Category: guidebook

At Clarum Homes, we are passionate about environmental sustainability. However, “sustainable” is becoming a more and more widely-used word, so it is important to understand what it means and how it relates to home building. There are some important distinctions to make when navigating these classifications. The word “green,” for example, is often used to generally describe anything intended to support the health of the environment. “Sustainable,” on the other hand, is objective and very definable. Sustainable literally means “able to continue without an end in sight.” In other...


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Over the last 20 years, Clarum has been a pioneer for eco-friendly home design in the green building movement. Through that time we’ve worked with multiple industry standards that define what it means to be green in the modern home: LEED, Passive-certified, Passive-inspired, CalGreen, GreenGuard. Today, we've compiled our favorite products and systems for the coming year into one list - keep reading to see our selection of top 10 green products for modern home construction! Green Products for Modern Home Construction 1. Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) A best practice for insulation...


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Deciding to build a custom home in Silicon Valley is an involved process, and understanding the progression of a construction project is essential to both your mental well-being and the success of your project. You may be surprised at how much work has to happen before construction. Pre-construction components like budgeting, financing, property selection, topographical surveying, permitting, planning, and design will weigh into your budget and timeline for completion. In particular, the complexity and duration of the permitting process can surprise future home owners in Silicon Valley. Permitting...


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NOTE: This is a two-part series. Click here to read part 1. You can also download our complete Guide to High-Performance Home-building. Choosing Your Custom Home Builder You've spent hours tearing out pages of homes magazines and pouring over plans. You're ready to build your custom dream home. It's a huge investment of your money and time. The question remains: Who is going to build it? To help with your selection, we've put together 10 questions for you to ask potential home builders. We went over the first 5 questions in Questions to Ask Your Builder - Part 1 of this 2-part series. Below...


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Note: This is a two-part series. Click here to read part 2. You can also download our complete Guide to High-Performance Home-building. Choosing Your Custom Home Builder You know you want to build a new custom home and you know where you want to build it. Now it's time to pick a builder. What to look for exactly? Here is the first of a 2-part series that provides you with a series of questions you can ask any potential builder. You can read the next 5 questions in Questions to Ask Your Builder - Part 2. These questions will help you better understand their operation, level of experience,...


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Sustainability at each and every step A home is only as sustainable as the materials used in its construction and the components on which it runs. At Clarum Homes, we care deeply about sustainability. In fact, our core purpose is to transform the way you live by creating greater comfort, greater health, and greater environmental sustainability. Our passive homes and high-performance, passive inspired homes do just that. Conservation in our components Passive homes are, by definition, energy-efficient; to attain certification, a passive home must meet the efficiency criteria defined by the International...


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What does it mean to build a green home? What’s the future of passive building? How does Clarum Home fit into the overall picture of home construction? Meet John Suppes (Clarum’s President) and Sean Misskelley (Director of Construction), discussing these and other questions. Clarum Homes is different than other home builders. Our difference is rooted in our core purpose: we work to transform the way you live. While the majority of the building industry continues to do just what it’s done for the last 40 years, Clarum Homes maintains a relentless commitment to lead the way in home...


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What is Embodied Energy? Look at your house... your computer... the snack on your plate. How much did it cost? Now look deeper. For each of the goods (and services) that we purchase – from automobiles to groceries – there’s an invisible price tag behind the one that we can see. It’s the cost of embodied energy. Embodied energy is the sum total of the energy that went into the production of any good or service. Extraction of raw materials, transportation, manufacturing, installation – it all contributes to embodied energy, because without those things, the final product couldn’t...


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What Does a High-Performance Home Cost? Of course, it’s impossible to estimate the cost of any home without knowing all the variables, such as size and style. However, there are general patterns. "People are often surprised to learn that a high-performance home only costs 5-10% more than its conventionally-built equivalent," says Clarum president John Suppes. After several years, the high-performance home catches up, offsetting the difference in initial construction costs, and begins to pay for itself. How? By costing up to 90% less, month to month. At Clarum Homes, we build our high-performance...


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What does it mean when a house is LEED certified? LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is an internationally recognized, third-party rating system for green building design – a standard we're very familiar with here at Clarum. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a non-profit organization committed to expanding sustainable building practices. The LEED certification program is the USGBC’s primary vehicle for promoting sustainable design and construction. The LEED system rates the environmental performance of a building. It is based on accepted energy and environmental...


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