Green Building Elements

The First Lady went green on St. Patrick’s Day, and not just with her choice of footwear or her order to dye the White House fountain green.  Joining the members of YouthBuild, a non-profit organization that teaches low-income youths construction skills while they work toward their GED or high school diploma, Michelle Obama helped build an affordable, energy efficient home for a Texas mother whose mobile home was damaged last year by Hurricane Dolly.  YouthBuild is celebrating their 30th anniversary by inviting current students and graduates of the program to show off green building techniques of all types on the National Mall.

Mrs. Obama took the opportunity to speak on the importance of both community service and building green:

“The work you’ve done here is quite impressive, and the evolution of your work to include green building, something that we’re talking more and more about as a nation, energy-saving practices, and environmental awareness, it demonstrates how YouthBuild has endured as a leading non-profit organization, keeping up with the times, making sure that the training and education that you get is current.” Read the rest of this entry »

Building Green Remains Strong, but LEED Popularity Slips

In the race for being certified as a ‘green’ building, LEED has been the certification of choice thus far, but some are not feeling so eager to obtain certification any more.

While the majority of builders and building owners support building green, the popularity of LEED certification has slipped a bit according to a recent survey conducted by Allen Matkins/CTG/Green Building Insider. The consensus from 900 design professionals, contractors, constructions planners and building owners was that 93.4% agreed that it is worth the time and effort to build green, but only 66.2% believe that obtaining LEED certification is worth the effort.

Has LEED lost the lead in the green building certification race?

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed by President Obama includes an uncapped 30 percent tax credit for the installation of small wind turbines, such as Windspire, (www.mariahpower.com), a residential and commercial wind power appliance.

The tax credit, previously capped at $4,000, gives all American taxpayers (residents and businesses) credit based on the total installed cost of an installation of one or more wind turbines.  The legislative package includes more than $42 billion in energy-related investments.

“Wind power is critical to the President’s new energy initiatives, said Mike Hess, CEO of Mariah Power. “It is refreshing that the new administration recognizes the potential behind renewable energy as a part of this important new legislation. Windspire transforms an untapped form of power – wind – into a cost effective, practical, and smart energy solution that is well-suited to homes and businesses. This is the first step toward a future in which our daily lives will be powered by renewable energy.”

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While we are on the topic of decreasing our energy footprints in small homes, I’d like to share the simple and small round yurt design, that has been around for ages. The yurt is a type of “Green Weefab Mini-Home” and can be customized into another kind of hand-built “Earth Sheltered House” for those on a budget.

Yes a yurt is a portable, felt-covered, wood lattice-framed dwelling structure used by the nomads in the steppes of Central Asia for centuries, and yes it is also a modern dwelling here in the west. I have often seen yurts perched on ocean side clifftops, in horse pastures for riders, and used as outdoor guest houses for those with big yards. Read the rest of this entry »

Send Vice President Biden and the other members of the Middle Class Task Force your ideas about creating green jobs and making buildings more energy efficient.

President Barack Obama announced today the formation of a Task Force to strengthen the American middle class.  As Vice President Joe Biden, a member of the group, describes the task force on the White House website, “This task force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting the middle class.  It is our charge to get the middle class - the backbone of this country - up and running again.”

First on the agenda for the task force is the creation of green jobs and the ways home energy efficiency can both save homeowners’ money and create green jobs that cannot be outsourced.  From the White House:  “If we create jobs that aim to reduce your energy costs - like your electric bill and your home heating bill - that means you have more disposable income for other things. Creating more green jobs has multiple benefits.  It helps the economy as a whole; it helps our environment; and it will save you money.” Read the rest of this entry »

Now comes news that strikes at the heart of every greenie - with all that we are doing to improve the environment and stop global warming, it may not make a bit of difference.  This is hard news to take.  What is a self-professed “tree hugger” to do?

The Bad News

Yes, you heard it right.  Some climate change is irreversible, according to a report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory on January 26, 2009.  “People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that’s not true,” climate researcher Susan Solomon said in a teleconference.  The truth is some of the damage is already done, and there isn’t much we can do to change it in our lifetimes.

One of the biggest culprits in the planet’s warm-up is carbon dioxide.  Not only because of the “greenhouse effect,” but because it takes hundreds of years to break down.  Other gases take much less time.  We are currently dealing with not only our own emissions, but possibly the emissions from centuries ago as well.  And our actions today will influence the environment of generations to come.

So what can we do?

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In an effort to stabilize the housing market, Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson introduced S. 253, which seeks to expand the homebuyer tax credit passed by Congress last year.  Instead of offering a tax credit only for first time home buyers that must be repaid over a 15-year period, the expanded proposal includes tax credits for all purchasers that do not need to be repaid unless the home is sold within three years.  Included in the proposal are the following:

• Extending the eligibility period for the credit to December 31, 2009.
• Increasing the credit amount to 10 percent of the home price capped at 3.5 percent of FHA loan limits.
• “Monetizing” the credit so it is available at time of closing
• Allowing the credit to be used in conjunction with mortgages financed by state or local bonds.

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We want to start the New Year off with an eco-bang, and so we’re launching a new Green Home Contest. Low Impact Living and Joie de Vivre Hotels challenge you to make your home as green as you can! We’re going to reward the greenest home of all with a luxurious 3-night stay at the very environmentally-friendly Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. More on the hotel and the prize in a minute!

Low Impact Living will identify the single family home (and its proud owners) that has the lowest Low Impact Living Index (calculated using our Environmental Impact Calculator), and we’re going to share with you what that family has done to get there. Don’t worry if you haven’t done big projects like installing solar panels or a wind turbine - as the calculator shows, many of the best green home projects are simple and inexpensive. We’ll show you how to identify projects to make your home more eco-friendly. The contest will close on February 15, 2009. So you have time to make green changes!

What you have to do to enter

1. Visit our Household Environmental Impact Calculator and calculate your base LILI (Low Impact Living Index). It will only take you five-ten minutes to use the calculator and create your account.
2. Once you have entered all of your base inputs, move on to the “select projects” page of the calculator. Make sure you only check projects that you’ve finished (or will finish by February 15th) before you log out.
3. Make sure that you log out or save your profile before leaving - if you just move on to another web site without logging out, your inputs could be lost.
4. If you’ve already created an account through our calculator, then you need to return and, log in again. We’ve added some new features recently, and they won’t work unless you refresh your account.
5. The calculator isn’t all-encompassing yet, so there may be projects that you’ve done that don’t show up. If this is true, send us an email at contest@lowimpactliving.com describing what you’ve done. Low Impact Living staffers will review your efforts and award up to a 5% additional deduction for compelling projects.

How we’ll select the winner

The contest closes on February 15, 2009, and we will announce the winner on March 1. This will give us time to check with the finalists to make sure that they’ve completed all of their checked projects. (Past entrants to our green home contests are not eligible.)

If you are a finalist (in our top 10 lowest LILI scores), we may ask you to verify that your projects are actually completed, via photos or receipts / invoices for work performed. We’ll also ask for your address (not to be published!) so that we can verify entered information about your home. If you are a winner, then you have to be willing to let us share your projects and process with everyone via our blog, and to provide us with the photos and project descriptions necessary to do that. You’ll become a green star overnight!

What you could win!

The greenest homeowner will receive three nights at Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. The Hotel Carlton is a member of the Joie de Vivre chain of hotels, which is deeply committed to making sustainability part of its core business operations. In fact, their mission is to “adhere to the strictest environmental standards, engage in sustainable practices and maintain an impeccable quality of guest experience.” The JDV Hotels environmental program includes hotel-wide recycling programs, composting, use of renewable energy, use of recycled paper products, energy-efficient lighting and much more. To learn more about Joie de Vivre’s commitment to sustainability, click here. To learn more about the Hotel Carlton, click here.

So, good luck, and get to greening!

{Readers, I apologize ahead of time for the tone of this piece, it is strictly stream-of-conscience, and may not make sense when I’m done.  I will return to “proper writing style” with my next article.}

I have been reading and seeing a lot recently about whether the green building movement is a fad or is here to stay, whether global warming is a myth, and how builders and owners are considering green measures only if there is a monetary reason for doing so.  There is controversy in other areas outside of green building, including paper or plastic, whether to buy organic food, and what to do with all the environmentally unfriendly stuff we’ve accumulated over the years.  Not to mention what do you do when you want to do the right thing, but you can’t afford it?

I’VE HAD ENOUGH!!!  It is time for a different perspective, one very different from our usual ego-driven, myopic view of what effects ME, and only ME.  Here are some thoughts that I think help put things into perspective (at least for me):

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A unit of Mitsubishi Plastics Inc. is providing panels for artificial skating rinks that require absolutely no ice.

The petro-based resin panels are made in Spain, measuring 1.965 meters by 0.965 meter, and are available for both domestic ice skating and hockey rinks. Um…one ice skating rink, please. Hold the ice.

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