EEBA's High Performance Home Blog

Clare Homes is a semi-custom single family home builder located in Lafayette, Louisiana, established by Isaac Scott and Kendall Gilmore. Their mission is to build more resilient, healthy, and energy-efficient homes for their customers and community. EEBA is excited to announce Clare Homes as the Builder of the Month. In this month's feature, we asked Clare Homes co-founder Isaac Scott to share some insight on their growing company. Aaron Smith: Tell us a little bit about Clare Homes. How did you get started and what are some of your goals? Isaac Scott: Clare homes, was founded in 2021, by myself and my business partner, and one of my best friends, Kendall Gilmore. Clare is an acronym for clean air, resilient, efficient homes. It’s been my personal and professional goal to build sustainable homes and communities since I was 18 and my mom first said to me, why don't you build sustainable communities? AS: Tell us what you're doing around clean air in homes. IS:... read more

Concert venues, shopping plazas and sporting arenas are continuously constructing accessibility improvements to make public spaces more comfortable for people with disabilities. But unfortunately, there’s one place that continues to be a challenge for people with disabilities to navigate — their own homes.

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The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a key piece of legislation that is helping to transform the way we think about sustainable housing. By providing incentives to encourage the electrification of buildings and infrastructure, the IRA is helping to reduce energy costs, promote energy efficiency, and create a more sustainable housing landscape. In this blog post, we'll discuss the effects of the IRA on sustainable housing and the benefits it has for homeowners and society. What is the Inflation Reduction Act? The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is an ambitious climate initiative that provides $369 billion in funding to achieve a net zero carbon economy and transition the US to clean energy technologies by 2050. The Act seeks to reduce global emissions and create economic opportunities for all Americans by investing in EV charging infrastructure, renewable energy, smart grids, and tax incentives for energy freedom and independence. The Act also works to reduce the cost of... read more

For decades, the perfect storm of challenges has been brewing throughout the construction industry, and this storm is now forcing all of us to consider how we design and build to best address today’s challenges. The storm includes a combination of construction material quality, cost instability, skilled labor shortages, increasing energy and building code requirements, the need for more resilient structures, rising utility costs, and a demand for healthy environments all combining at once in a market full of uncertainty. Builders, architects, engineers, and building owners must address these challenges – all while working to balance construction schedules, budgets, design flexibility, and occupant comfort. The good news is there is a solution that tackles each of these challenges – and also helps you create stronger and more energy efficient buildings. Register to join a complimentary live webinar on December 8th (10:30a PST/11:30a MT) to... read more

In this webinar, David Bernadino goes over the role of competitive differentiation and why it is critical to any marketing strategy. Bernadino gives an overview of some of the tools and techniques to assess your brand versus your competitors and how to apply this to any marketing strategy.

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Know what business you're in and capitalize for it. Are you a developer? Are you a builder? Are you in and titeler? And those of you who do multiple things, each one of them requires a different capital structure. If you're doing the land business, you better have a lot of equity but, if you are a builder, you can have a reasonable amount of debt because you're spinning your inventory relatively fast. You should ask yourself, are we capitalized correctly? 

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To advance the leading edge of building science knowledge and sustainable business practices in the residential construction community, EEBA collaborates with industry experts to broadcast regular webinars. Recently EEBA CEO and President, Aaron Smith sat down with Housing 2.0 author Sam Rashkin to talk about how to help people "get on the path to zero.”    

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Chef Rachelle Boucher of Kitchens to Life cooks her favorite Chinese New Year dishes as two of the top experts in Indoor Air Quality bring a fresh perspective to traditional cooking and the vital role of ventilation in today's homes. Instructors: Rachelle Boucher, Brady Seals, Alex Siow. 

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We built this home to educate everybody in the construction industry that there is a place for women to work making a good living, teaching a new generation that there are no longer traditional roles in the workplace, and to help eliminate the shortage of labor in our industry which is an ongoing problem. We feel like women can be a part of that solution. --  Jennie Tanner, President of the Utah Professional Women in Building.

 

When you're a little girl, parents don't often think about saying, “Hey, why don't you get a job in construction? Have you thought about being a plumber or an electrician?” Even school counselors don't discuss these options with girls. And so, three years ago, I joined the Utah-based charter of the National Association of Homebuilders and came up with an idea to build the first all-women-built home in the nation.

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Module 6: Air Sealing for 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) Compliance, presented by Joe Nebbia. Continue on to read or click on the video below to watch the one-hour session.

Installation of the air barrier and then testing of that air barrier are the most challenging parts of the residential energy code and have been since 2012. It's not something that you can get by with ignoring and hope you're going to pass. It is a challenge.  It is essential to pay attention to these details if you don't want to have a problem with compliance at the end of your build. 

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