Carl Seville

Carl Seville

Carl Seville is a green builder, educator, and consultant on sustainability to the residential construction industry. He founded and served as Vice President of SawHorse, Inc; an Atlanta design/build firm for 25 years. While at SawHorse, he served as the chairman of the committee that developed the Earthcraft House Renovation program and supervised the pilot homes for that program.

He is the recipient of numerous industry awards including the 2008 Excellence Award for Green Homes from Residential Design Build Magazine, the 2009 Energy Value Housing Award, the 2005 and 2007 Green Remodeling Advocate of the Year, the 2004 and 2006 National Green Building Awards for Residential Remodeling, six Excellence in Design Awards from Environmental Design and Construction magazine, the Southface Energy Institute Award of Excellence for Environmental Stewardship, and the 2006 EarthCraft House Leadership award.

Carl is an NAHB Certified Trainer, a HERS rater, an NAHB Green Building Program Verifier, a LEED for Homes Green Rater, and an EarthCraft House Technical Advisor, and holds the LEED AP Homes designation. He has served on the boards of directors of the Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association and the Atlanta chapter of NARI, the Green Building Subcommittee and the Green Building Education Curriculum Committee of NAHB, NARI’s Green Remodeling Education Committee, the Georgia Governor’s Energy Policy Council, and the Editorial Advisory Boards of Professional Remodeling and Atlanta Home Improvement magazines. He is the USGBC Residential Green Building Advocate for Atlanta.

Carl has been involved in numerous green building training and certification projects. In addition to working on the creation of the EarthCraft House Renovation program, he was a co-author of the USGBC/ASID ReGreen residential green remodeling guidelines and the NAHB Certified Green Professional training program for which he taught the pilot class and continues to teach to builders. He is a lead writer on the team currently preparing the 2012 LEED for Homes Reference Guide. He recently prepared and delivered a new curriculum for EarthCraft Renovation. He was a member a task force of the Partnership for Advanced Technology in Housing (PATH) involved in developing protocols for home energy retrofits. He has contributed to and served as an instructor for the NARI Green Certified Professional curriculum, and has presented dozens of seminars on green building and remodeling to industry professionals.

He currently hosts the blog www.greenbuildingcurmudgeon.com and is the co-author of Green Building, Principles and Practices in Residential Construction, the first college textbook on residential green building and is a regular contributor to Remodeling Magazine.



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Knowing the angle of the sun makes a difference in passive solar design.

Thermal Mass in Passive Solar Design

Posted by Carl Seville | Mar 07, 2012

People have been talking about passive solar buildings for a long time, although there have been surprisingly few actually built during that time. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s...

These are WaterSense certified fixtures by American Standard. Pretty nice, eh? [Photo via American Standard/ResponsibleBathroom.com]

Water Efficiency at Home Matters

Posted by Carl Seville | Feb 21, 2012

About the only thing Americans waste as much as they waste energy is water. Kind of like the person who thinks that if there are blank checks in their checkbook that they must have...

Photo by futureatlas/Flickr

Eco-Bling: Get Out of My Grill and Seal Up Your Ducts

Posted by Carl Seville | Feb 13, 2012

Following up on my recent posts on solar panels, bamboo floors, and tankless water heaters, I feel the need to vent further about the tendency for people to add stuff to their homes,...

What's wrong with this picture? This house is in sunny Atlanta and does not have overhangs over the windows. --Carl

Building a House to Fit Local Climate Conditions

Posted by Carl Seville | Feb 06, 2012

Before the invention of central heat and air conditioning, people generally built houses designed to be as comfortable and durable as possible for their specific climate. In hot climates,...

Before you install this, take a few things into consideration. --Carl

A Warning About Tankless Water Heaters

Posted by Carl Seville | Jan 25, 2012

Now I got a lot of heat on an earlier post about solar panels, so I want to be clear up front that I have nothing against tankless water heaters (BTW, they are “water heaters”...

I know they're shiny and cool, but don't buy them if you haven't made your house more efficient yet.

Why You Don't Need Solar Panels

Posted by Carl Seville | Jan 11, 2012

When people learn that I am a green building consultant, almost without exception, they ask me if I do a lot of work with solar power, which I don’t. I don’t install many...

This is insulation that is properly sealed around a wire. (Photo by Carl Seville/Seville Consulting.)

Busting 3 Green Insulation Myths

Posted by Carl Seville | Jan 05, 2012

There is no free insulation lunch. Super-magic foil insulation won’t do what salespeople say it will. Natural, recycled, and green insulation won’t work if it isn’t...