It's What's On the Inside that Counts!

This is a point that I cannot stress enough. Any builder can make a house look pretty. I quick trip to the mega hardware and home improvethat look good. Wall colors can be changed in a matter of an afternoon. Flooring within a day. Heck, even whole kitchens can be re-tooled in a matter of six weeks or so. It's what is behind the drywall and under that floor that really matters.

Ask yourself this question. . .would you rather pay towards the equity in a really well built and insulated home or would you rather hand your hard earned cash over to your utilities company? In these times of horrific heating a cooling seasons I can honestly say that I'm one of the lucky ones. One of my neighbors actually told me that they skip (yes I said skip) ment meccas will find you all sorts of things to the mailbox having moved into a Coolman Green Built Five star energy rated home, having moved out of a turn of the century Italianate.

Anyone out there know what an "R" value is? It's ok. I had to initially look it up in Wikapedia. It is a measure of thermal resistance used in the building and construction industry. The bigger the number the better the building's insulation effectiveness. We use blown in Nu-Wool insulation with an R value of 17 on our walls and R 40 on our ceilings. Any time a pipe or tube comes into the house the opening is insulated with spray foam.

Another question I am often asked is in regards to our Borg (Trekkie reference)/Matrix looking device. This is our water manifold. We use a direct delivery PECs system. It is a little more pricey, but the advantages are numerous. First, it gives you direct access line from the hot water heater to your apparatus. No more waiting ages for the hot water to appear. The lines are rated to freezing well below any temperature that would sustain life, so your pipes aren't going to freeze if you are away on va-ca in the dead of winter and the power goes out. Plus they have a little give with expansion and contraction, unlike PVC or metal piping. You can also turn off any apparatus, hot or cold, at any time should you have the need to.

Once again, we use a system that makes sense in our climate and for our home owners.

(A little more horn tooting to follow) Did you know that 10 of the first 100 homes certified NATIONALLY by the National Association of Homebuilders was a Coolman home? Here's the great part about that. When Coolman went to find out what we needed to do to become a builder of certified green homes, we discovered if we did absolutely NOTHING to our current standards that every home we built would be certified to the SILVER level. We were Green before it was trendy simply because it made good sense. We cared about what was inside your walls, because it is what is inside our own walls.