be durable) on my deck in Salt Lake City. It was totally trashed in 2 years time. A south and/or west exposure in these parts destroys all wood products. Ipe, despite its hardness, doesn't hold up around here either.

Aesthetics and function are the most important aspects of any building. However, in 2009 the true environmental impact of construction, should trump anything else. Just because we framed stud walls back in the day with CVG fir, doesn't give us the license to build decks out of old growth wood or tropical hardwood, in 2009.

The IRC and the insurance industry clearly are tripping over dollars, to save pennies. Does it surprise you that these bodies are mandating a panacea, to make the world a safer place? These same bodies, overlook a much bigger problem. They refuse to hold the screws to the folks who build their wet dream abodes adjacent to forests or grasslands. How many homes have burned to the ground or have stressed our national resources (BLM, Forest Service or wildland fire crews) because the greedy second, third, fourth McMansion homeowners have a sense of entitlement that the rest of us will pay for their fire suppression?
The IRC and the insurance companies should concern themselves with the true problem of poor building site selection rather than the occasional house fire.
Will the sprinklers work, if one spills hot coffee on their crotch?"

Wow, I went to the mddesign web site. It was just what one would expect to encounter. An aging white male, who hasn't pried his lard butt off of the lazyboy, for quite a while. Design divinely inspired by watching too many reruns of Dallas or Walt Disney on the flat screen, in the home auditorium. Grand great rooms galore, pay homage to the vacuous space of self importance . Your sense of aesthetic is the stuff that doll houses are made of. Devine, do the world a favor, live out your deluded fantasies in your own gated community amongst your brethren. You'll be safe from the empirical evidence, supported by 97% of the scientific community, that yes, the world is a different place than your medieval, stunted design sense of history would suggest. Global warming isn't a make believe hoax. Devine, don't worry. The tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and Tinkerbell will all live, happily ever after.

I'm still amazed that the green moniker is so easily attached to virtually any dwelling. How could a home this large, be considered green? Size does matter! The amount of energy to manufacture the materials, the energy consumed transporting everything and everyone to the building site are just a couple of the factors that should be considered before a building is deemed "green". When the bar is set so low, it becomes obvious that the marketing aspect of construction trumps true sustainibility. Fine Homebuilding should focus its attention on small, well built structures that are part of a vernacular that is truly relevant in 2009. The old paradigm of big, seductive shacks are hopefully losing their audience. We need a new model, if we have any hope of a future.