Salvaged
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 [...]
Brooklyn Wood Floor Revival
We did two jobs over the past week on wood floors. They started out really ugly. And they ended up amazing. We finished them with 100% pure tung oil so they are really natural.
The first job was to remove some paint that a previous owner, in their infinite and unfathomable intelligence, had painted over the [...]
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 [...]
Rebuildersource.coop
I just go a call from Joel Frank, one of the three members of the Rebuilder Source cooperative in the Bronx. They accept donations of building materials and resell them at good prices. The drive behind them is mostly idealistic: one of making the world a greener place by reusing materials.
He was just reaching out [...]
Stop Buying Wood
Eco Brooklyn has one rule: we don’t buy new wood. We buy damaged wood, salvaged wood, unwanted wood, and overstock from other Brooklyn contractors. We collect it from dumpsters.
But we won’t buy new wood. Period.
It is the thorn in my carpenters’ side. When they are under pressure to perform (which is always), time is tight, [...]
Natural Wood Flooring Finish Option
We’ve been using PolyWhey Natural Wood Finish from Vermont Natural Coatings for a lot of our salvaged floors and we are very happy with their product.
First of all you can apply it in a closed room without barely any smell. It is really low VOC and the VOC that is present is not noxious at [...]
Salvaging Old Brooklyn Stairs
Here you see the Eco Brooklyn team diligently salvaging some beat up old stairs in a Brooklyn Brownstone. Along the Eco Brooklyn credo we salvage anything we can. Buying new is our last resort.
But we keep in mind the cost. If it costs the same in materials and labor to salvage than buy new then [...]
Reusing Sand Paper
At Eco Brooklyn we are always looking for ways to reduce, reuse or recycle. Here is a cool thing we just discovered today.
Because we refinish a lot of old wood floors, either subfloors or salvaged floors that others deemed too beaten up to keep, we do a lot of sanding.
We go through A LOT of [...]
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 [...]
Tyrany of the Two by Four
Our green building company in Brooklyn, NY, has a kindred soul in Huntsville, Texas. It is called Phoenix Commotion and is run by Dan Phillips.
I’ve read about him a couple times, most recently in the NY Times.
He builds for lower income people and his buildings are almost totally out of trash. Yet they are to [...]
Salvaged Tin Ceiling
Somebody just paid us to cover up a tin ceiling! If it weren’t for the fact that we did a green roof and all sorts of other green stuff for them we would have refused.
And then there are others who throw it out.
And yet others who pay huge prices to get it installed new.
Strange how [...]
Salvaged Electric Conduit
Electric conduit is hard to salvage because the scrap people get to it before it goes into the dumpster. They take it to the scrap yard for pennies on the pound.
If we can get to them before they get to the yard we are happy to give them much more than what they get at [...]
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 [...]
Burning Down the House Radio Show
I was on a radio show this evening called Burning Down the House in Williamsburg with Joe from Fine Lumber and Hector a furniture maker. We talked about wood, specifically salvaged wood. We started around 18 minutes into the show. I started around 25 minutes into it.
Check it out here
[...]
Brooklyn Salvaged Kitchens
I am looking for some salvaged kitchens in Brooklyn without much luck. So I do a google search for “Brooklyn Salvaged Kitchens” and our site EcoBrooklyn.com comes up first and second in the list.
Google has a sense of humor.
Brooklyn Green Decking
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 around and [...]
Smart Strip on Salvaged Floor – Crazy Colors!
We salvaged this floor that had dark purple paint on it and it turned out to give this amazing rainbow of colors! Read on.
We put it in the bathroom.
Then we put Smart Strip paint remover (from Peelaway) over it to get the paint off. We could have sanding the paint off. But our motto is [...]
Reclaimed Lumber Pergola
We have built a pergola on the green show house for solar pv and thermal. This raises it above the green roof.
Green Architect Roxanne Ryce-Paul sketched up the drawings for it:
It looks really great. Eco Brooklyn green builder and project manager Jack Watson built it with his crew.
[...]
Reclaimed Roofs Inventory
Reclaimed Roofs has a new list of inventory. If you want a great roof they are the ones. Here is their list.
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. [...]
Art Of Dumpster Diving
As a green contractor in Brooklyn we feel very fortunate. The New York area is the land of plenty if you are not averse to jumping into a dumpster. We find all the flooring we need for our customers in dumpsters. Salvaged doors, bricks, sheet rock, studs, metal beams, and wood joists are all available [...]
LED heatsinking
Being a Green Construction company in Brooklyn, NY we like to recycle, reuse and re-purpose materials. Electronics are no exception. This post is about heat sinks. LEDs like to run at about 25 deg C or 70F. Led manufacturers give guidelines for heat sink size and [...]
Green Job Site: Junk Heap
A non-green builder uses the stores are their storage house. When they need something they go to the store and buy exactly what they need.
But a Brooklyn green builder gets their material from dumpsters, other job sites, fellow contractors, and the street. You never know what you will get or how much. And it usually [...]
Spirit of Salvaged Wood
Here is a great example of why I love New York salvaged wood over the crap new wood that comes from god knows where.
Salvaged wood is better because it is:
saved from the overflowing landfill
does not cut down a new tree
is ‘harvested” locally from buildings
already dried out and won’t shrink or warp
is stronger
has history and spirit
That [...]
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 [...]
LED Basics
LED lighting is not a new idea. It is only in the last few years or so that the technology’s efficiency and efficacy surpassed CFL and HID lighting. This makes it hard to find cost effective lighting replacement, without large upfront cost. But at Eco Brooklyn we are passionate about improving the energy efficiency of [...]
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 [...]
Example of How NOT to build Green
There is a gut renovation going on accross the street from our green show house. It is a classic renovation where a lot of money is being spent and not much thought going into how it is done. The owner is getting reamed with prices IMO.
A couple weeks ago there was a dumpster full of [...]