Design
Brownstone: No Heat Needed!
We just went away and left our brownstone for two weeks. We turned off all the heat. The only appliance making heat was the fridge. And while we were gone NY got hit with one of the worst snow storms in history.
How cold was our home when we came back? A balmy 60 degrees. Not [...]
Green Spiral Staircase
Here is a spiral staircase we are designing for a client. We salvaged an antique round oak beam. It measures 14 feet long and is a solid 8 inches in diameter. The wood is so dense it takes four guys to lift it. We tried cutting it with a chainsaw and broke the chainsaw. It [...]
What Do Brooklyn Green Contractors Do On Their Day Off?
What do brooklyn green contractors do on their day off?
Build igloos of course!
The trick to building a good igloo is to use deep cake pans or small storage boxes to make snow bricks. The other trick is as you slant the walls inwards be careful NOT to slant the bricks. The walls slant inwards but [...]
Anatomy of a Brownstone Event This Spring
The NY City College of Technology does this cool seminar series called Anatomy of a Brownstone. This spring I’ll be one of their speakers. For more info see below.
Spring 2010 Offering: Layouts and Lifestyles
Course Code: BRNS 032
Date: Saturday 3/13 1 – 5 pm
Fee: $40
Directions: click here
When it’s time to renovate [...]
Green Building gets better with age
I call myself a green builder and as such am constantly thinking what that title means. Possibly one of the best definitions of green building I can think of is this: does it age well?
Green building is meant to be sustainable, meaning it can be repeated on an ongoing basis. Clear cutting trees is not [...]
Concrete Countertop Formula
Here is a good formula for a beautiful strong concrete countertop:
4 parts white cement
1/4 fly ash
4 white sand
4 marble dust
1/3 fiber
It creates a nice white counter top that is also very strong. We do custom concrete counters and find that this formula really works. We sometimes add decorative aggregate. One that really works is broken [...]
New Green Homes Book
The book “New Green Homes” by Sergi Costa Duran, Liliana Bollini and Ethel Pohl is a focused book. It is an architects visual study of modern homes around the world. They claim the homes are green but I didn’t really see that.
What I did see was a study of a very specific architectural style, and [...]
Hobbit Houses and Glass Box houses
I’m seeing two styles in green building. One I call the Hobbit house and the other is the Glass Box house.
One looks like the past, the other the future.
Here are some examples of the Hobbit house.
Hobbit Houses are:
low tech, low embodied energy, dark, local materials, high thermal mass, part of the earth, small, have a [...]
Brooklyn Brownstone Extentions and the Stack Effect
This is the season of phone calls from clients needing Eco Brooklyn’s help with their brownstone extensions. The problem is always the same: they are cold.
They call us up because we are Brooklyn brownstone insulation specialists.
Here are my observations having seen and fixed extensions for a while now.
There are two types of extensions. The first [...]
Building Green Book
This book has a long title: Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs. But then again it is a big book.
Written by Tim Callahan and Clarke Snell this book overflows with 600 pages and 1500 images. The book aims to [...]