Ted Cushman covers the building and remodeling industry for national publications including Builder Magazine, Remodeling, JLC, and Coastal Contractor.
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Ted Cushman
Net-Zero Energy
2024 Digital Edition Only JLC subscribers have access to content from the November/December issue of JLC at this time. Articles will be posted online soon. In the meantime, feel free to browse the digital edition. Subscribe
Vegetated Roof
Posted on June 13, 2024 Preventing Moss on Shingles Once moss has gained a foothold on a roof, there’s no easy way to get rid of it,... More Posted on July 26, 2018 Forming a Hobbit House Engineers - not wizards - were needed to design the concrete roof of this... More Posted on April 01, 2010 Installing a Green Roof Interlocking pre-grown panels add little dead load to the roof.
Structural Insulated Panels
JLC subscribers have access to the Jan-Feb 2024 print edition at this time. Articles will be published online soon. In the meantime, you may browse the digital edition.
Rebuilding a Family Home in Saratoga Springs
This article appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of This Old House Magazine. Click here to learn how to subscribe. When Evan and Whitney Williamson's house in Saratoga Springs, New York, was built, Abraham Lincoln was in the White House, and Ulysses S. Grant was slugging it out with Robert E. Lee in a struggle to shape the nation's destiny. There were no telephones, automobiles, or refrigerators. Electric lighting was rare. Most homes in town lacked indoor plumbing.
What is a Smart-Home Integrator?
In the past decade, there has been an explosion of smart products and smart-home technology. From video doorbells to thermostats to lighting and audio systems, more and more of a home’s electronic components are capable of communicating with each other and with central controls.
Building Strong Bones at the Concord Cape Project
Lincoln and Megan Pasquina took a bold path when they decided to add on to their antique Cape in Concord, MA. Working with architect Andrew Sidford, they settled on a design for their addition that merges modern style with the house's traditional form. At the heart of the new plan is a high-ceilinged, open family room with a view onto the backyard. "As you step through from the kitchen into the new family room, you'll have vaulted ceilings and a wall of glass," says TOH host Kevin O'Connor.
One-Level Living for Empty Nesters
En Suites on Every Floor Instead of a second-floor study, this cottage features two primary en suites: one upstairs that allows parents of young children to be near the kids' rooms; while grandparents or guests can be comfortable on the main level. A Playful Powder Room In this powder room just inside the main entrance, the gentle curves of the mirror and faucet are echoed in the statement light fixture overhead.
Flexible Plan for Multi-Generational Families
En Suites on Every Floor Instead of a second-floor study, this cottage features two primary en suites: one upstairs that allows parents of young children to be near the kids' rooms; while grandparents or guests can be comfortable on the main level. Perfect for a Powder Right inside the entryway, the powder room features a classic combo of navy and gold.
Scaffolding and Work Platforms
JLC subscribers have access to the Mar-Apr 2024 print edition at this time. Articles will be published online soon. In the meantime, you may browse the digital edition.
Welcome to Our Cottage Community in Norwalk, CT | 2021 Idea House
This article appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of This Old House Magazine. Click here to learn how to subscribe. Try to find a new house with a first-floor bedroom suite in the city of Norwalk, CT, an hour’s ride from Manhattan, and you may search in vain. Despite their popularity, “you won’t find any,” says builder Jerry Effren. That’s a deficiency he and his wife, Sandy, of Greyrock Homes, are looking to correct.
Welcome to Our Cottage Community in Norwalk, CT | 2021 Idea House
This article appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of This Old House Magazine. Try to find a new house with a first-floor bedroom suite in the city of Norwalk, CT, an hour’s ride from Manhattan, and you may search in vain. Despite their popularity, “you won’t find any,” says builder Jerry Effren. That’s a deficiency he and his wife, Sandy, of Greyrock Homes, are looking to correct.
The Seaside Victorian Cottage: A Beauty Reborn
This article appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of This Old House Magazine. Click here to learn how to subscribe. A diamond in the rough—“with emphasis on the ‘rough’!” That’s how This Old House host Kevin O’Connor summed up the 1890s Queen Anne in Narragansett, RI, when he first toured it last spring. Just under a year later, the house has been transformed, with a state-of-the-art 21st-century interior and a pristine, faithfully restored exterior.
Take a Look Inside the 2021 Idea House: The Rustic Modern Barnhouse
This article appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of This Old House Magazine. Click here to learn how to subscribe. The minute she set foot on the old farmstead in Afton, Minnesota, Amy Matthews says she “felt something magical about this place.” Located in the greater St. Paul area, just 35 minutes from her current home in downtown Minneapolis, the site is surrounded by wooded slopes and sheltered in a hollow carved long ago by retreating glaciers, screened from any neighbors.
The Solar-Ready Rooftop
There are two components to the net-zero house energy equation. On the one hand, there’s conservation: The house needs to be designed and built to require minimal inputs of energy for heating, cooling, lighting, and plug loads. On the other hand, there’s on-site power generation: No house uses zero power, so to reach net zero, the house has to generate some of its own juice using photovoltaics.
Are Builders Ready for California's Switch to Net Zero?
By Ted Cushman, senior editor at the Journal of Light Construction Ed. Note: The following article was written for builders and others in the construction trades. We publish it here because it does impact hearth products, and because Zero Net homes are in all of our futures. With almost 40 million people, California is the most populous state in the nation. It’s big enough to be a country, and not a small country at that: California’s economy is the fifth largest in the world.
Harvey Flooding: Who's at Fault?
Federal money has started to flow in Houston, Texas, for rebuilding and repair efforts for homes damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. But some homeowners say the government owes them more: They're suing the Corps of Engineers for floodwater releases that damaged their property.
A New Way to Meet the Energy Code
Ever since the Home Energy Rating System (HERS) index was introduced by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), people have been talking about whether builders should be able to use HERS as a way to comply with the building code. In some states, that’s starting to happen. The International Code Council (ICC) voted in 2013 to create an Energy Rating Index (ERI) pathway to code compliance, based on the HERS index.
New Skin for an Oceanfront Dormer
Dormers are a tricky cladding problem in the best of circumstances. If the dormers in question face the ocean on the shore of an island on the coast of Maine, it gets tougher. In July, JLC’s Coastal Connection went up on the roof with Mark Pollard, lead carpenter for Thompson Johnson Woodworks, on Peaks Island, Maine, to watch Pollard deal with the dormer-flashing challenge.
Robust Walls
Because of its versatility and convenience, rigid foam sheathing has become more and more common throughout the U.S. Contributing anywhere from R-3 to R-7.5 per inch, sheet foam is a handy way to boost the wall's total R-value without adding too much thickness.
Could the Mississippi River Change Course?
The Mississippi River is a foundational piece of America's infrastructure, serving agriculture, commerce, and industry for most of the U.S. heartland. Nowhere is the river more important than in southern Louisiana, where it performs critical functions, not just for shipping, but for the oil and chemical industries. But the river's not a piece of technology, like a highway or bridge; it's a living creature—powerful, wild, and fickle.
Double Whammy
[Updated Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017 at 1:00 PM Eastern time] Time had run out for Florida residents to evacuate on Sunday morning, as Hurricane Irma took its long-predicted turn to the north, regaining Category 4 strength on its forecast path up Florida's west coast, with Tampa squarely in the crosshairs. Miami and the Atlantic shore will be spared the storm's worst wrath.
Living With Wildfire
When the Waldo Canyon wildfire roared into Colorado Springs in 2012, destroying a record 346 dwellings in a matter of hours, it was a disaster. But it wasn’t exactly a surprise—at least, not to Colorado Springs Fire Marshal Brett Lacey. Colorado Springs, Lacey told JLC in a conversation last month, has a long history with wildfire. In 1950, a fire that started in a slash pile created during construction of a golf course got out of control, killing 10 firefighters.
An Airtight Lid (the Easy Way)
Conventional vented attics are one of the most obvious places to increase insulation values: Once you’re set up to blow fiber into the attic, piling the material a little deeper is easy. Air-sealing is a different story, though. The drywall ceiling below a vented attic is usually perforated by ceiling light fixtures, bathroom vent fans, plumbing vents, and wiring penetrations at partition wall plates.
Flood-Hardy Construction: Louisiana's Lesson for Texas
Hurricane Harvey made a second landfall on the Texas coast as a tropical storm this week, obliterating flood records and devastating coastal communities like Port Arthur. The New York Times had this report on Wednesday (see: "Port Arthur Faces Harvey Flooding Disaster: ‘Our Whole City Is Underwater’," by Jonah Engel Bromwich). As the storm finally moved inland, Houston caught a glimpse of the sun, but the city's flood crisis continued unabated.
Small Builders Feel Excluded by New Jersey Rebuilding Grant Program
New Jersey's "Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation" (RREM) grant program, funded by part of New Jersey's share of the $60 billion Federal appropriation for recovery from Hurricane Sandy, will be a big shot in the arm for New Jersey's construction industry. But small building companies say they are unlikely to share in the wealth, reports the Newark Star-Ledger ("Small builders in N.J. feel left out of state's Sandy reconstruction grant program," by Erin O'Neill).
A Passive House in Wildfire Country
Ramona, California, situated in the dry hills near San Diego, gets barely 16 inches of rain in a typical year. Almost all of it falls in a few torrential downpours during the brief winter rainy season: of the 15.18-inch precipitation total for 2016, 12 inches fell on a handful of days in January and December. In mid-summer, the sun-baked hills are bone dry: last June, for example, the Ramona airport weather station received precisely zero inches of rain.
Charleston Adapts to Sea-Level Rise
All over the world, coastal cities are on the front lines of climate change: When you live and work next to the ocean, sea level rise is hard to ignore. All along the Atlantic seaboard, rising seas aren't just a future certainty: They're a present reality. Charleston, S.C., is one city that is grappling with the problem—and taking practical steps to address it, now and into the future.
Dormer Flashing Done Right
A dormer facing the ocean on the shore of an island on the coast of Maine is exposed to some rough conditions: baking sun in summer, snow and ice in winter, and wind-driven sheets of rain pretty much year-round. And a dormer, of course, involves several tricky intersections between different roof and wall planes, clad with different materials. Making those complex intersections watertight is a head-scratcher.
As Flood Maps Change, Cape Cod Builders Elevate
Cape Cod in Massachusetts has some of the finest ocean views on the Eastern Seaboard. Some of the Cape's shoreline homes are situated high on the Eastern-facing bluffs, where flood is not a concern. But other parts of the shore are low enough to fall into storm-surge flood plains, and as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) re-maps the shoreline region, those flood plains have been expanding.
New Deadline for FEMA Sandy Claim Review: October 15
Special Coverage Read more on Sandy’s Aftermath The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after some prodding by lawmakers, has extended by one month the deadline for homeowners to ask for a review of their flood insurance claims from Hurricane Sandy flooding.
How Long Does It Take to Build a House?
You probably know how long it takes you to build a house. But you may also wonder how your experience compares to the rest of the industry’s. So in case you’re curious, the U.S. Census Bureau has some data for you. The Bureau just released the results of its 2014 Survey of Construction.
Maine Remodel Beats Passive House Standards
Remodeler Heather Thompson, supervisor Mark Pollard, and architect Rachel Conly were holding their breath as Harvey Johnson set up the blower door, connected the controls, and started the test. But it was high fives all around as the blower door told its tale: the three-bedroom, two bath house they had been remodeling all winter was blowing away their expectations (see Slideshow).
A Net-Zero Addition on Cape Cod
In the world of high-performance home construction, there's an ongoing discussion of how best to achieve ultra-low energy costs for homeowners. Airtight building shells, with heavily insulated foundations, walls, and roofs, are usually the starting formula. But on-site power production can also play an important role.
Island House Makeover: Starts at the Bottom
As a group, builders in the state of Maine take a wide range of positions on energy efficiency. At one end of the spectrum are a handful of companies focused on ultra-high-performance homes (the zero-energy, Passive House crowd). At the other end are a few builders who still aren't happy with the state's decision to adopt the 2009 International Energy Efficiency Code (a move that was required for states who wanted their share of stimulus package money after the 2008 housing market collapse).
EIFS
Posted on October 01, 2014 Drainable EIFS Exterior insulation and finish systems took a beating when “barrier” systems failed widely in the 1990s, but EIFS are back in a new, robust form More
Products: EIFS
Posted on October 01, 2014 Drainable EIFS Exterior insulation and finish systems took a beating when “barrier” systems failed widely in the 1990s, but EIFS are back in a new, robust form More
Wrapping an Old House in a Passive House Puffy Jacket
Play slideshow Maine builder, designer, and Passive House consultant Chris Corson is passionate about reducing the environmental cost of America’s houses — both new and old. Corson’s first Passive House project was profiled in the May and June, 2012, issues of JLC. This year, Corson’s crew is applying a similar method to an existing home in Newcastle, Maine, aiming to turn the old house an air-tight, superinsulated modern dwelling. Here’s a step-by-step look at EcoCor’s technique.
A New York City Passive House: First, Get Out the Shovels
The New York City borough of Brooklyn is a hot market these days (see New York Daily News, "Brooklyn real estate keeps soaring as both sales and rental markets end 2013 on a high note," by Phyllis Furman; and Park Slope Patch, "Brooklyn Real Estate Median Sales Price Sets 11-Year Record," by Rich Arleo). Unlike next-door Queens, Brooklyn is feeling the powerful economic spillover from upscale Manhattan and its rebounding financial industry.
Products: Insulated Vinyl Siding & Accessories
In the July/August 2023 issue, learn more about how home builders are using technology and artificial intelligence to drive efficiency.
Products: Heat or Energy Recovery Ventilators
In the July/August 2023 issue, learn more about how home builders are using technology and artificial intelligence to drive efficiency.
Project Profile: An Energy Makeover in Maine
Maine was one of the last states in the nation to adopt a statewide energy code for homes, and there are plenty of Mainers who still don’t like the idea. But Maine also has its share of energy-efficient builders, including some who are leading the nation with exemplary cold-climate high-performance homes. Case in point: Dan Kolbert and Portland-based Kolbert Building.
Project House Showcases Flood-Tolerant Building Assemblies
Elevated on four-foot piers, the Green Dream 2 “wash and wear” house has water-tolerant construction details that would allow it to survive deep water inundation with little need for repair or replacement of materials.
Beyond Zero
Maine Houses Raise the Bar Contributing more power to the grid than it consumes, the 700 square-foot BrightBuilt Barn in coastal Rockport, Maine, maintains comfortable indoor temperatures without the use of fossil fuel. Photo courtesy Bensonwood Homes Building a net-zero energy house is one thing in a mild climate, but what about a tough environment like the coast of Maine?
Custom Modular for the Coast
In a cost-competitive construction market, modular technology offers small-volume custom builders the efficiencies of factory-based mass production. The typical modular shell drops onto the foundation in less than a day — and includes plumbing, wiring, insulation, windows, and doors. So what about the “custom” part? The public perception of modular homes is that they’re basic, boxy, and not very stylish.
Raising Carolina
Coastal builder Paul Buske has fond memories of his family's summer vacations during his youth. Most summers, the Buskes would travel from Virginia to a North Carolina beach to spend a week or two at a rented one-story bungalow. "I slept on a Naugahyde couch on the screen porch," recalls Buske.
Rebuilding the Gulf: Cooling Strategies for the Gulf Coast
In the storm-battered Gulf Coast, uncounted building projects are still disrupted by the devastating effects of 2005's Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But on the Baton Rouge campus of Louisiana State University (LSU), one building project's purpose has actually been strengthened by the disaster.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Ted
Contact Ted, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack