Show House
Our green show house in Brooklyn, NY, highlights best green building practices for brownstone
renovations in the NY metropolitan area.
It is a real home. The show house is open to the public and professionals by appointment 9-4 any day except Sunday. Please call for an appointment: 347 244 3016.
We are happy to assist you in any educational endeavors where a project like this would help you, for example if you are a school or organization seeking to show your students innovative green building.
Visit the house’s blog for ongoing details.
Relevant Links for the Green Show House:
Blog
Architectural Plans Small View
Architectural Plans Large Format PDF: Front view and notes — Floor Plans —Side View
Description
The building is a brick row house in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, originally build around 1900. The last renovation was cheaply done in the 1950’s so it made a lot of green sense to gut most of it. It has an upper triplex and lower duplex.
We rebuilt it using the strictest green concepts we know of. The goal was to meet three criteria: no waste, no materials, no energy. We didn’t achieve the goal but we came close.
No waste means we tried not to create any garbage during the renovation process. We tried to reuse as much as possible, either in the show house or on other houses. No materials means we reduced the amount of new materials to almost nothing. Everything was salvaged or made. No energy means the end result is a house that requires almost no gas and electricity to function. This is helped by the solar thermal and solar PV as well as efficient systems and insulation.
The end result is that the building process actually consumes more “garbage” than it creates, turning the building process into a process that cleanses the world of garbage instead of making more. By not consuming any new product no impact is made on new resources. And my not consuming energy once it is built it also helps the environment. Ideally we can maximize these elements so the house actually becomes a producer of energy.
The main green tenet involves consuming as little as possible. We reduce the impact on the earth by reusing and salvaging all possible materials. This means less material has to be made for the job. If that is not possible we use recycled and green products.
Most of our materials comes out of dumpsters and from the debris of other job sites.
Some of the house’s green elements are:
As much as possible the joists, studs, and other woods are either recycled from the structure or salvaged from other houses that were gutted. This means we are working with wood that is over 100 years old that otherwise would have been sent to the landfill.
The windows are fiberglass frame and of the highest energy efficiency. Windows are arranged to maximize solar gain on the south side and minimize heat loss on the north side.
The fire escape is recycled back into the building as walkways and stairs.
The roof has a “green roof” and bee hive. The roof and south wall have solar PV and hot water panels.
Rainwater is strategically routed to water the garden. The gardens, both on the roof and in the front and back of the house, will have all the required flora to recreate a wildlife sanctuary and attract local fauna. As much as possible the garden will be an edible one, both for humans and animals.
Radiant heat is in all floors, some bathroom walls and in the concrete slab on the ground floor.
The floors are either buffed and colored concrete, salvaged stone and slate, salvaged wood flooring or newly made floors from salvaged beams. The bathroom floors are salvaged steel tiles for maximum heat conductivity to bare feet.
All electrical is being laid out to minimize the magnetic exposure to the occupants. Main shut off switches are located near the entrance doors to minimize usage when tenants are out. Lights are LED and a lot of the wiring is low voltage.
We are using LOTS of high R value insulation to make the house air tight and warm. All exterior wall insulation is salvaged Poly ISO board. The exterior walls are R40 and the roof is more than R70.
All interior walls and floors are hard packed cellulose insulation for both insulation and sound proofing benefits.
Walls have various surface applications. Some have clay. Others have home made paints with natural pigments.
The kitchen and bathroom counters are a mixture of techniques all made in-house. We have cement and salvaged glass, resin and salvaged glass, cement and coloring, and wood.
Stones from the cellar that we dug out and bricks from walls we removed are re-used as retaining walls and patios. The chain link fence from the yard is used instead of rebar in the cellar concrete slab.
All appliances and the boiler are the most energy efficient we could find.
We use a gray water collection tank to collect all water from showers and bathroom sinks. The water is then passed to flush the toilets.
The list goes on as we awaken to new possibilities. It is an exciting and liberating experiment. Our budget has been drastically cut by the current banking crisis so the job is coming in below what it would cost to build a similar building using normal building techniques. Of course this building is a million times more comfortable to live in. At least we think so.
Project Team
The job requires many skills and a good deal of muscle. People are brought in on a consulting basis when needed. The group can be loosely classified as, “Family, friends and Craigslist.”
Gennaro Brooks-Church – Financing, Design, General Contractor
Loretta Gendville – Financing, Design
Paul Marino – Engineer
Jack Watson – Carpenter
Pedro Reyes – Electrical
James Herrera – Excavation
Leo Ortega – Mason, Carpenter
Martin Alvarado – Insulation
Daniel Garcia Perez – Radiant Heating Installation
Matthew di Francesco – Green Roof
Fred Seton – Radiant Heat Design
Alex Lopez – Asst. Mason, Asst. Carpenter
Hans Dompedro – Green Plumber
Chester – Boiler, solar hot water
Comments
Housing projects like this are inspirational as it shows that house renovating can not only be a way to save on future utility bills but environmentally friendly as well. Renovations that have a environmentally aspect could seem expensive but the way money has been saves in places and re-using as much as possible saves money that could be used in other places.
I called earlier today (Friday, January 8th) to book a tour of the eco home on Monday the 18th of January (I think that sometime in the morning would work best for us, but we are flexible).
The 2 of us are architecture students at the University of Manitoba in Manitoba, Canada, and we’re currently studying green building and travelling down to NYC with our studio to experience the city.
I had mentioned that I would send an e-mail just as a reminder, and we will be in touch with you when we arrive. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at (204) 461-1856 or via e-mail.
Thanks,
Kelsey McMahon