Foam; OuR(-Value's) Best Friend

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Foam; OuR(-Value's) Best Friend

If you can believe it, foam has been one of the most focused on details in the Hillside design office. Being mostly air, foam is a superb insulator. Heating and cooling are responsible for roughly 44% of all home energy usage, so having the best possible insulation can make a huge difference in energy savings. Over the years of Hillside design work, the options of insulation materials moved from creative things like recycled blue jeans and sheep wool to EPS foam for one reason.

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Slow the flow, a system to withstand the ever-increasing influx of rain

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Slow the flow, a system to withstand the ever-increasing influx of rain

Suppose you have ever noticed the pond at March's Hill or Federal and Water St intersection after a significant rain event. In that case, as we have in the Hillside offices, you may have thought to yourself, "Wow, that water is coming fast, and this space just can't handle it." With the ever-increasing frequency of these rain events in the future, we are working deliberately to design a system that will be able to withstand the influx of rain with ease.  

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The Hillside Barn, chicken coop, resident storage, shared tools, and workshop space, shared gardening equipment, storage, and more

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The Hillside Barn, chicken coop, resident storage, shared tools, and workshop space, shared gardening equipment, storage, and more

One of the most significant drawbacks for small homes is the lack of easily accessible storage, especially for large outdoor recreation equipment like bikes, kayaks, skis, or surfboards. For this reason, we have created space in the Barn for residents to store large and small objects. The shared tools and workshop is the other space we are excited about.

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Our love for water - we want to keep as much water on site as possible - in the form of moist soils, organic matter, or underground cisterns. 

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Our love for water - we want to keep as much water on site as possible - in the form of moist soils, organic matter, or underground cisterns. 

The traditional methodology of landscape water management has been to move it as quickly and effectively offsite as fast as possible. Not only has this negatively impacted our water quality but we are now realizing that clean consistent water supplies might just become a thing of the past. Our motto for water is to slow it, spread it, and sink it. This means that we want to keep as much water on site as possible - in the form of moist soils, organic matter, or underground cisterns. 

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Recycling While Constructing concrete piers from the Whittier Bridge

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Recycling While Constructing concrete piers from the Whittier Bridge

We could recycle the concrete for our multiple retaining wall systems, just miles from its origin. So far, we have recycled approximately 500 blocks weighing anywhere from 2,500 lbs to 32,000 lbs (three times the size of an elephant)! Along with the blocks, we are also recovering over 6,000 cubic yards of recycled concrete aggregate from the piers we will use as a road base.

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