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As green building grabs the attention of otherwise cautious home buyers, so does the potential for "greenwashing" — the efforts of overzealous marketers to label anything and everything "green." Selectively focusing on one feature while ignoring others, or intentionally misleading buyers about the...
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The devastation and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina set Bill and Bryan Spatz in motion rethinking what type of foundation makes sense in flood-prone areas. The Noah's Ark Project is a steel-framed modular home built on a barge. The home looks like a typical 2,700-square-foot home with an asking...
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Beyond Code
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Daunting as the coastal climate can be, the home-building industry has the capacity to construct homes capable of withstanding the ravages of hurricane-force winds, floods, home-crushing waves, incessant rain, high humidity, short drying cycles, scorching sun, and corrosive concentrations of salt...
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Houses That Swim
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Potable Water for Secluded Sites
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The projects that D.P. Thomas Construction complete each year on or near the water around Wrightsville Beach, N.C., range in cost from $150K to well past the million-dollar mark. What owner Dave Thomas started as a small remodeling firm in the 1970s has grown to become a local authority on the...
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May the Best Practices Succeed
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One Year After
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Faced with an unprecedented coastal reconstruction need post-Katrina, the mitigation arm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has released FEMA 550, Recommended Residential Construction for the Gulf Coast: Building on Strong and Safe Foundations. This must-have document for coastal building...