The Pretty Good House
Dan Kolbert, Kolbert Building / co-author, Pretty Good House
Have you heard about the building standard that's not a standard? Learn how to create energy efficient, healthy, sustainable homes with an emphasis on making the concepts and technical details accessible to builders and designers of all levels of development. One of the co-authors of the Pretty Good House book will go through the essential elements of what makes a Pretty Good House and share how it can help make low-carbon energy efficiency more accessible to contractors, designers, and clients.

Planting for Wildlife
Deborah Perkins, First Light Wildlife Habitats
Learn from The Personal Ecologist about how to build native plant communities that support an array of species and promote biodiversity in your home habitat.

Retrofitting Foundations
Randy Rand, passivhausMAINE
Foundations are the cornerstone of any home, and retrofits offer an opportunity to enhance their performance for water, thermal, and air-tightness management. In this session, we’ll explore strategies for addressing Maine’s diverse foundation types—concrete, CMU, stone, and more—through the lens of high-performance and Passive House principles. Learn how to manage moisture, improve thermal performance, and achieve superior airtightness to create a durable, efficient, and healthy home. Join us to gain actionable insights for retrofitting foundations that stand the test of time.

Driving Electric in Maine, Incentives and Testimonials
Hogan Dwyer, Efficiency Maine
Barry Woods, ReVision Energy
Cindy Talbot, Cooper Morrow and Kenneth Copp, EV owners
Learn about Efficiency Maine's current EV related incentives and charging infrastructure updates, plus hear from Mainers with years of experience driving a plug-in electric vehicle for a real world view of what it’s like to drive an EV in Maine. Bring your questions!

Creative Ways to Reinvest in Your Property — ADUs
Parlin Meyer, BrightBuilt Home
Chris Lee, Backyard ADUs
Julien Jalbert, Knickerbocker Group
Join us for a panel discussion and Q&A with representatives from Backyard ADUs, Knickerbocker Group Prefab Pods, and BrightBuilt Home as we explore ADU infrastructure, construction techniques, zoning, and creative ways to approach financing.

A Holistic Approach To Your Home’s Mechanical System
Andrea and Shawn LaPlante, LaPlante Home Services
Solar, Electrical Upgrades, EV Chargers, Heat Pumps, Generators (and how they complement traditional heating)

Efficiency Maine’s Residential Offerings
Andy Meyer, Efficiency Maine
Efficiency Maine offers rebates and loans for energy saving investments including EVs, heat pumps, weatherization and heat pump water heaters. Learn what they are, how to access them and web-based tools including: the contractor locator, cost of home heating calculator and cost of water heating calculator and EV charging station locator.

Landscaping to Protect Your Home
Helen Watts, Criterium Engineering
Landscaping affects your home. Done well, and maintained, it helps show off your home, helps it dry out, stay cool in the summer. Ignored? It grows moss on the roof and funnels water toward the foundations. Let’s talk shrubbery!

Solar and batteries for retrofitting and new construction
Chris Jones, ReVision Energy
Whether you have an existing home or are drawing up plans to build your dream home, come learn how to prep your home for solar, battery storage and the all-electric household model. Modern technology makes it cost-effective and sensible to build a 100% solar-powered home, with no utility bills and a minimal carbon footprint.

The Ecology School at River Bend Farm: The Greenest Living & Learning Campus in Maine!
Drew Dumsch, The Ecology School
The Ecology School at River Bend Farm is a 313 acre working farm on the banks of the Saco River with an 8 acre, solar-powered living & learning campus that includes a 9,000 sq.ft. dormitory and a 7,000 sq.ft. Poland Spring Education & Dining Commons. These two buildings are pursuing Living Building Challenge Certification, the most rigorous green building certification process in the world. Learn all about the many green building approaches that The Ecology School models at its River Bend Farm campus and how you can do similar things in your own homes and businesses.

Heat Pumps in Maine—The Way Life Should Be
Roger Willett, Homans Associates
Everything you wanted to know about how heat pumps work, what to expect from them for heating, cooling, comfort and operational costs and debunking some common myths.

Tips to improve home air quality
Christy Crocker, Maine Indoor Air Quality Council
Learn easy, practical measures you can take in your own home to reduce your exposure to common indoor pollutants such as mold, radon, particulate matter, and more.

How We Built It: A Peaks Island Revival
Heather Thompson, Juniper Design + Build
Will Wheeler, Juniper Design + Build
Claire Betze, BuildingWorks
In one of Juniper Design + Build’s most comprehensive projects to date, workshop attendees will learn about the many cutting-edge technologies utilized to reduce carbon and increase energy efficiency in a high performance family compound on Peaks Island where an aging 19th-century cottage once stood, including:

- Deconstruction vs. Demo! Using a deconstruction process instead of conventional demolition methods to salvage materials of the original 1890 structure and reduce landfill waste.
- The utilization of new-to-market carbon-reducing materials including Timber HP® for wall and roof insulation and Glavel®, an all-in-one structural insulation utilized below the basement slab.
- The house’s all-electric mechanical systems including an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV), ducted air source heat pumps, electric baseboard backup, air source heat pump hot water, and an induction stove.

Creating Bird-Friendly Landscapes: Merging Bringing Nature Home & BirdSafe
Andrew Tufts, Maine Audubon
This presentation explores how to design landscapes that support native biodiversity while reducing hazards for birds. Combining the core principles of Bringing Nature Home with BirdSafe strategies, it highlights the importance of native plants, habitat restoration, and mitigating threats like window collisions and light pollution. Attendees will learn practical ways to create safe, thriving environments for birds and other wildlife in their own backyards.

Top 10 Building Science Fails
Colin McCullough, All Around Home Performance
This light-hearted look at building science issues in homes helps to highlight some common issues which impact energy efficiency, comfort, and health & safety. Come see if any of the Top 10 Building Science Fails are in your home and what to do about it!

Pre-fab Construction for High Performance Homes
Parlin Meyer, BrightBuilt Home
Jason Reynolds, GO Logic
Alison Keay, Unity Homes
Planning to build a new high-performance home? Learn about the off-site building process from three companies that have pioneered the use of modular and panelized methods for building homes that are energy efficient, healthy, comfortable and durable.

Heating the Whole Home with Heat Pumps
Nick Moore, Dave’s World
What do I need to consider when I make the move to heating my whole home with heat pumps? We will cover what this means to you now, and how the new Efficiency Maine rebates impact the next 100,000 heat pumps will be installed in our beautiful state of Maine.

Creating Native Species Corridors: Empowering Youth Climate Leadership
part of the Sustainable Landscape series

Amy Thomas, Amy Thomas Native Landscapes, Wild Ones Midcoast Maine, Camden Native Plant Sale
Amelia Tracy, Youth Climate Leadership Initiative
Join us for an engaging workshop that explores the critical role of native species corridors in restoring ecological balance and how we can create public awareness and action through the Youth Climate Leadership Initiative. Participants will learn about the challenges of rewilding landscapes, from the unintended consequences of many commercially available seed mixes, aggressive exotic nursery plants, to the harmful use of systemic herbicides and pesticides, and introduce the Youth Climate Leadership Initiative, a program dedicated to engaging youth for climate leadership. By engaging young people to learn about the need to create native habitat and become involved in building native habitat throughout our bioregion, we can develop healthy landscapes that are prepared for the changing conditions of the climate crisis.

Providing green home builders and their clients information and a framework to make habitat landscaping an integral part of green homebuilding to offset land fragmentation which often occurs with development, home building and even renovation, ranging in scale from a few feet to thousands of acres.