Recycled
Salvaged Wood Synergy
Here is a cool example of creative salvaging. They have taken planks from an old brownstone roof and flipped them upside down as a ceiling.
The one consideration is fire. This was done in a restaurant, which means it shares the ceiling with an apartment upstairs, which means the ceiling has to be 2 hour fire [...]
Green Counter Top Options
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 has definitely cornered [...]
Habitat ReStores
Since we are in the salvage and reuse business for all our building we are always on the look out to get good salvaged stuff in the New York area. Here is a great place: the Habitat ReStores. It’s not exactly in the NY area but it is close. We’ve not had the opportunity to [...]
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 [...]
Eco Bike
We just added another bike to our small fleet of Green Building Transportation. Unlike new construction (yuk!) where you can plan the process better, working in a Brooklyn Brownstone has a lot of surprises. So it is common to need a small thing to keep the job going – a certain size screw, some brackets, [...]
Salvaged Wood Seating
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 hard [...]
Making Glass Tiles
You might have seen the recycled glass tiles in green magazines. You might have also seen the price…..for some reason they remain in the stranglehold of boutique green builders.
It is actually pretty easy to make glass tiles out of salvaged glass. You do need a kiln. But thats about it.
This page describes it in detail.
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Used-Electronics Community Recycling Event in Park Slope
Tomorrow (Saturday):
A Used-Electronics Community Recycling Event in Park Slope- This July 18, from 9a.m. until 6p.m., join Park Slope in welcoming PerScholas to Brooklyn with a Community Used-Electronics Recycling Event. Operating under the highest standards of excellence, PerScholas, a non-profit organization, will save your electronics from landfills (where their toxins soak into the earth).
Either [...]
LED drivers
An LED driver is a self-contained power supply that has outputs matched to the electrical characteristics of your LED or array of LEDs. There are currently no industry standards, so understanding the electrical characteristics of your LED or array is critical in selecting or designing a driver circuit. Drivers should be current-regulated (deliver a consistent [...]
Green Job Sites Make Garbage
As a Brooklyn green contractor we actually generate more garbage than a non-green contractor!
More garbage!? You ask.
The truth is yes. Bag for bag we cart off more garbage from our sites than non-green job sites.
But how could this be?!
The reason for this is that we BRING ON a lot more ‘garbage” TO the job site. [...]
LED heat sink and power supply salvage
So with the understanding that any experiment should be undertaken with the proper materials. I set out and found a large supply of computers and harvested anything I could use, before they were sent off to be melted down. (Or crushed) After 7 hours of unscrewing, unclipping and moderate finger jabbing I end up with [...]
New Sheet Rock
I’ve gone a couple weeks without finding cull or used sheet rock. Not wanting to wait any longer I painfully, regretfully, and sadly went to Home Depot and bought new sheet rock.
It is rare that I buy new material like that. Now it is a strange feeling. It is so easy. Go to store [...]
Gotham Forest Wood
I’m happy to say that NY is an exception to the rule that using wood isn’t green
due to the Gotham Forest we have here:
millions of board feet of old growth lumber sitting in the frames of old
buildings just waiting to be harvested and reused. I simply have to drive
around to dumpsters to get pretty much [...]
Recycling Wood Joists for Siding
We wanted some siding for a wall we built. So we used some 100 year old joists.
We took the joists and cut them into long strips.
Then we sealed them on both sides so they don’t warp.
Then we put them onto strips that we had attached to the wall. This way there is air behind the [...]
Things We Salvage
Dumpsters, Job Sites, Garbage Night Streets, Damaged Store Stock, Craigslist, Neighbours, Salvage stores, Ebay, our building… these are some of the places we get our materials from. The rules are simple: it needs to be dangerously close to being sent to the dump or once used.
Here are some of the things we have saved:
Old [...]
Drain Pipes: Iron or PVC?
New York recently approved the use of PVC as drain pipes.
PVC is considered very “not green”, mostly because it basically takes forever to decompose, so it sits around in landfills for hundreds of years. Or it gets burned and lets off all sorts of nasty chemicals. From a practical point it is also much noisier [...]
Degradation of Recycling
This is more a technical point but something worth considering when
using materials. For example the “problem” with recycled cellulose is that it is
degraded. There is a green term for this but I forgot it. Basically
you are taking a higher purpose material – newspaper that is used to
transport knowledge – and degrading it to ripped up [...]
Salvaging Slate
We needed some slate to repair an existing slate wall on the top of the green show house. One consideration was using a slate look alike that is made from recycled materials.
But then I discovered there is a thriving community of people who salvage old slate from homes. They have merged into the “green” [...]
Solar Panels, An Example in Green Considerations
The process of building green is different than normal building. There are new considerations to include in the mix.
Here is an example. Solar PV is a smart choice in NY I think. NY gets a lot of sun and although a Californian electrician might scoff at it, most NY professionals think it is a good [...]
Doing Things Differently
Green building is not mainstream. The systems and habits are not in place. Doing a green job is part construction part education part experimentation because once you start thinking off the grid there are very few reference points to guide you.
I had a plumber walk out of my job today before even giving a bid. [...]
Adding Solar gain and recyclables to Facade
Above: Facade with planter and recycled joists.
Originally the top facade of the building had a lot of rotted wood. And there was a great view. So in the heat of the summer I tore down the wall and planned on adding a wall of glass. It would have been magnificent.
But then as the cooler [...]
Wood Flooring courtesy of Corcoran
Only in USA are dumpsters so full of wonderful stuff. And you can’t get fancier than a Corcoran dumpster. There is one in front of the Corcoran condos on President St in Carroll Gardens. I had the good luck to check them out today and found 1000 sq.ft. of once used wide plank maple flooring!
The [...]
The Costs of Recycling
Above Pic: “ugly” wood that I use for everything from studs to window frames.
Recycling is a great way to reuse materials and save money. It is important to keep in mind the extra costs of recycling.
If you get the materials for free, say from a salvage, that is a great starting point. It beats paying [...]
Soundproofing between floors
After some research we noticed that one of the most effective ways to reduce impact noise between floors was to put a recycled tyre product between the floor and sub floor. It creates a vibrating cushion that absorbs the impact, thus deadening the sound.
The only problem is that this product is costly. And costly is [...]
Insulation Has Arrived!
Green Building is like life: it is all about energy. How you control it, who has it, where it is flowing, and where it isn’t flowing. You control the energy and you have a great house (possibly a great life too).
So obviously insulation plays a huge part ini green building. Green building typically insulates a [...]
Salvaged Wood
At the beginning of this job I had to buy my salvaged wood from Fine Lumber in Williamsburg. But now that the local job sites know about my project I get most of my wood from them.
Here you see a nice selection of old cut prime wood. That’s my daughter.
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Recycled Wood Floor
I have relationships with the contractors in the neighborhood. These oak floors were perfectly fine but the owner wanted to replace them with cherry wood floors. Instead of put them in the dump I got them.
The lower floors of a brownstone are dark so I like light floors to maximize the light.
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Recycled Steel Studs
These studs were on their way to the dump until I intercepted the contractor and he let me take them..
I’m using them in the cellar where they will be in touch with the ground and where in the past there have been termite problems (thus no wood studs).
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Fly Ash isn’t flying
On the 2nd street project we are doing a lot of underpinning and laying a concrete slab in the cellar. This requires a lot of concrete. Cement uses up a lot of energy to produce and creates a lot of CO2 Substituting up to 50% of the cement with fly ash is considered a more [...]
The Story Of Stuff – How we consume
Here are some great movies from the web site TheStoryOfStuff.com
Guess what percentage of the stuff that Americans buy is still around six months later?
1%!! The other 99% is already garbage according to the site.
These movies are useful for anyone in construction. What construction company doesn’t spend huge amounts of money on dumpsters to throw out [...]