If you’re a regular reader of this magazine, you’ve likely noticed some contradiction within our pages. Just take a look at the table of contents for this issue—you’ll see we’re informing readers of the need to care about upfront carbon emissions in “Why Care About Carbon?”, while seven pages earlier we detail step by step how to pour a giant concrete slab, which is responsible for an enormous amount of embodied carbon (“Placing and Finishing a Heated Slab.”) We are solidly straddling the line.

In my seven-year tenure at Fine Homebuilding, I have watched us make these decisions time and again. They are no accident. FHB offers best practices and expert advice, which means navigating both the practical and the ideal. We must consider the upfront carbon emissions and global warming potential of the materials we use, and aim to lower them whenever possible—public policy is ordering that we do so. So we’ve explained the science and best practices when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint.

But it’s also best practice to consider the most adequate floor for a post-and-beam workshop that will house heavy equipment and act as material storage for a remodeling company. Pouring and finishing a large concrete slab, in this case, is something homeowners, builders, and remodelers may be confronted with, and so we have chosen to publish this story in this issue, to explain how to do it right. But it is no less true that we should, at the same time, care about the larger results of our decisions.

We can’t ignore the impacts of this industry. There is an environmental cost whenever we choose to build—for example, when we use spray foam or when we rely on plastics over sustainable materials. As we learn more about the materials and assemblies that negatively affect our health, we continue to report on them—and the best and most practical choices for moving forward. But we cannot wave a wand and make carbon-emitting materials obsolete. So if you’re going to pour a slab, we’ll advise you how to make it supersmooth, without a chance of failure. After all, there’s an even higher cost to doing it twice.

—Samantha Maver, Executive Editor

From Issue 317