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How one island-based camp-to-cottage transformation in Stoddard, NH, embraced green living and got topped with a cool metal roof.

Hip or Hype?

The "Green Seal," reports journalist Paul Smalera in MSN's "Money Watch" column , is Good Housekeeping Magazine's way of guaranteeing the quality of everything from yogurt to storm windows. Unfortunately, it only guarantees the quality of companies that advertise on its pages. Moreover, none if its advertisers are ever denied the designation. It's pure and simple "greenwashing," which Smalera defines as "the art of scoring an environmental touchdown simply by moving the goal posts."

For years, while consumers muddled over the necessity for energy-efficient building systems, there was a sleeping giant in the building industry.

Now, after years of skyrocketing heating fuel prices in the U.S. and associated movements to conserve the same, the giant is awake. Structural insulated panels – SIPs, as they’re known to builders – are coming into their own and causing some who knew nothing more than conventional stick-framing to give the alternative building method a look.

But it’s new. It’s different. And that makes the general building public – homeowners, general contractors and even large commercial contracting firms alike – skittish.