Posts Tagged ‘recycling’

Our Resolution is a Revolution

Todd Hawkins

 

Dec 29 |09:34
As unlikely as it seems, housing is beginning a renaissance because of the Great Recession and blow up of the housing market. Companies are innovating all aspects of design, construction and product manufacture, trying to stand out, thrive or simply survive.

 

BuilderFish’s mission is teaching and helping people improve their houses into Lifetime Homes, that your house should seamlessly adapt to you as life progresses and changes.

 

What we do can be applied to any style of house in any area of the country whether building new or retrofitting, and includes proactive attention to every detail from the door knobs to home automation. There’s a new dawn for all of it, and your home should include if you want to live comfortably and conveniently no matter what happens to you and your family (even pets!).

 

Our residential housing stock is old, nearly obsolete with a median year built of 1974, and there’s a glut of beat up foreclosures (shadow inventory of well over a million units) not yet on the market. While some perceive housing is newer following our recent construction boom, the demographic fact is most of our nation’s houses were built
in the decades immediately following WWII. So the picture below is typical of the vast majority of our homes. Imagine inside the lay-out, user friendliness and efficiency of that house.

The good news, a bulldozer isn’t the cure. What’s required is modernization, improved air sealing/quality, water proofing, energy efficient systems and interior redesign accentuating ease. We describe as “custom new within old walls” emphasizing BOTH energy and personal effort efficiency. “Green” building gets all the attention but accessibility and easiness are just as important and apply to every area of the property including the yard.

 

As we head into 2012, think about your home and what you could do to make it livable for a lifetime, or where you plan to go if you don’t.
 

Green Baloney

Todd Hawkins

 

Dec 20 |09:16
All you need to remember: build a tight house and mechanically draw in fresh air. And I don’t mean “fresh” from an attic, crawl space or garage, bring in from the Great Outdoors. Think airplane, but NOT a tight house without fresh air circulation, that would be like living in a coal mine. If you live in a tight house without fresh air, you’re farming dust and allergens.

 

Old school builders espouse that you don’t want to make a house too tight. My favorite rebuttal is from an architect teammate, Charles Hendricks who typically replies, “Which window do you want me to leave out?” (By the way, Charles is an expert in indoor air quality.)

 

Green building is the “in” thing right now and we’re all for energy (and social!) sustainability and maximum efficiency. Folks, this is simply smart construction with newer, better products and all soon to be code.

 

Greenwashing_grinch

(graphic courtesy TerraChoice)

However, there are plenty of dubious designations, certifications and unsubstantiated claims (even by the government! Imagine that?) resulting in “green washing” (i.e. all that’s “green” is not gold). Attorneys call it something else, making their cash register ring with LEED-igation (lawsuits over unsubstantiated performance claims). I’m not damning any particular designation or measurement, I’m not a scientist, but undeniably there’s Bovine Scatology in unverifiable claims of utility savings and conservation, the modern day snake oil within the housing industry.

 

Martin Holladay of Green Building Advisor wrote one of my favorite posts weeding some of the green junk claims by our government and others in A Plague of Bad Energy-Saving Tips. One example, running ceiling fans during the winter (which I admit I believed). Does ZIP to lower your heating bill, actually raises your electricity bill if you’re unnecessarily running fans, only reason to do it is circulating air so you’re not dust farming.

 

So ’tis indeed a good thing that owners and housing professionals are concerned about energy efficiency and sustainability. But back to my main point, tighten your house, suck in fresh air from outside the walls and skip the green baloney.
 

Green Washing

Todd Hawkins

 

Apr 26 |15:08

Feeling Green Washed? (A numbing sensation similar to cramming for finals.) I’ll admit we do sometimes, keeping abreast of the alphabet soup of industry acronyms, certifications and designations. Below I’ve written a short glossary of some primary certifications (certainly not a comprehensive list). Bottom line, it’s all good although skeptics argue the purported savings from “going green” are unverifiable and simply marketing fluff from industry participants trying to reinvent themselves post housing bubble.

As with most things in life, the truth is somewhere in between. Is the Green Movement a fad? Certain parts are surely puffery. Take cleaning products for example, do you really need to buy the “green” disinfectant cleaner (which almost always costs more than the conventional brand)? Probably not, cleaning with white vinegar is about as green as you can get and it’s way less expensive.

So some of the current “green claims” in construction will likely fade away too as more prime initiatives, likely those connected to improved energy efficiency (recapture) and the modernization of an undeniably old housing stock, become mainstream through the adoption of new construction code. Just the reality that owners and industry participants are discussing and implementing these systems proves building science has turned a corner from the design room to construction site. I think green elements are here to stay regardless of the slogan or terminology used to express it in the future.

And the point we preach at BuilderFish, you can “be green” just by re-using what’s still functional in your current home assuming the element isn’t detrimental to some other aspect of your whole house system. In other words, recycling your home includes being green. If you do only one thing when it comes time to improve your home, remember to look upstream and downstream from whatever element you’re upgrading and make sure you’re not reducing the benefit of your expense/fix by ignoring something else that will diminish the advantage of your improvement. For example, if you’re getting a new roof, don’t just stare at the roof, look around. How is your attic insulated? What’s the condition of the venting, duct work and HVAC within the attic?

Don’t miss the forest staring at individual trees, your home is a system. This is an opportunity to practice re-use if something still works properly in concert with the improvement.

Don’t know the difference between Energy Star and the Death Star? Here’s a short primer:

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Homes (LEED-H): The US Green Building Counsel created and administers this certification that incorporates a LEED Rating, a point total assigned to homes that meet or exceed guidelines for “high performance, green homes”.

ENERGY STAR: A home must achieve between 15 – 30 percent improved efficiency than “standard homes” as set forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Home Energy Rating System (HERS): The HERS Index is another scoring system based on a HERS Reference Home developed by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) to which the subject property is compared.

National Green Building Standard (NGBS): The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) created a points system similar to LEED-H in that a total rating value is accumulated through scoring 7 categories. NAHB issues guidance via their NAHB Model Green Home Building Guidelines (GBG).

There are also regional (EarthCraft Homes) and local (LEAP) programs and associations.

Study those acronyms because there will be a quiz!

I probably should’ve written this at the top for those who stopped reading long ago but, regardless of designation, all of these entities provide check-lists so any builder can comply. In other words, they promote and encourage participation by all housing professionals. Regardless of skepticism, the building trade is indeed greening. And really, how can anyone argue against improving efficiency?