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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 [...] 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 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] “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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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 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 – [...] I am still fighting it out with my fellow green builders on a list serv. I still eat meat, although a lot less, and am still not sure if my body is made to not eat meat…..but…here is what I wrote: After cooling off a bit I am ready to come back in. I [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] The book Mini House Now is a picture book of small houses, specifically houses with less than 1080 square feet. They are all free standing houses, most of them in the country side but one or two surrounded by other houses. The pictures are great. Do you have any idea how hard it [...] Eco Brooklyn is desperately in need of a green space where we can store and share with others all the materials we salvage. The city provides and we constantly find good materials in dumpsters and demolitions. But we have no place to put it! The Brooklyn Green Show House is bursting with material and [...] I just got invited to a greenwashing event called “NEW YORK CITY’S FIRST EVER PRESS ONLY SHOWCASE OF ECO-LUXURY PRODUCTS & SERVICES FROM THE PRODUCERS OF GO GREEN EXPO”: You are invited to showcase your environmentally friendly LUXURY product or service at New York City’s premiere Eco-Luxury Press Event on September 22nd. Leverage Rubenstein [...] Boutique Green Building is the dominant business model of most residential green building right now. It is a combination of three things: 1. bad business management Usually you have a skilled artisan who is not naturally a good business person. So their efficiency is not great and they waste resources and energy. This drives [...] Here is a great run down of wood types by a master carpenter, Stan Pike. Check out that page. It is cool. I found the site while researching Black Locust, an underused wood in the US. It is considered a weed pretty much so grows in abundance. It is one of the hardest woods [...] As a Brooklyn green contractor we are always looking for ways to save resources. The key ones are water, electricity, and raw materials. We don’t mind using up human energy. It’s good exercise and pretty much limitless. But when you hear facts like the ones in the video below you realize how important it [...] This image shows the time it takes to attain old growth for a forest. It is a humbling time frame. It is a classic example of build it forward thinking. If we plan on an old growth forest now it will need to be tended and protected for at least 200 years into [...] I’ve been speaking with Wendy in Suffolk County about bats. She makes and sells bat houses and we’re talking about the best way to have a bat house in the Brooklyn Green Show House. Bat are a very important part of the ecosystem. One of the reasons Brooklyn has such a problem with mosquitoes [...] |
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