Here is a great animation of the “trash islands” floating in the Pacific Ocean. Billions of pieces of plastic are collected by the currents and corralled into unfathomably large floating garbage heaps. People like to compare them to the size of Texas. I saw one person saying it was as much as three times [...]
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Here is a design our architect intern Matthew Pethley sketched up for a row house we are designing in Bed Stuy. it is not what we eventually designed for them on but I wanted to share it because the ideas are really cool. It would make for a beautiful space. It addresses the issue [...] Here are some of the latest earthship videos sent to me from the folks at earthship.com Comments on earthships and the Copenhagen summit. Here is another cool one: The one peeve I have with this last video is “What the world needs now is one Billion earthsips, immediately.” That sounds too much [...] Michael Reynolds is one of my favorite visionaries. He is doing what Eco Brooklyn aims to do with eco brownstone renovations in Brooklyn – Build net zero homes out of trash – only he does it with earth ships in the Midwest and beyond. Check it out. Really cool. These are the only justifiable [...] I think new construction is to building like heroin is to health. It should be outlawed as a threat to our well-being. There are enough old buildings for us to renovate. New construction is a needless act of arrogance and self destruction. There’s really not much more to say. I could explain why I [...] 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 [...] 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. [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] I was just blogging how much we like earthen floors because for one it doesn’t use CO2 producing concrete. Then I decided to calculate how much CO2 your typical Brownstone basement would produce if you poured a concrete slab. Answer: Almost ONE MILLION cubic feet of CO2 is let off to pour a simple [...] The correct way to finish off a brownstone is to put lots of insulation and then a concrete slab, right? Correct maybe but not the greenest way. Concrete creates way too much CO2. The greenest way and a great alternative to concrete is to put lots of insulation and then an EARTHEN floor. Yes [...] Here is a great image. It shows the true value of a Brooklyn brownstone green renovation. This is something you can’t put a price to. It is like the credit card advertisement: Insulation $10 Radiant floor $15 Fiberglass Windows $12 Watching your baby play naked while it snows outside: Priceless This photo really [...] HAVC manufacturing companies throw a lot of info around without consumers really knowing what is true. As an energy efficient HVAC installer we are very interested in the real energy efficiency of a unit. Is it really a SEER 25? How did they do the test? Does it retain that rating when the temperature [...] This is probably my farewell post to what I think is one of the stupidest building I’ve seen in a long time. I say it is a farewell post because I don’t have much hope for rectifying the problem and am moving on. I’m referring to the 2009 installation of window grilles onto the [...] Here is a video of green architecture ideas from around the world. They are very 1970′s, pot smoking from outer space sort of structures IMO. But they make me think about green architecture possibilities in Brooklyn. Our canvas is the brownstone. What normal contractors paint on it is currently pretty standard stuff. I [...] 350.org is a site worth knowing about. It is at the helm of a very sensible movement to get the CO2 levels of the world back down to 350 part per million, which is a safe level. Right now they are at 387 and it isn’t very clear whether they will keep going up [...] Here you see the Eco Brooklyn team diligently salvaging some beat up old stairs in a Brooklyn Brownstone. Along the Eco Brooklyn credo we salvage anything we can. Buying new is our last resort. But we keep in mind the cost. If it costs the same in materials and labor to salvage than [...] Here is a cool window shade made out of a box and semi wild plants. It shows how we can put plants in a lot more places that the hyper manicured garden. Window sills, ledges, above doors, on walls, as fences….plants can be part of our building structure just as we use other materials [...] I just met with landscape designer Rachel Poritz who is designing a green roof design for some gas stations. Hey, even gas stations can benefit from a green roof. The gas stations are not just any pit stop though. They are Gaia Certified gas stations. They will sell gasoline derived from socially and [...] Here is a great idea for nice wood seating. Of course you could use new wood, but the use of smaller pieces means you have more chances of finding good salvaged wood for the job. We like salvaged wood from old Brooklyn brownstones because the wood is so much nicer and stronger. It is [...] The book 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick is a great little read and it even endears yourself to Architects. On the job site Architects from my point of view as a green contractor are not liked that much. They get in our way. A green builder is a very [...] The book Green By Design, Creating a Home for Sustainable Living by Angela Dean is a good exploration of green design and the process behind it. In green building the process is just as important as the end result. A beautiful home is not beautiful in the green builder’s eyes if the materials are [...] Green roofs use an engineered substrate, rather than natural soil, to support plant growth. There are a number of commercial varieties available, but these are often shipped considerable distances from supplier to consumer and can be expensive. To reduce the cost of our roofs, it would be best if we could produce our own [...] A green builder should be treated the same as a coroner or dentist. You don’t call them if you don’t have to. The greenest building is to not build at all. At the industry’s current evolutionary state in building it is best to avoid building if possible because building inevitably consumes resources and destroys [...] |
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