Green
No Fracking in NY
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 disasters and wanton [...]
Eco Brooklyn is Featured in NY Times Blog
Here is an article on Eco Brooklyn in today’s NY Times Blog.
http://fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/sustainable-brownstone-101/
The general gist is that green building can be affordable. They say Eco Brooklyn “practices guerrilla green-building techniques” to achieve this, which involves a lot of dumpster diving and salvage.
We try to set up more formal ways of collecting material but it is not easy. I [...]
Cancers from Environment ‘Grossly Underestimated’
Cancers from Environment ‘Grossly Underestimated’. ”Daily Exposures Cause Far More Cancers Than Once Thought”, a Presidential Panel Says. According to studies almost half of the US population will be diagnosed with Cancer over their lifetime….
It makes me think of the Roman empire where they regularly ate off lead plates and all their plumbing was lead. The [...]
Wood, Cancer and Boiled Frogs
When most people think of wood they don’t think cancer, but studies have shown that wood workers have a higher level of respiratory cancer.
This was brought to my attention when a local lumber supply sent me the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for wood . At first I thought, ” Why do you need MSDS [...]
Green Building time and cost
Building along green standards does not significantly increase the construction time or cost. There is no reason why not to build green since it may save money in the short term and is guaranteed to save money on a monthly basis once the building is done.
I wouldn’t say this is the case with most [...]
The Homeowner’s Guide To Mold Book
The Homeowner’s Guide To Mold by Michael Pugliese is a thorough examination of mold and mold remediation. I recommend it for any contractor. It won’t get you to being certified but certainly will give you the information needed to assess a mold situation and take action.
The author is an expert at mold abatement and gives [...]
Tree Houses
Here is a cool tree house slide show.
It is a far cry from Brooklyn green building. A respite from our boxy row houses.
Convert Partner To Green Building
I got an email recently with a funny title: Need Help Converting Husband. What fuel does he run on now?! The sender of the email, the wife, was not aware of the humor though. She was asking me for info to convince her husband, who from the sound of it seems like a lost case. [...]
Eco Brooklyn Show Garden Seeks Participants
We are planting our front and back gardens at the Eco Brooklyn show house and welcome anyone who wants to be involved.
The gardens are edible gardens as well as aesthetically beautiful. Drawing from horticulture, permaculture, feng shui, xeriscape, gray water and Biodynamic gardening we seek to redefine the definition of a Brooklyn brownstone garden.
It is [...]
How To Grow Fresh Air
Did you know that in addition to carbon dioxide, humans release as much as 150 volatile substances from our bodies, including carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, phenol, and hydrogen sulphide?!
I got this from the book “How To Grow Fresh Air – 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office” by Dr. Wolverton.
Since we have put [...]
Green Building Directories
There are a number of ‘green’ product listings and databases on the web; Greenspec at BuildingGreen.com and Pharos, for example, but most (if not all) of them require a paid annual membership. One good source of free information on green products is Oikos.com. More than 2,500 companies are listed in a searchable database.
Others are
WNC [...]
Permaculture, Pigs and Bees
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 green contractors [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Food Inc and Green Building
I had been avoiding the movie Food Inc for a while. I’ve seen lots of animal rights movies: they are depressing. They make me angry because of the barbarity and frustrated because I feel helpless.
But one evening I was feeling especially brave. It turns out the movie is UPLIFTING!
Sure it jumps all over the place [...]
Earthen Floor Brownstone
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 earth, [...]
Natural Green Cleaning
Today’s modern home is loaded with toxic and polluting substances designed to make domestic life easier.
The cost of these commercial, chemical-based products can be high — long term health concerns for the family, and environmental pollution caused by their manufacture and disposal. In the US, for example, 1 in 3 people suffer from allergies, asthma, [...]
Waste, Reuse and Cheese with Worms
I was just speaking with an Eco Brooklyn intern who is an architect for a non-green firm in Queens. She was lamenting a current job she is working on where they are tearing out beautiful cherry wood details to turn the building into crap rentals.
All my workers have similar stories and one of their main [...]
Quote of the Week: Sustainability is like teenage sex…
“Sustainability is like teenage sex. Everybody says they’re doing it, very few people actually are doing it. Those that are doing it are doing it badly.”
-Aussie architect Andrew Maynard
Here at Eco Brooklyn we definitely aren’t getting enough sex. Lucky for us green building turns us on almost as much and we have plenty of that! [...]
Global Dimming
Here is a sobering documentary on what is called Global Dimming, the effect of pollution particles blocking the sunshine on the planet. Ironically global dimming helps block the sun’s rays and thus REDUCES Global Warming. But the moral of the story is not very positive. This documentary apart from being fascinating is also a very [...]
Brooklyn Green Brownstone Renovation Template
The way Brooklyn brownstones are currently renovated does not work. It does not work for the environment nor for the inhabitants’ comfort and utility bills.
Eco Brooklyn is focused on redefining how a brownstone gets renovated. We use the Brooklyn Green Show House as an example of a renovation template that works for the triple [...]
Green Building Defined
Green building means a lot of things to many people. As a green builder I think long and hard about the definition of green building for our company.
I’ve boiled it down to four key concepts:
good for the planet
long lasting
energy efficient
holistic
Any green building practice has the basic tenet that it is helping the planet, meaning the [...]
Hitting Eco Brick Walls With Clients and how to Overcome Them
I just had a contractor come visit our Brooklyn Green Show House. He was up from Virginia visiting family and decided to check it out. He isn’t a green builder but wants to move in that direction.
Where he’s from he says there is very little green building interest and he is very frustrated with his [...]
Brooklyn Green Architecture
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 ask myself, how [...]
Brooklyn Modern Book
The book “Brooklyn Modern” by Diana Lind, published by Rizzoli, is a real inspiration to any green builder or contractor in Brooklyn because it shows great examples of creative, green renovations of Brooklyn buildings.
Most of the renovations are not intentionally green, although some are, but the home owners are part of a Brooklyn breed of [...]
350.org and Turn Brooklyn Green
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 or [...]
Using Plants to clean household air
One of the largest issues in a house is indoor air quality. Up until recently most people usually don’t pay any attention to it and subsequently the amount of headaches, foggy headedness, breathing problems and body aches are much higher than need be.
Not coincidentally the above body symptoms are also what happens to you when [...]
Demo Bags – Trash Bag Alternative
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 did [...]
Green Building Aesthetic and Naturalist Architecture
Do you remember when vegetarian foods tried to be meat? Tofurky anyone? There was this identity crisis. Now vegetarian food has its own identity. It isn’t trying to taste exactly like a beef hot dog any more. Veggie burgers taste nothing like hamburgers yet they taste great.
I think green building is going through the first [...]
Brooklyn Green Flooring
The greenest flooring option is to keep the one you have.
If it is wood, then simply sand it and seal it with tung oil. It will look better than new. If it is tiles, then re-grout it and replace the cracked tiles. The exception is if it is laminate or linoleum – then get [...]