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Here are a few of the sources we found helpful and have visited many times during the process of making selections for EcoLumina:
Our media partner The Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH). http://www.pathnet.org/index.asp has a huge amount of information about buidling products.
ToolBase is the housing industry's resource for technical information on building products, materials, new technologies, business management, and housing systems http://www.toolbase.org/about.aspx
EcoManor, the first LEED certified house in the southeast was a major inspiration for us in developing EcoLumina. They have a great web site at: http://www.ecomanor.com
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Environmental Resource Guide includes comprehensive information about building products that allows you to compare products on a variety of properties. It is available at the AIA’s online store at www.aia.org. They have a great example video of an architect working with a client to create a sustainable house at:
The GreenSpec Directory from Environmental Building News has a good listing of environmental building products (printed version currently costs $89 but an online version is also available from https://www.buildinggreen.com/ecommerce/gs.cfm
The Sustainable Building Sourcebook is a free resource from the City of Austin (Texas) Green Builder program. It contains lists of manufacturers of various building products and can be accessed at www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook
An online directory of manufacturers of green building products by Iris Communications, Inc can be found at www.oikos.com/products/index.lasso
The hard part can be sorting through all the products to determine which are best for your project. A software program, Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES),
helps you select building products based on your priorities (e.g., energy efficiency, indoor air quality, recycled-content materials, embodied energy, etc.). It is available for free at: http://www.bfrl.nist.gov/oae/software/bees.html
Solar heliotracker used to improve efficiency of photovoltaic collectors by keeping them constantly optimally aligned with the sun.
Visit: http://www.solenergy.com.au
Additional Resources
One of the great ideas which came from our discussions with Laura and Rutherford Sydel, owner of EcoManor, was to make our notebooks available to the public. These represent hundreds of hours of research into green topics. So here they are:(sorry, comming soon!)
