|
|||||
|
This weekend we get a special treat: we’ll be taking delivery of over 250 tropical plants and installing two indoor living walls. It’s the culminating step in a complete renovation of Area Yoga Studio in Downtown Brooklyn and promises to transform the character of the space.
Arranging and installing the plants presents [...] Ed from NJ Renewable Energy made a great video about the construction of his passive house that you can view below. It discusses the many benefits of building a Passive House, the amazing energy savings that are possible and the details behind how they built this specific one in New Jersey. As a NY [...] Eco Brooklyn obsesses over energy. Our projects are built to minimize heat loss and optimize gain, while providing individual homeowners ways to generate their own energy through solar panels. We want to minimize homes’ reliance on energy generated through fossil fuels and nuclear power. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Fukushima Daiichi. These names instantly bring [...] Being a green builder is a constant search for more ecological ways of doing things. That’s why we listened when Justin Hall-Tipping told us that in the future, all energy could be sustainable, green, and free. Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO of Nanoholdings, gives a TED talk about the energy applications of carbon nanomaterials. It’s worth a watch, [...] First 2000, and now 2012: Years in which people think the world might possibly end. The world probably won’t end with a bang, but might just crumble beneath the accumulated consequences of our actions. Meanwhile, American politicians’ opinions of science, especially climate science, are at an alarming low. Sometimes TV makes me wonder if [...] As New York green contractors, we’re always interested in emerging innovations, but take special interest in locally-developed technologies because we believe that green solutions should have a local focus. An effective way to build green is to ensure that each building make the best use of the environment in which it’s located. In New [...] We’re Brooklyn-based green builders dedicated to turning our local neighborhood green, but we’re always following the latest developments in global standards for more sustainable living. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met in Durban over the past two months in order to hammer out a plan for extending the Kyoto Protocol. [...] At Eco Brooklyn, we do energy-efficiency retrofits that involve huge amounts of air sealing, air barriers, vapor barriers and insulation. We aim for the super stringent Passive House building envelope standard and net-zero energy consumption. This is as radical it gets in energy conservation. Sealing the home in an airtight shell requires a [...] If you live in New York city you know the summers can be hot and muggy, with humidity levels shooting through the roof. As a New York green contractor we are faced with the challenge of creating healthy and happy indoor air environments while keeping energy consumption low. So how do you remove humidity [...] As a New York green contractor you learn very quickly that “natural” does not mean “good”, nor does it mean “bad”. Case in point: the mushroom. Mushrooms are some of the most beneficial human foods available. But you eat the wrong one and you will die. Not good, not bad. Powerful, yes. So the [...] On a beautiful fall day in early October, Eco Brooklyn, a New York City green contractor, took to the South Plaza of Union Square in downtown Manhattan to check out New Green City, an event hosted by GrowNYC. The event hosted many contributors, ranging from non-profits and schools to entrepreneurs, government agencies, and corporate [...] Director of Eco Brooklyn, Gennaro Brooks-Church discusses how the Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) will work once it is completely installed in the Passive House building. The NY green contractor is currently renovating this entire Harlem brownstone, and the addition of an ERV is a vital part of the standards that need to be met. [...] We just received our triple pane windows from Europe to our Passive House site in Harlem. The windows will help the brownstone achieve its necessary air tight specs and save up to 90% in energy costs compared to an ordinary building of the same size. If you enjoy the video, please give us a [...] Last week a judge dismissed Henry Giffords law suit against USGBC. Gifford had pointed out that energy audits of LEED buildings showed no greater energy savings than normal buildings of the same class, and in fact LEED buildings showed WORSE energy savings in many cases. Green Source Magazine speaks about it here. USGBC countered [...] The web site CleanAirNY.org has an email list worth subscribing to. Sponsored by the NY Dept of Transportation, the alerts tell you whenever NY is at risk of smog. You’ll get an email the day before saying, “Hey tomorrow is a clean air day!” with advice on what to do: drive less etc. It [...] Hemp is actually one of societies oldest cultivated plants and has only in the past century gotten a bad name mostly due to political and financial interests wanting to dissuade its use. But recently it is becoming more popular again as a building material. Check out these videos on the topic. They show how hemp is [...] Here is an interesting article from OilPrice.com. It outlines the best way to live in a world without oil, something most people foresee in the next 30 years or so (we are all really guessing but that is one number). Preparing for a world without oil is a little like preparing for the end [...] Good design is probably the most effective green building technique there is, more than how much you salvage, what chemicals are not used or what technology you put into the house. Good design is what makes a house green or not green. With this green builders perspectivein mind, reading the classic book The Design of Everyday [...] Sheet rock isn’t very green. It requires a lot of heat to make it and the ingredients are not great. I’ve had little luck finding sheet rock alternatives. Plaster and lath is one but the labor costs make it hard to compete with sheet rock. The best I do so far is use salvaged sheet [...] One of the things Eco Brooklyn is focused on is eliminating the use of concrete. Concrete is normally used in the following areas of the brownstone: the foundation footings, the cellar floor, front sidewalk. Concrete and its ingredient of cement is not green. It produces massive amounts of CO2. So we are eager to [...] It is striking that despite the many green building going on in the US that there still remains some blaring gaps in our knowledge and available products. I encountered another of these gaps recently in my search for a good front door for a Brooklyn Passive House style brownstone. I was looking for something [...] If you haven’t signed a petition against Fracking please do so with this link. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/676/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4322&tag=youtube If you want the negative view on Fracking check out this three minute Video. And yes Haliburton and Cheney are once again part of it. It is so funny how they pop up wherever there are mass deaths, ecological [...] On the Eco Brooklyn job sites we have certain green building concepts that we use. They are mostly coined by me to help the crew and clients understand what Eco Brooklyn’s core goals are. They are easy rallying points to help us all stay on track. These terms can be searched on this site [...] On my quest to find information on the effects (negative, positive or neutral) Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) I have uncovered the following negative info. In fact some if it is the strongest proof yet that EMF is harmful to us, or at the very least causes our bodies stress. The reason this is of interest to a [...] A few nights ago Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News answered a question about whether the oil disaster would increase the price of oil. He answered that it wouldn’t as the spill was such a small amount of oil relative to actual usage. He said all the oil that has spilled so far is [...] The table below gives R values of various building materials. To obtain a wall or ceiling assembly R-value you must add the r-values of the individual components together (this won’t give you an entirely accurate R value if you’ve got thermal bridging but it is good enough for rough estimates). If we are building [...] There is an increasing opinion amoungst New York solar installers that solar thermal pays for itself quicker than solar PV. Looking at the numbers I thought so too and would recommend solar thermal as a better investment if the client had to choose between solar PV and thermal. Of course it is great when [...] I realize concrete has huge embodied energy and creates tonnes of CO2 during it’s manufacture but I still can’t resist reading up on the uses of concrete for residential interior applications. Eco Brooklyn is guilty of making some concrete counters too. I just read Concrete at Home by the concrete fanatic Fu-Tung Chen. He [...] The following info to chew on was compiled by Martin Holladay, former associate editor at the Journal of Light Construction, former editor of Energy Design Update, currently senior editor for Green Building Advisor. GreenSpec recently delisted powered attic ventilation fans, to which the powered attic fan manufacturers have taken great exception. - – – [...] Happy Vernal Equinox!!!! Today at 10:33 PDT, 13:33 EDT, 18:33 CET is the Spring Equinox. The moment when the relation of the Sun and the Earth are in equipoise. Our planet hangs in perfect balance for one brief flash of a second…all balanced, the day and night everywhere, for all of us in San [...] |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Eco Brooklyn - All Rights Reserved |
|||||