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What can you say.

Since most of my client are spread out all over the US and Canada, I rarely have the opportunity to meet them in person. With sadness one of thew few that I do see, Eric Diener, passed away Dec. 29. I saw him a few weeks before to give him some plans. He was one of those I always enjoyed working with. His integrity was exceptional. He was honest, and built very high quality homes in the Asheville. He will be missed.

Below is his obituary.

Montgomery, Ala. – Eric Edwin Diener, 39, passed away unexpectedly on Dec. 29th 2008 in Montgomery, AL.

Eric was born in Newport, RI and lived in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area for most of his life.

For the past four years he lived in Asheville with his wife and dogs.

Eric was a self-employed home builder, a passionate humanitarian and loving husband.

Deeply saddened by this loss are his wife Laura Dominkovic, his parents Thomas and Patricia (Pam) Diener of Brentwood, TN, his sister Erin Diener of Wilmington, NC, and many dear friends.

A memorial service will be held January 11, 2009, at 1:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, 1 Edwin Place. Weather permitting, his ashes will be spread in Graveyard Fields after the service (dress appropriately), followed by a reception at the home, 29 Spinet Street.

Memorials gifts may be donated to Save the Children (http://www.savethechildre n.org/).

To donate to a specific country, call 1-800-7283848.

Eric was dedicated to supporting countries in critical need, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, Gaza strip, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Rest in peace, my love!

Recently an MIT professor, Daniel Nocera announced a major breakthrough that promises to make the way passable to revolutionize the adaptation of storing solar and wind harnessed energy. The current problem has been that when the sun goes down, or the wind stops blowing, the energy stops. Battery systems are expensive, and only live so long before they need replacing. This new discovery uses non-toxic natural materials to split oxygen and hydrogen from water, at room temperature. These can be stored and recombined in a fuel cell later whenever electricity is needed.

You can hear Daniel Norera discuss this at … MIT TechTV

You can read an article about this work at MIT news.

Below I posted my intentions to start a web site narrowing the available stock plans to ones that generally fit in the categories of sustainable and green. Both words are now official (to me at least) buzz words that are rapidly loosing their meaning due to so many people associating their products with “green” and “sustainable”. It is like the word “bungalow”. Do a Google search for bungalow plans and the same old multi-gabled stuff (being polite here) shows up, just relabeled.

While I do have specific goals for these new plans, as well as modifying some of the existing plans, I would very much appreciate hearing from people as to what they expect in this specific category of house plans. I am not going to simply relabel plans. I am especially interested in what spec builders are after. I would specifically like to know what your market would like, basically what constitutes a sellable product for you.

Would passive solar be a plus? (ie: solar green houses or “sun space”, solar mass walls, direct gain etc?)

Would a dedicated room for alternative mechanicals be important? (ie; would you be installing renewable energy products… solar water heating, photovoltaics or wind equipment?)

Would you install active solar panels to generate electricity?

Do you need assistance specifying sustainable products?

etc

You can post to this message,. or reply to me via this link
http://www.thompsonplans.com/contact/index.php

If you need to attach something you can email me via the form/email link above and I will reply with a different address. If I put my “real” address in this blog I would be spammed to death over night. The spam robots are relentless.

thank you for your assistance.

BYOBlue is a nationwide collaborative between Architecture 2030, Earth Day Network and numerous other groups calling for an immediate moratorium on the construction of any new coal plants. In 2007, Fifty-nine coal plants were canceled – over a third of the 151 planned. That was before millions of people joined together to say No Coal by participating in BYOBlue. For more information you can follow this link http://www.byoblue.org/

So, just wear blue April 19th through April 22nd. If you want to bring even more attention to the issue, just wear blue underwear and nothing else. That ought to bring attention to the matter.