Since the Occupy Wall Street events this fall I have immersed myself in information that questions existing paradigms and searches for solutions to current problems. I’ve always done this, and as a green builder I do it on a daily basis, but the recent Occupy Wall Street events has given my ongoing education a focus and timely reference [...]
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Check out this great article about our Eco Brooklyn’s Passive House in Harlem. GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, a great online source for building, designing, and remolding green homes, sent Richard Defendorf to our Harlem site to check out our work. Read his write-up of all the techniques we used to seal our passive house! http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-news/bringing-passivhaus-harlem [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] Here is a great clip pretending to be a nature show following the “life” cycle of the plastic bag from strip malls in California to the great garbage island in the Pacific. Narrated by Jeremy Irons, it is really great. What I love about the clip is how it not only shows the tragedy [...] Eco Brooklyn’s business model is to salvage as much as possible. We believe this is the true definition of a NY green contractor in a city with such abundant and high quality trash. We recently salvaged what we thought was marble. We cut it down to make all the bathroom and kitchen counters for [...] 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 [...] For me the green builder’s tedium is the boring non-VOC paint and I’m forever looking for more natural and interesting wall applications. The book Tadelakt – An Old Moroccan Plaster Technique Newly Discovered, by Michael Johannes Ochs and published by Norton, is one such source for alternatives to the bla of big company non-VOC [...] We just made a last minute switch from Zehnder’s Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) to Ultimate Air’s ERV for our Manhattan Passive House project. There were two main factors in this decision: price and USA made. Zehnder is a great unit and Barry the sales rep is a great guy. You’ve got top grade quality [...] Here is a cool web site about all things Passive House, aptly called, International Passive House Magazine, or IPHM. It is run by Tamas Banki. Based in Hungary he is doing a great job pulling together all the PH info from around the world. As a Passive House builder in New York I found the site [...] The book Green from the Ground Up - Sustainable, healthy, and energy-efficient home construction byDavid Johnston and Scott Gibson is one of my suggested books for Eco Brooklyn’s rookie workers and interns. The book is very similar to Your Green Home – A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly, New Home by Alex Wilson, [...] I checked out Film Biz Recycling‘s warehouse today in Brooklyn on President and 3rd Ave. Eva Radke, founder and visionary, gave me a tour of the place. Film Biz Recycling collects all the props and materials from film sets and offers it up for sale. You’ve got a great selection of cool stuff, from [...] The folks at Living City Block are coming to tour the Brooklyn Green Show House this wednesday. This is exciting because they share a lot of the same focus as Eco Brooklyn. Their work sees the city as a bio-organism, where each block, each company, each house, each person are functioning aspects of the [...] 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 [...] The concept that us humans screwed up the world is pretty well accepted and most ecologists are hell bent on undoing the damage and restoring nature. However I came across an interesting idea today that throws this on its head: there is no such thing as a pure nature and we need to redefine nature so that it INCLUDES the [...] I just read the book “A Natural System of House Design, An Architect’s Way” by Charles Woods. I was interested in it from Wood’s involvement with Malcolm Wells, a great natural architect and the pioneer of earth covered building. Before I start my review I need to make clear that I see Woods as [...] Fracking, the toxic method of squeezing gas out of the ground is yet another coffin nail in the long line of destructive activities that the oil and gas industries have wreaked on our planet. Check out this cool video below. Get active against Fracking. New York and New Jersey have more Fracking going on [...] Reading the book “Designing Your Natural Home, Over 200 Rules of Good Architecture You Can Apply to New or Renovated Work by Award-Winning Designers, Charles G. Woods and Old Malcolm Wells” (long tittle!) is like sitting with two friends on a quiet evening. Each night after a long day in the field I would [...] The book “Complete Guide to Water Gardens Ponds and Fountains” gives you everything you need to know to build and run a small to medium sized water feature in your yard. The book lays out every detail in clearly worded and well organized sections with plenty of supportive photographs and images. It is focused [...] As part of our service in the green renovation of a brownstone Eco Brooklyn looks at the brownstone plot in its entirety. This means we don’t just gut and renovate the interior. We also look at how the interior effects the exterior. As a NY green contractor we look at the whole system, from [...] I came across a video that struck a chord and I have shared it below. I realize your food habits may not appear to be a green building topic. But the definition of green builder is somebody who puts the welfare of the world ecosystem before all else. And it all starts with what you put [...] I just read Garden Up, Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet. Humans have become very good at building up with cement and metal. We cover large parts of the planet with buildings of all sizes. We all see the value of building upwards in this way [...] 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 [...] Eco Brooklyn is expanding into natural landscape design and ecological pools. In this process I have been reading a lot and hiring new employees knowledgeable in this field. One book I have found very helpful is Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Douglas W. Tallamy. It is a must [...] 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 [...] Fans are inherently energy efficient since they reduce your need for an energy hog air conditioner. But for those of us constantly pushing the envelope we want to know what the most energy efficient fan is. Right now my favorite is the Sycamore Fan. The main reason I love it is that it is [...] A client of mine just came back from England raving about her friend’s natural paint company Annie Sloan. Paint, a substance you put onto another surface, usually acts as protection and an aesthetic. Natural paint can be many things but needs to have the same basic elements: a binder, a base and optional color. [...] Broadly speaking there are two kinds of green building books: one looks to the latest scientific innovations for solutions and the other looks to revive ancient techniques. Lets call them the futurists and the traditionalists. In the futurists camp you have high tech, in the traditionalists you have low tech. Futurists design houses with [...] The book Green from the Ground Up, Sustainable, Healthy, and Energy-Efficient Home Construction, offers everything its title promises, and yet that very same title shows how wrong the authors are. It is 330 pages full of intelligent “green” building techniques covering everything from efficient insulation techniques to natural ventilation. The book is a fantastic overview [...] The book Graywater, the Next Wave is one of many graywater books I have read in my ongoing search for a viable graywater system for Brooklyn brownstones. The book offers a great beginners introduction on how to build a residential graywater drainage system. It doesn’t answer my questions thought. Firstly because they flat out [...] |
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