|
||||||
|
|
Eco Brooklyn recently obtained a copy of McGraw Hill’s Green Building: Square Foot Costbook 2012. Construction cost data books are intended for use by planners and builders who would like to get a quick, rough idea of how much a job might cost. I think it’s pretty cool that green building is at a point where resources like [...] I attended last Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street march to Times Square because as a New York green contractor I feel alligned with many of the issues brought up in the Occupy Wall street movement. There was a big crowd and for the first time in my life I saw more New Yorkers than tourists [...] On 10/11/11 Eco Brooklyn, a green builder and supporter of a better America and world, went down to the Financial district to check out Occupy Wall Street. Nearly 30 days ago, a diverse group of citizens took to the street in NYC, and marched down to Zuccotti Park, formerly “Liberty Plaza Park”, placed in [...] As a New York green contractor the truth is that our work is very much about things not in NY. Each time we salvage wood from a dumpster we aren’t saving a NY tree. We are saving a Canadian of Brazilian tree. As a company we may be acting locally but our vision 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 [...] The year has ended and a new one has begun. I have prepared a state of the union statement for where Eco Brooklyn has been and where it is going. Here goes…. 2010 was a turning point for Eco Brooklyn: we became too successful for our size. Up until last year our love for [...] The book Good House Cheap House: Adventures in Creating an Extraordinary Home at an Everyday Price doesn’t set out to be about green building. It aims to show nicely designed and affordable homes. But it ends up showing good green building as well. The many case studies in the book show a pattern. Firstly all [...] I see the Brooklyn Farmers’ Market as the antithesis of a Twinkie. The Twinkie is always the same. It lasts forever, is full of chemicals and is made on some distant planet. And never does it create a healthy sense of community. The Brooklyn Farmers’ Market on the other hand is possibly the most powerful community force [...] 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 [...] I love the psychology of sales. It is what distinguishes humans from numbers. The sale item that a shop keeper takes a loss on to get people in the door so they buy other things. Half price drinks at the bar with the hope people will stay and buy full price drinks. Pricing something [...] The other day I passed by a Manhattan condo renovation and saw they were throwing out good stuff: metal studds and flooring. The contractor told me it was a 3,000 sq.ft. condo that right before the current gut reno it had just been gut renovated! It had high end everything: Poggen Pohl German kitchen, [...] Here is a cool insight into nature. It is by Michael Pollan. He also talks about the Polyface Farm which is run by “grass farmer” Joel Salatin. Joel is interviewed a lot in the Food Inc Movie. Check out the talk below, follow the links above. All very cool stuff. Not directly connected to [...] 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 [...] Sixty Minutes ran a very interesting and sobering segment on the state of real estate now and to come. According to them there is a second wave of collapsing mortgages as some more exotic mortgages like the option arm readjust their interest rates, spiking the monthly payments on people. If for some reason the [...] A reporter was over at the Brooklyn green show house last week and I was talking about the importance of Brooklyn green contractors being affordable to middle class people in order for our goal of turning Brooklyn green to be successful. She mentioned another green developer who had built a house in Phili for [...] The Magazine called The Real Deal just published a comprehensive analysis of Brooklyn real estate. Bottom line: prices have dropped to 2005 levels. The wost hit were speculative new construction levels like Williamsburg and Bushwick. Carroll Gardens and surrounding areas fared the best because of the lack of new construction. There is [...] One of the most revolutionary things to happen to our company was the discovery of Demo Bags, a contractor garbage bag alternative. It is revolutionary because it is so simple yet so profound. We are a green construction company in Brooklyn. We salvage, reuse, and recycle like obsessed neurotic 1950′s house wives if they [...] This just out: Green Business is Booming. I agree. Eco Brooklyn is getting almost more jobs than we can handle. From the wire: The Pew Charitable Trusts has conducted the first-ever hard count across all 50 states of the actual jobs, companies and venture capital investments that supply the growing market demand for environmentally [...] Here are two banks who supposedly offer financing for green homes in New York. I haven’t used them (yet). Bank of America 800-900-9000 2007 Special Financing Pulaski Bank Home Lending 913-338-4300 2008 Special Financing As a green contractor in Brooklyn we need to be very aware of current tax rebates and incentives since it has an impact on the cost of any job. And the rebates are constantly changing. To stay on top of them we work closely with Steve Goldberg, a Tax Consultant who specializes in this [...] ‘We learned that a product doesn’t sell just because you’re trying to do good in the world. You still have to have a healthy distribution, a good marketing strategy, and price the product properly.” Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s, on their “Peace Pop” product that flopped. This is an important point for those [...] As a green contractor in Brooklyn, NY. I can post an add on Craigslist.org and get a hundred responses in an hour of highly qualified people asking very little for their work. Such is the nature of the economy, a highly skilled region and immediate technology. But here is the kicker: I get people [...] There is a gut renovation going on accross the street from our green show house. It is a classic renovation where a lot of money is being spent and not much thought going into how it is done. The owner is getting reamed with prices IMO. A couple weeks ago there was a dumpster [...] Our budget for the Brooklyn green show house got decimated with this banking crisis. So we don’t really have a budget any more. It is basically as cheap as we can make it. For our kitchens for example we were going to buy salvaged kitchens, make them in house out of salvaged wood [...] When we went into contract for the property that is currently being built as a green show house it was during the “normal” financial times of March 2006. No storms were on the horizon and everyone was still giddy from the constant rise of funding and property prices. Our plan was to do what [...] Here is a useful list of policies put into action by our gov that affect green building. The list is courtesy of Green Homes NYC A. 10684 / S. 8134 Sponsors: Cahill (D-Ulster, Dutchess) / Maziarz (R-Niagara) Signed Into Law: 9/25/08 Creates a new NYSERDA grant program to provide incentives for green residential construction [...] This Bush bailout fiasco which in many ways is a total con actually has at least one good side: it earmarks $17 Billion is tax incentives for green building. A tax incentive is no use if you aren’t making enough money to actually pay taxes of course, so for many people a tax incentive [...] Value Engineering is a useful concept. In the article below it is applied to co-ops but can be applied to any building practice. Saving Green, and Greening, Too Value Engineering Analysis helps condo owners and environment It’s no secret that the current trend in home greening has been a boon for developers and [...] |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2012 ECO BROOKLYN INC. - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
