Posted: Mar. 8, 2012 | 2:03 a.m.

Want to know what the "next big thing" in home ownership will be? No one can predict the future with absolute certainty, but there are no safer predictions than these: Nonrenewable energy sources will become increasingly scarce, energy costs will rise over time and people will continue to desire comfortable homes that are affordable to maintain. Wrap it all up in a solution that makes sense for the vast majority of existing homes and, voil: The next big thing is ... drum roll please ... the energy efficient retrofit.

It may not seem very sexy, but no one can deny that slashing home-energy bills is an attractive goal. Did you ever wonder why they are so high in the first place? Don't blame the power company. There is no free lunch. We pay a lot because we use a lot, and we use a lot because most of our existing buildings are, I will say this as delicately as possible, gross energy hogs.

In fact, suburban America was mostly built using a flawed strategy of resource extraction, depletion, externalized costs and the short-term availability of cheap fossil fuels. James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape," has called it "the greatest misallocation of resources in history."

Our economic system is designed to maximize profit (referred to as "shareholder value") while minimizing long-term value for the end user.

Rather than wring their hands and wish for a magic solution that will never come, some people are actually dealing with this issue head on, developing practical approaches that incorporate state-of-the-art science, materials and techniques. The results are often spectacular.

I recently attended an open house event that showcased two home-energy remodeling projects. Turning decrepit old energy hogs into beautiful, affordable, power-sipping homes requires some effort, but the results are so worthwhile.

The process involved four basic steps:

1. Energy assessment: Test the current performance level and diagnose the best opportunities for an energy-efficient remodel.

2. Develop the plan: Determine the specific items and tasks to provide optimum performance in energy, comfort and health.

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Retrofit Energy Hog Homes Into Power Sippers

An announcement today from Empire Today, a full-service provider of quality flooring, carpet and window treatment products for the commercial and residential segments, is now serving the Kansas City area. Empire, commonly known as Empire Carpet, services over 50 metropolitan markets across the United States.

Northlake, IL (PRWEB) March 08, 2012

We are excited to begin providing service in the Kansas City area with our quality flooring, carpet and window treatment products, said Steve Silvers chief executive officer for Empire Today. Empire makes updating our customers homes or businesses convenient by offering free estimates, shop at-home or on-site consultations, quality products at great prices and professional, next day installation on many of our products.

Empire Today also offers quality products from leading manufacturers, a Low Price Guarantee and one year financing options with approved credit. All of Empires products come with a manufacturer product warranty and an Empire service warranty.

In 2011 and 2010, Empire Today was a finalist for the prestigious national awards for Best Customer Service Organization and Best Overall Company from the American Business Awards. As a Better Business Bureau accredited organization, Empire has an A+ rating.

About Empire Today

Empire Today, LLC, also commonly known as Empire Carpet, has been a leading provider of installed home improvements and home furnishings for Over 50 Years. Empire provides services to residential and business customers with a wide selection of products suitable for homes, small businesses, organizations and commercial applications. Our line of quality, name-brand products includes: Carpet, Hardwood, Laminate, Ceramic, Vinyl Flooring and Window Treatments. The company provides shop-at-home or on-site consultations, next day professional installation on many products, quality products at great prices and world-class service to more than 50 metropolitan areas in the United States. Empire Today for a greener tomorrow a leader in floor covering recycling. For more information, call 800-588-2300, visit empiretoday.com or follow us: @Empire Today twitter.

Also, visit the following sites for more information:

Empire Carpet Man

Empire Carpet Stories

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Empire Today® Expands Next Day, Carpet, Flooring and Window Treatments Service in the Midwest.

By Alana Kansaku-sarmiento

The Times, Mar 8, 2012

Jaime Valdez / The Times

Tualatin Indoor Soccer owner Monty Hawkins said he expects to see a complete payoff of his investment of energy- efficient lights in less than three years.

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Tualatin Indoor Soccer made a move toward big energy savings with the installation of new, energy-efficient lighting.

With a big assist from a $9,371 cash incentive from Energy Trust of Oregon, business owner Monty Hawkins is already reaping the fiscal benefits.

Its good to be responsible and invest (in energy-efficient solutions), said Hawkins, who opened Tualatin Indoor Soccer on Southwest Itel Street in 2003. If you think about it, its going to be a responsible business-owner thats looking out for the environment, whos fortunate enough to have an energy savings through the investment, and ends up with a great product delivered.

Thats all it is, isnt it? Its kind of a no-brainer. The hurdles are being able to afford it and to take the gamble, so to speak, about recouping the savings in your energy usage. But, you see those savings, and you feel good about your decision.

Energy Trust is an Oregon-based nonprofit dedicated to providing energy-saving alternatives for utility customers. Hawkins was approached by the organization multiple times in the past several years, but had turned down previous incentives to the installation of energy-efficient fluorescent lighting in his arena.

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Tualatin soccer club lightens up

TWO senior Surrey county councillors have defended their conduct after they were removed from their high profile cabinet posts.

Ian Lake and Denise Saliagopoulos, who represent Weybridge and Staines respectively, were sacked by leader David Hodge over matters which are now being referred to the councils standards committee.

Councillor Saliagopoulos said involvement in a private company had led to the pair's dismissal. Both she and Cllr Lake are listed as directors of Charter House Chancery Ltd, which was set up more than a year ago to build alliances between UK business and other countries across the world, particularly China and West Africa.

The company, which has its registered address in Cobham, arranges packages for visitors to the UK, in particular for the London Olympic Games.

Cllr Saliagopoulos, who is losing her post as cabinet member for community services and the 2012 Olympics, said: "I have absolutely nothing to hide. The company does not work in conflict with what I am doing and there is no conflict of interest whatsoever.

"I was asked to join the company. It's not a problem because the company has not made any money - I have nothing to show for it thus far."

She said she would have more time to commit to her business interests and to being the company's secretary now she was no longer a cabinet member, adding that she was "happy" to speak to the standards committee.

Cllr Lake, who was the cabinet member for transport and environment, said: "Surrey County Council have alleged that a conflict of interest in my day-to-day workings for the authority existed and I was dismissed from my cabinet post.

"I completely and utterly deny this allegation. I look forward to the opportunity of proving to the standards committee in due course that this has not been the case and to receiving an apology from the leader."

Cllr Hodge said it was "disappointing" that he had to dismiss his cabinet members.

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Sacked councillors deny conflict of interest

Posted: Mar. 8, 2012 | 2:03 a.m.

Remember the days when you tore pictures of your dream home out of magazines, stuffed them in a drawer and scrambled to find the right one when you were ready to begin a remodeling project?

Just as listening to music or talking on the telephone has gone high-tech, so has finding the right look for your home. Welcome to Houzz.

Houzz is an online site where you can find pictures and put them in a personal ideabook so they are readily available with just the click of your mouse. The site has more than 300,000 magazine-quality photos, uploaded by design and decorating professionals.

Liza Hausman, vice president of marketing for Houzz, describes it as a free website and mobile application that brings together homeowners and remodeling professionals using technology.

"There are a few ways you can use the site," she said. "The way most people start is to use it for inspiration and to help define their style. They can browse all the photos or, if they are doing a living room, they can sort by living room and just look at living room photos."

Hausman said the photographs also can be filtered by style, such as traditional, contemporary or transitional. In addition, you can tailor your view by city.

"As they discover photos they like, the can save them in an ideabook. It's what we used to do when we ripped photos from a magazine and put them in a manila folder," she said.

Since the ideabooks are online, they can be easily shared with a spouse or professional collaborator. There's also a place to comment about what they like and don't like about each photo.

"It's a key communication tool within families ... they say they don't need marriage counselors," Hausman said.

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Welcome To My Houzz

OneRoof Energy to provide solar roofing lease options to Chandlers Roofing Los Angeles, Orange County customers

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) March 08, 2012

Chandlers Roofings Los Angeles and Orange County customers now have the option to integrate aesthetically pleasing solar rooftop systems through OneRoof Energys SolarSelect Lease. The lease gives customers flexible, affordable options for incorporating sustainable energy into their home while also avoiding high maintenance and installation costs. Homeowners can reduce their monthly lease payments with a large down payment, or put little to nothing down and choose to pay higher monthly fees. The monthly fee combined with the new lower utility bill is less than the fee homeowners traditionally pay without solar.

Going solar makes great sense, especially in California. Now our customers have the option to add traditional solar panels or seamlessly integrate solar into their roof, and we can even match your specific tile colors if you have a tile roof, said Brian Hicks, CEO of Chandlers Roofing, Inc. OneRoof Energys SolarSelect Lease makes it easy and affordable for our customers.

OneRoof Energys goal is to offer all homeowners the most affordable and convenient way to install solar power systems into their home, said David Field, CEO of OneRoof Energy. Chandlers Roofing, Inc. is the premier roofing contractor in the Los Angeles area and we are honored to bring these solar options to their broad range of customers.

Chandlers Roofing, Inc. partnered with OneRoof Energy because of the companys strong financial stability, reliable customer warranty and affordable options. Installations of OneRoof Energys solar power systems are available for retrofit and new roofs.

For more information on OneRoof Energys SolarSelect Lease offered through Chandlers Roofing, please visit http://www.chandlersroofing.com/solar or http://www.oneroofenergy.com.

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About OneRoof Energy

The OneRoof Energy mission is to provide simple, affordable solar solutions that people can trust. OneRoof Energy offers homeowners integrated, aesthetically pleasing solar solutions coupled with the peace of mind that comes with industry-leading warranties. Through OneRoof Energys SolarSelect Lease, homeowners can lease solar energy generation systems for as little as zero down. Strategic investors in the company include Hanwha International and Black Coral Capital. For more information, visit http://www.oneroofenergy.com.

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OneRoof Energy Partners with Roofing Contractor of the Year, Chandler’s Roofing, Inc.

You get home from work on a Tuesday evening. Sensing your arrival, your home turns on the lights in the living room and kitchen. You stop by the bathroom and step on your Internet-connected scaleit absorbs your day's activity levels from a clip-on fitness monitoring device, then logs them on a website along with your sleeping activity and health history.

After making dinner, you sit down in front of the TV and tell it you want to buy a series you heard about on the way home from work. It responds to your voice, and in a few seconds downloads the entire first season over a gigabit connection. The series automatically downloads to your tablet, too, so you'll have it available on the go tomorrow.

We've been sold on such technological visions for years, but they always seem to be "three to five years" out. The tech we do get never seems to work quite as seamlessly as the futurists suggest. And yet we're still making remarkable technical progress; networking in general, and the Internet in particular, have only begun to transform our homes. Here are five basic technologies that will soon prove crucial to our networked livesand none are mere fantasies. The core technologies exist; shipping products exist. They just need to make it into more homes before the effects are truly felt.

A lucky few communities have already managed to line up gigabit home Internet connections: Google's projects in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, EPB's network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Sonic.net's plans for San Francisco.

Gigabit fiber connections remain the technological equivalent of Evil Knievel stunt-jumping a row of buses. Such speeds are more entertaining than practical for most, but content on the Internet will only continue to grow in size and quality. The Internet connection provides the baseline bandwidth that makes all of home network uses possible.

But getting gigabit Internet into the house does little good if you can't share it. To that end, groups like the Wireless Gigabit Alliance are already at work transitioning gigabit connections to WiFi. By focusing a concentrated signal from router to connected device, or "beamforming," the IEEE 802.11ad WiGig specification will allow data transmission speeds of up to 7Gbps. Qualcomm plans to start making 802.11ac chips soon that will give mobile and desktop devices access to 1.3Gbps WiFi speeds.

Faster WiFi can't come soon enough: a lot of our personal Internet business is currently conducted through smartphones (thus 3G and 4G connections). Carriers are straining under the load, capping data and throttling "unlimited" connections. We can expect more carriers producing devices with technology that makes offloading to WiFi as seamless as possible.

Another new standard, 802.11u, streamlines the process of switching between 3G and WiFi. Instead of presenting users with a long list of inscrutable SSIDs, 802.11u lets devices see and automatically connect to active WiFi, thus offloading activity from the cellular data connection. Of course, this requires public, trustworthy WiFi, like the one managed by the city of Chattanooga. They're rare today, but will likely become a necessary supplement to the cellular networks struggling to keep up.

There's a lack of transparency in the power usage of most homes. Power comes in, it gets used, and you get a bill. The "how" and "how much" of what happens in between are difficult to determine. But a range of technologies and devices are setting themselves up to make the whole life-cycle of energy more visible and easier to control.

For example, the Nest Learning Thermostat received a lot of buzz last fall for its ability to adapt automatically to users' habits and temperature preferences. Leave the house at 8AM everyday? The Nest detects your routine and learns to stop heating or cooling the house unnecessarily. Come home for an impromptu lunch, nap, or Skyrim session? The Nest detects that too, and starts warming or cooling the house to your ideal temperature.

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Feature: The five technologies that will transform homes of the future

The office building will undergo a large scale renovation to bring it back to its original Class A standards.

Arlington, VA (PRWEB) March 08, 2012

This outstanding asset has been fully-occupied for a long period of time, creating an opportunity to reposition it up to todays Class A standards and to reacquaint the market with West End Courts great physical and location attributes, said David Alperstein, Principal at FD Stonewater. The building offers a unique neighborhood feel in a highly-desirable commercial zone and will feature significant upgrades to common areas as we prepare it to meet the needs of either a full building tenant or those seeking suites from 5,000 square feet and up he concluded.

About FD Stonewater

FD Stonewater was formed through the recent merger of two boutique real estate firms, FD Partners based in Arlington, Virginia and Stonewater Partners of New York and Los Angeles. The merger brings together a combined track record of more than $10 billion in investment, advisory, development and acquisitions and over 40 million square feet of lease transactions, to offer a fully-integrated, national real estate platform with capabilities in Principal Investment, Development, Advisory and Brokerage activities.

David Alperstein FD Stonewater 571-451-0018 Email Information

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FD Stonewater Awarded Exclusive Leasing and Construction Management Services for 1255 22nd Street, NW

Credit: DEAN HOFFMEYER/TIMES-DISPATCH

A new steeple was placed Wednesday on Bethlehem Presbyterian Church's new sanctuary on Old Church Road in Hanover.

Bethlehem Presbyterian Church is like thousands of other white clapboard churches in the turn of the road in Virginia, only this one on Old Church Road in Hanover County is about to get a new sanctuary.

The 175-year-old church received a $110,000 gift from a church elder 30 years ago with the stipulation that it be used for new construction. It has taken this long for parishioners to match the fund and add enough to it to build a sanctuary.

"We decided this was the time to do it. It was now or never," the Rev. Rebekah J. Johns said.

The new steeple went up Wednesday.

"This has been a long time in the coming," said parishioner June Cappello, a sheep and hay farmer. She and her husband, Roger Cappello, a physician, were married at Bethlehem Presbyterian 31 years ago.

"It's a big day for us," said Craig Davis, construction superintendent, as the new steeple was bolted into a cupola.

Construction on the new church started last summer. It is scheduled for completion in April.

Johns said the building committee talked with five construction companies and chose Norman Co. Inc. in Mechanicsville because of its ties to the church and the community.

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Steeple goes up on new sanctuary for 175-year-old church

Redevelopment of the historic Blass Building in downtown Little Rock will begin in June to convert the former retail property into 100,000 SF of office space, 20 loft-style apartments and more.

The developers, Doyle Rogers Co. and Moses Tucker Real Estate, described it as a $20 million project.

Accompanying the project will be 200 employees from the Office of Child Support Enforcement, which will lease space in the building. A 300-car parking garage will be built at the northeast corner of Fourth and Louisiana streets as part of the project.

Construction is expected to be completed in mid-2013, according to the developers.

Officials at the two companies on Wednesday announced their plans for the 105-year-old building at 317 Main St. The development encompasses the seven-story building, once the flagship of Blass Department Stores, and its adjoining three-level annex.

New Market Tax Credits through the Heartland Renaissance Fund of Little Rock are an important component of the financial package backing the deal.

Doyle Rogers, the famed Batesville developer behind the Peabody Hotel, Stephens Building and Statehouse Convention Center, has owned the property for more than 12 years, awaiting a redevelopment opportunity.

"The time has now come," said Tommy Lasiter, CEO and president of the Doyle Rogers Co.

The redevelopment is owned by Blass Property LLC, which includes Lasiter, Jimmy Moses, Rett Tucker and Rogers' son and daughter, Doyle "Rog" Rogers Jr. and Barbara Hoover.

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Moses Tucker, Doyle Rogers to Put New Office, Loft Space in Blass Building