There are so many green building conferences, expos, and tradeshows that it’s hard to keep of track of them all. For the past two years I’ve attended West Coast Green here in San Francisco, which to me, is a rather important one to go to, as they put everyone together under one roof!

The conference is still a month away yet everyone is abuzz with its keynote speaker this year, former Vice-President, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Eco-Warrior Extraordinaire Al Gore! Also not to be missed is Sarah Susanka, best selling author of the book The Not So Big House , and author David Suzuki who is also the TV host of The Nature of Things.

This year the conference has moved to the San Jose Convention Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. It will be held on September 25-27. One of the unique things that sets this conference apart from others is the “Homeowners Day” on the 27th. Most conventions are geared toward the professionals in that particular industry; West Coast Green offers a day that’s open to the public and all of the events and speakers are formatted for homeowners and their interests.

(If the price of admission is a little too steep for you there are volunteer opportunities available which give you free pass to all of its events.)

It looks to be another fun-filled, educational event. I hope to see some of you there!

Hi Everyone-

I’m back after a very long break. I wasn’t on vacation or anything; just trying to finish up school and get through this wretched exam. I’ve been working on my certification in sustainable building, and can now officially say I am a Certified Sustainable Building Advisor (CSBA). This distinction was hard earned – the test was the equivalent to passing the bar exam and you only had three hours!

In addition to finishing school I had begun teaching as well at the local city college. This summer I taught a hands-on construction course to adults looking for a career change and to young students hoping to get into the trades. I’ve also been approached to pen a green building textbook!

I am happy to be back to normal (somewhat) and look forward to resuming posts on what’s going on here in the US of A as well as any and all things related to sustainable design and building as I am up to my eyebrows in it.

Ciao for now,

Arcadia Maximo, CSBA!

PS: If you have any questions or comments regarding green building please feel free to drop me a line.

“What’s a nice Irish girl like you doing in a place like this?” might well be the opening line for conversation with me. Twenty-seven years of calling the Sonoran Desert home has me convinced that you can transplant, but you can’t take the green out of the girl. The new green that is.

Recently I downsized from a large house. The search for a two-bedroom house in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains, in Tucson, Arizona, offered few choices. With three weeks to go before handing over my previous home I settled on the smallest and ugliest house on the list. Unloved, lacking in any exterior charm whatsoever, the house had the elements that I was looking for. Namely: small; spectacular views of the mountains; a neighborhood where dog and I could walk in the desert, and, a rarity in these parts, a twenty minute walk to a grocery store, several restaurants and coffee shops. Furthermore, improvements are scheduled for the main artery road to include sidewalks, bike path and noise reduction road surfacing.

The house is brick construction, circa 1983 and a structural inspection, pronounced it “sound”. Built into a hillside with garage below, the steps leading up the front door enforce daily cardio.

Living in the desert affords a blissful climate for eight months out of the year and blast furnace heat June through September. Anything you do to limit direct effects of the Sun’s heat is a bonus. This house has south facing wall of French doors….a conduit for the sun …opening onto a back yard area that housed a shabby, plaster coated pool, and enough concrete on which to drill (even grill) a regiment. Not a blade of grass or leaf marred its jarring horribleness!

My first task was to create shade. I did my homework and located a company that made aluminium trellises. One product, touted to look like aged redwood, exceeded expectations. We covered the entire back yard (excluding the pool) with a trellis, 14 ft. high and affording 60 percent shade pattern. I did research on using recycled aluminium but it was not available. Deep awnings now shade the remaining windows on the south side of the house. The pool was resurfaced with a black “Pebbletec’ to retain heat. The aging pool heater and chlorine filtering system went to the dump and I put in a salt filtering system. The concrete surface was coated with a spray -on product “Kooldeck” in a soft terra cotta and softened the concrete. Next came pots and vines. On the east side I put in mature wisteria, which have already reached trellis height and are forming a green wall. To climb the columns I chose an orange trumpet vine and a jasmine…both frost hardy and evergreen. The result is a sala fresca, an outdoor room that is cool, inviting and shady. By this time next year, the vines and wisteria will cover the entire “roof” area. The direct sun into the great room has been eliminated and despite recent 100F plus temperatures, the interior house temperature has not risen above 84F. Compare that to the October morning when I first saw the house and the thermostat showed an interior temperature of 97F.

The front of the house beautification involved carving out a portion of the hillside. The dirt was carted round back to form a “mesa” behind the pool wall on which I planted native Mesquite and Palo Verde trees. A small area was walled in for a front garden; the Irish in me surfaced and I do have a bed sheet sized lawn. I have planted grape vines and a fig tree, creating green surfaces on exposed walls to offset bricks retaining heat from the sun. A tiny side yard off my study has become a vegetable garden and with the help of a large shade umbrella, tomatoes, onions, herbs and other vegetables are thriving and my study is a cool, pleasant spot. Along the perimeter of the property I have planted citrus trees.

Now I can hear the voices : “what about water…she’s created an oasis”. Everything is on a drip system that is carefully monitored to give exactly the amount of water needed. My exterior trees make use of grey water from the washing machine and creating catchment wells around their trunks prevents run-off. Native trees are not watered; I have built dry river beds to carry monsoon rain run off into basins; plantings outside the walls on the west side are the beneficiaries of pool back flow. Plans are in place to monitor rain run-off this coming monsoon season and, based on that pattern, to install a water -harvesting holding tank in the obsolete underground septic tank.

My point is that a girl can have her green in the desert and remain green. So many voices clamor that green demands sacrifice. My contention is that green demands knowing your property and applying common sense management. I made one self-indulgent concession this year…I planted a bed of annual flowers to tide me over whilst the native perennials and treasured roses (brought from the old house) got their toes in the earth. This coming fall that bed will be home to vegetables.

Gerry Hogan has lived in the USA for 43 years. Her primary career was in the manufacture of instruments for observing the surface of the Sun. Her retirement career is the publication of an on-line magazine for women www.connectionsforwomen.com

After moving into our first home, a 3-bed terrace in Worthing, we are finally getting around to doing some work on it. Up until now, we might as well have been living in rented accommodation as we still have the previous residents’ carpets and wallpaper in situ, as well as their cooker, fridge, lampshades and curtains!

Of course, as a trying-to-be-green girl, I’m keen for us to do the renovations in as eco-friendly a way as possible… but the inevitable purse implications are hitting before we’ve even peeled off the first strip of wallpaper (which, incidentally, covers the entire house, all walls and ceilings too!).

So I’m posting here in the hope that fellow green girls will offer us some support and inspiration and perhaps their own eco home stories!

Our first job is to replace the big window in our kitchen (that doesn’t open!) with French doors onto the back garden, and replace the back door with a window. As we’ll be taking out the original PVC frames, now is the time to think about materials for the new frames.

At first, we were considering soft wood but due to the position of the doors (south facing, lashed by wind and rain and burnt by the sun) our builder advised against this option as they would need treating every year and would need replacing in about 5 years anyway.

We then headed over to www.greenspec.co.uk who advise the following:

First choice:• FSC durable temperate hardwood • FSC temperate softwood treated with plant based paint systems
Second choice: • FSC temperate softwood clad with recycled Aluminium
If you are compromised: • Use a certified softwood painted with low VOC paint
Avoid: • PVC • Aluminium without thermal breaks.

We had already ruled out the softwood options so headed over to local Sussex business, The Green Wood Company to check out hardwood frames. The staff were lovely and we were really hopeful until we opened the envelope and the quote tumbled out… £4000. A similar enquiry to another local company produced an even bigger quote.

uPVC, GreenSpec’s ‘one to avoid’ is suddenly looming large on our window frame horizon.

The issue is not just the money. We also have to bear in mind (as our parents have been quick to point out!) that this is not our lifelong home. We would hope to be here probably another 5 years. Imagine if we invested in hardwood only to have it ripped out by the next residents and replaced with uPVC to match the other windows in the house. Would it then have been better to have gone for uPVC in the first place? The mind boggles…

At the moment, we have our builder seeking out hardwood and uPVC quotes for us for comparison and in case he can get a better price – so the work is on hold. But if anyone has any suggestions or advice we would love to hear them – post your comments below!

Wood washed up on Worthing beach – isn’t there enough for our windows?!

Take care,

Katie

To say our housing market is in a slump is like saying Hurricane Katrina was just a few heavy winds!  It’s bad.  So what are home builders doing to attract buyers, they are “greening” their inventory.  Because we all know that green is the hot buzz word of the day and put eco in front of anything and people will come a running!

I’ve been reading in the Wall Street Journal how the big production builders are adding green elements such as Energy Star rated appliances and increased insulation so they can market their homes as “green” and sell them.

My question is why aren’t these few features standard in any home? And why are they only implementing them now – when forced by a housing crunch.  This leads me to believe that if our housing market wasn’t in such dire straits then the big builders would not be using any green features at all.  The WSJ agrees with me as they state “it is a strategy born out of neccessity.”

Basically it all comes down to money.  Homes built truly green cost a few more dollars yet they are better built.  Why? Because truly green built homes exceed building codes, we go above and beyond what is required of us.  When any contractor comes up to you and says “oh yeah I build to code” you should run the other way.  We green builders have a saying around that, “building to code is just the bare mininum anything less would be considered illegal!”

Although I despise the “greenwashing” in my industry, eco-terrorism is not the answer either, which is what is suspected in some housing developments in Washington State.

If you are in the market for a new green home please keep the ancient code of Hammurabi in mind: “BUYER BEWARE”

Lloyd Alter an architect, developer, inventor, and now author at www.treehugger.com said that “the key to sustainability is to simply use less. And, the key to happily using less is to design things better”.

Well I like this idea, on the one hand because it expresses the essence of design in general and on the other hand it’s true indeed!

But what if we try to apply this to building construction methods and materials? Let’s take wood for example, as a widely known ecologically sustainable material (certainly we imply that forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable way i.e. FSC certified). Then let’s analyze wood housing statistics: around 80% of all low-rise buildings in USA and Canada are made from timber frames. In the UK around 60% of new houses are built this way. It’s the traditional construction and certainly the most common building method. But is it the most natural?

About half a year ago our company started a most promising project we named EcoBase. The challenge was: to design an eco-friendly wood house for a family of moderate means.

We researched what kind of wood construction could be considered more sustainable, more environmentally acceptable, and more stable. Looking into ancient history we found out that as long ago as 700 years people made dwellings from…. logs. By comparing a common timber frame house and typical log house we found out that:

Log homes are true natural eco homes. Because of the innate ability “to breathe” and to create a unique natural balance between temperature and humidity of a dwelling, the air is always fresh and humidity is kept at an optimal level. All this is without any modern air control devices for humidity or temperature control. This balance is maintained because the natural wood structure is kept intact.

In the event of fire, log homes burn more slowly than conventional timber framed housing and therefore risk less fire damage. Fire would spread much slower across the face of a log wall than on other wall-covering materials. When logs burn, they form char, which acts as an insulator or a barrier, shielding the wood from the fire and slowing the rate of burn-through. Tests on some logs have shown they burn at a rate of only 1 1/2 inches per hour. That means that in a home with 6-inch walls, a fire would have to burn intensely for hours before the log wall or structural beams would fail because of burn-through.

As mentioned previously in this article log homes are simpler. Yes, you need to use more wood volume (maybe that’s why they are called wooded houses) but it is the only wood that you use. There is no need for any kind of external boarding, vapor seals, water or wind-proofing materials. Only the natural wood! It’s simple and more sustainable. Even more so comparing the fact that more energy is consumed to produce all these extra insulating materials typically found in timber framed housing.

Of course like any other building construction log homes have their own demerits, but if you try to live in tune with nature then why not choose a better more natural way? As I do not mention all the differences between timber framed and wood houses point for point, leave your comments, add facts and complete this picture.

Article written by Alex from EcoBase with editing support from Stacy at Tum Tum Tree Designs.

It’s been a little while since I complained about lighting outside buildings (and inside for that matter) so I thought it was about time I had another moan.

The government has given their response to a petition on floodlighting I signed a while ago. The petition requested a ban on uneccessary floodlighting and asked the government to lead by example and reduce the lighting on their own buildings.

You can read the whole response at the 10 Downing Street e-petition site but the straight answer is that they do not intend to bring in a policy which bans floodlighting.

They say that “good practice” is to use various types of lower energy lighting but importantly they do not suggest making even this the law. Why not???

My favourite statement throughout their whole response is “Effects of reducing lighting levels or turning lights off vary from case to case”. Surely reducing lighting levels or turning lights off will reduce energy in every case!

They then state that safety should be a consideration (and balanced against financial and environmental cost) and I wouldn’t argue with that. So, let’s not necessarily have a blanket policy to ban floodlighting altogether but consider the use of it more carefully – I’m sure that alone would cause great reduction in energy waste and light pollution.

I strongly feel that this is an issue which shouldn’t be brushed off in the way it was in this government response. So, if you feel that light pollution needs to be tackled join me in signing a couple more petitions:

Make it illegal to leave lighting and electrical devices on in any establishment whilst the building is vacant or outside of working hours

Save energy consumption by reducing streetlight usage

Switching off a light is one of the easiest things to do so why is it so difficult to make it happen?

The Opinion of a certified green builder:

I must get this off my chest as it has been on my mind for some time now.  While watching TV one night a commercial came on for the building insulation product which features the Pink Panther cartoon character as its mascot.  I thought nothing of it until the very end of the commercial when the announcer said “Pink is Green”!

I nearly fell out of bed!  This was a very blatant example of  misleading the public and jumping onto the green bandwagon since it seems to be the fad du jour!  How you ask? The commercial advises its viewers to insulate their attic spaces to save on energy cost, this is good and well known across the board.  What I have a problem with is that I wouldn’t use this product to do it!!

Just because you tell your consumers to insulate their homes doesn’t all of the sudden make your product green!  That’s a freakin’ given in construction!  I went to Owens Corning website to investigate this further and despite their green efforts I became even more miffed.  I do applaud corporate giants that are at least trying to make a green difference but only when it’s done because it’s the right thing to do and not the latest trend.

Their website boasts of their use of recycled content fiberglass in their batts insulation.  So what!  So do the other brands.  Their site boasts of how their product is being used to help cut down energy costs in various applications, well guess what, so do the others!  What I couldn’t find on their site is one of the most important things that got me to switch to their competitor-Johns Manville (JM)- and is called out on construction specs for green buildings which is Formaldehyde Free! I even went as far as to call Owens Corning who told me that yes their product does contain formaldehyde, but the JM product is just a marketing ploy.  Oh really I asked, but why?  The response was their product is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified!  Excuse Me, but LEED only certifies buildings not products!! I was also told their product has the GreenGuard seal.  This one stopped me cold in my tracks until I went to the GreenGuard website.  Good grief it seemed like every insulation product ever made got their seal of approval.  I’m surprised toilet paper wasn’t on the list too!  Plus I also know that many third party certifications are industry funded.  Here’s a great article on that very topic which confirmed my suspicion.

What You Need To Know:

Truth be told there are even far better insulating products to use than fiberglass batts (I’ll save that for another discussion), but since this commercial showed the pink fluffy stuff lets stick with that – please be aware - regardless if it’s white, pink, or yellow, it doesn’t retain its R-value if it’s installed improperly.  Smashing it into the stud bays is the worse way to install batts, who cares if it’s the greenest, most sustainably made product in the world; it won’t do any good if it’s installed wrong.

I don’t hate the pink product and I am clapping with one hand for the efforts they have made thus far, and if I ever saw them at any of the many green building conferences I attend I would tell them (hmmm….I wonder why I never see the pink stuff displayed at the green building expos?).

I see my rant is long so I will stop now, but if I’m to believe that Pink is Green, then I guess I would also believe that burning coal is better for the planet because you’re not using wood from trees!

[No, I don't work for John Mansville , and stay tuned for my next post when I talk about all the wonderful things General Motors (another coporate giant) is doing to make cars eco-friendly.  I'm serious!]

Three great, green events coming up!

The Big Green Home Show
Ideas and inspiration to build or renovate a greener home.
Date: 15 – 18 November
Venue: National Self Build and Renovation Centre, Swindon
Visit The Big Green Home Show website for event and venue details

Fashion Made Fair
Now you can afford to be stylish and conscious. Get 80% off Fair Trade, organic, hemp and recycled clothing and shoes
Date: Friday 16th November 5.30pm-8.30pm Sat 17th 10am-6pm and Sunday 18th 10am -4pm
Venue: Fabrica Art Gallery, 40 Duke Street, Brighton, BN1 1AG
Download the Fashion Made Fair event flyer for more details

A Green Christmas Fair
Hosted by One Green Earth, A Green Christmas Fair makes going green this Christmas an easy option by bringing together a fabulous range of ethical companies so that shopping can be done with a clear conscience.
Date: Sunday 18th November
Venue: Century Theatre, 291 Westbourne Grove, London
Visit the One Green Earth website for full details.

No need to complain about having nothing to do this weekend!

Green is all the rage these days and on this videocast from IntoTheBox.tv, we take a look at what green means in New York City real estate. After former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace prize, we wanted to dig a little deeper into the green garden here in New York.

Certainly, Battery Park City is doing its part. There’s the Solaire—a green rental building built four years ago in Battery Park. The building urges its residents to ‘live green’ and there is a myriad ways that this building is utilizing environmentally-friendly materials and resources.

Additionally, the Visionaire is currently under construction in Battery Park City—an environmentally friendly 35-story condominium development slated to be completed in Fall, 2008.There are some roadblocks on the green train with all the pre-war buildings in New York City; the bones of these buildings simply aren’t environmentally-friendly.

Lee H. Skolnick, partner and founder of Lee H. Skolnick Partnership, said that he envisions seeing green on all of the rooftops of the city’s pre-war buildings—gardens, plants and trees—and that, ultimately, the entire grid of the city can be a green one.Skolnick’s company develops buildings that are ‘LEED-certified,’ meaning they are up to par on standards for environmentally sustainable construction, which are developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. Currently, New York City has 10 large green residential buildings. Seattle, however, has our fair city beat—with 23 green-certified buildings.

IntoTheBox.tv is all about peering inside the surreal housing market here in New York City. We take a look at the news, trends and politics of the NYC real estate market. The stories here are even better than fiction. There is a new videocast each day (Monday-Friday) where we provide you with an intimate view of the way New Yorkers cope with the absurdities of living in the best city in the world!