Summer Heat May Encourage HVAC Maintenance
By Brian Andrade HMH Builders Now that summer is here and you’re starting to use your air conditioning system at home you might be interested in how you can make it run more efficiently. There are a lot of advertisements this time of year offering HVAC system checkups; some contractors are looking to get their foot in the door to sell you a new system and others are honest people that can give your system a clean bill of health or show you what’s physically wrong and provide a competitive quote to fix the problem. If your HVAC system blows out air that is 15 degrees cooler then the...
Read MoreInch by Inch, Row by Row…Green Landscaping Considerations Part II
By Kevin Brooks Part II of this series discusses a rain garden and it’s benefits to reduce water costs. We’ll also cover the best plants to use in landscaping! Rain Garden An alternate to this concrete box technology is a bioswale. A bioswale, sometimes also referred to as a rain garden, is simply a shallow depression or trough with a gentle slope, cut into the earth (swale) to collect the surface water and channel it to its desired location combined with biological filter media to treat the water. The biofilter media is simply selected plantings and organic material that is used...
Read MoreTwo Homes in Five Days
San Diego Habitat for Humanity Partners with Swinerton Builders to Construct Two Homes in Five Days SAN DIEGO, California, July 18, 2011 – From August 1 through August 5, 2011, San Diego Habitat for Humanity, in partnership with Swinerton Builders, will construct two homes – from the ground up – in five days. This annual event is called the Home Builders Blitz – construction will take place 24 hours a day and will include nearly 500 volunteers building homes for two families in need in Oceanside. The Home Builders Blitz represents a partnership between Habitat for Humanity and...
Read MoreNASA Takes Off With Sustainability Base
Sustainability Base, one of NASA’s greenest buildings, was recently featured in a video interview segment of the Silicon Vally Buzz. Dr. Steve Zornetzer, NASA Ames Associate Center Director, talks about the innovation behind Sustainability Base. Located at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley, California, Sustainability Base was designed by William McDonough + Partners, in partnership with AECOM. Swinerton Builders was the General Contractor. Sustainability Base will be seeking LEED Platinum certification through the USGBC. While this video is a bit...
Read MorePhoto of the Week! High in the Sky
This is no tight-rope act but an in-action shot from one of our jobsites! This brave worker is 100% tied off; each worker on the frame for this project had two lanyards. When they moved positions, they always have one connected at all times, most using two connections as an additional safety precaution. What was a higher risk on this project was the cantilevered space frame which protruded outside the parking structure 14 feet in some areas, and the workers were roughly 50 feet above the ground. In these instances, while the frame was being erected, we had a 56-foot reach lift with...
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