Review
Energy Efficient Fan – Biomimicry
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 classic example of Biomimicry, [...]
Natural Paint Options
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.
The binder holds [...]
Hybrid House Book
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 complex energy calculations. [...]
Green From The Ground Up – Book
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 of pretty [...]
Graywater, the Next Wave
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 state that gray [...]
Our Planet in Perspective
Check this PowerPoint out. It is cool. It shows images of the earth and other celestial entities. It gives a really great perspective of our place in the universe, both as a small spec in a vast ocean and as a very beautiful, fragile gem.
EnglishAstronomie2
Plastiki
The boat Plastiki is a boat built entirely out of salvaged plastic. I presume it is a play on the original boat called Kon-Tiki that THOR HEYERDAHL built out of reeds.
You have to check out their site. Check out the pictures and the vids. They are on such a high that it is really contagious. [...]
Natural Wood Finish
Vermont Natural Coatings is one of the leading green wood finishes out there. Most of the time we mix oils and bases from staple ingredients like tung oil, linseed oil, whey pigments and citrus solvent, but sometime the situation calls for a more “conventional look”. This is when we might use Vermont Natural Coatings.
Here is [...]
Gentle Architecture Book
The book Gentle Architecture by Malcolm Wells is one of those cult books. Published in 1981 it is out of print. The author died in 2009. But the book lives on amongst those of us searching for alternatives to our current building crisis.
Most people don’t even know we have a building crisis. Most architects don’t even [...]
Uncovering Toxic Sites in Brooklyn
Have you ever wondered what toxic sites are in your neighborhood? Do you unknowingly live next door to an abandoned toxic dump? Here is a site that can give you some clues. It is called ToxicTargeting.com and lists all the recorded environmental activity in New York State.
You can type in your address and see all the registered [...]
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 [...]
Earth in Mind
The book Earth in Mind, on Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect by David Orr is dense. It took me a couple months to get through it. I could only read a couple pages at a time.
It didn’t even have any pictures! I’m a picture book kind of guy.
It was both deeply rewarding and painful [...]
Mannahatta
The book Mannahatta, a Natural History of NYC by Eric Sanderson was the best book I read in 2009, and I must have read 40 green building books.
For weeks after reading it I walked around New York in a daze, spellbound by the historical tapestry the book had woven of my surroundings.
If you haven’t yet [...]
Micro Living
Looking for an enlightened activity this summer? Maybe you should go attend the Micro Living event mentioned below.
Micro Living is a great concept born in reaction to our current Out Of Control Living (my term . Micro Living aims to reduce our consumption of inessential objects and increase our life affirming relationships (with ourselves, [...]
Go Green Expo NYC
Go Green Expo NYC is coming up next week. See below to get the $10 special rate. I went last year and it was ok. It is really a subsection of Architectural Digest Home Design Show, although I’m sure it will be bigger this year.
Go Green Expo NYC in my opinion is profit based. Green [...]
Your Rubber Duckie is Killing You
One aspect of green building is about reducing the toxins we use in the building process. For example our green renovations of Brooklyn brownstones use no toxic glues (Liquid Nails, for example). Our meter is that if a child can’t be in the room while we are doing it then we aren’t interested in doing [...]
Greening the Community through Education
Here is a video put out by Sustainable South Bronx about their green training program, BEST.
They have it down in the sense that they understand training green builders is more than technical info. It is about community outreach, personal empowerment and large scale advocacy – essencially a holistic approach to living and teaching.
Check it out [...]
Tribute to a Solar Hero
Here is an email blast from one of my favorite organizations, Solar Energy International. They wrote a great eulogy to Walt Ratterman, a real pioneer in humanitarian renewable energy. I never knew him and I wish I had. He is a great example of what it means to be a green builder. Green building is [...]
GardenFork.TV Visits Brooklyn Green Show House
My friend Eric Gunnar Rochow from the great show GardenFork.TV came by the Brooklyn Green Show House to see our green renovation progress. If you are interested in a five minute tour of the show house with me and Eric check this out.
GarenFork.TV is a cool show where Eric combines wholesome living with intelligent insight. [...]
Center for Sustainable Energy
A really cool source of education on sustainable energy in New York is the Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE), located at the City University of New York’s Bronx Community College.
Their goal is to “promote and implement the use of sustainable and efficient energy technologies in urban communities.”
Their roster of classes makes a Brooklyn green builder [...]
Recovering America
Please read to the end: there is an invitation for designers and architects to submit work to Eco Brooklyn.
After hearing that Malcolm Wells, pioneer of underground architecture, had died I bought a couple of his books and read up on him.
I regret not meeting him when he was alive. He had a great sense of [...]
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 [...]
Lives of the Trees
Diana Wells’ book “Lives of the Trees” is a veritable folkloric historical encyclopedia for the common folk about trees. If you ever wondered what the Apple tree had in common with Shakespeare, where the tree originated, what political impact it has had on Europe, and why the Golden Delicious is just a marketing name [...]
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 [...]
Malcolm Wells, Champion of ‘Gentle Architecture,’ Dies at 83
“To leave the land no worse than you found it” is the manifesto of Gentle Architecture, a concept coined by Architect Malcolm Wells, who recently died.
He made an impression on the green movement of the 1970’s and his work is getting attention with the new green building movement we are currently having.
There are many ways [...]
the wabi-sabi house
The book “The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty” by Robyn Griggs Lawrence attempts to bring the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi to the American homeowner.
Firstly Wabi-Sabi, like the Zen culture it comes from, is hard to describe even in Japanese. How do you describe the sound of one hand clapping? But trying to [...]