Check out our video below, and feel free to leave [...]]]>

Gennaro Brooks-Church, Director of EcoBrooklyn Inc, discusses the significant element of salvaging materials for use in the company’s green renovations. Currently we are wrapping up a full-renovation of a brownstone in Manhattan where we’ve been working hard to attain its stringent Passive House requirements.

Check out our video below, and feel free to leave us some feedback!

The only problem is that this product is costly. And [...]]]>

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 not green in the slightest.

So we went to the mechanic down the road. He was more than happy to give us some used tires. He has to pay to dispose of them into the landfill. We took the tires and cut them into little strips.

The strips were placed wherever a stud or support beam made contact with the floor above, creating a sound impact barrier between the two floors. Kids jumping, heavy boots and games of basketball should all become less audible from the neighbors above thanks to our technique.

Cutting the tires into strips.

Placing the tire under the joists.

The same tire pictured above but now we have put the support beam beneath it. The tire now acts as a sound barrier between the joists and the beam, breaking the vibration that would normally pass from the joist to the beam and the floor below.

Here is an example of the tire placed between the stud and the footer. It is better to place the tire between the stud and the header to stop sound coming from above. But in this case the stud was supporting the stairs so it didn’t matter.

This week I was reading in this [...]]]>

I subscribe to some very scholarly journals on green building. I also subscribe to some radical journals on politics and conspiracies. I like to check out the pulse from various sources. And when I start seeing trends overlapping I know it is something worth paying attention to.

This week I was reading in this one very academic journal about the use of hemp fibers mixed with lime to make a concrete-like material that is stronger and apparently six times lighter than real concrete. It is used in France a lot and expanding around Europe.

And then one of my conspiracy journals also spoke about it, but from the perspective of it being this miracle material that was being kept from the building industry due to political reasons (hemp apparently has many uses that threatens existing companies, namely oil and timber companies).

Seeing it in two widely different contects raised my interest. It does indeed seem to be a viable building material on the rise. Worth keeping an eye out for it.

The basics:
hemp grows as a plant, thus CONSUMES CO2.
it grows abundantly and quickly, thus is rapidly renewable.
because it grows, it does most of the production itself reducing embodied energy.
once it is made into “concrete” the CO2 is fixed into the walls, thus it is a CO2 neutral or possibly even CO2 NEGATIVE product.

portland cement requires huge manufacturing power and thus creates massive amounts of CO2. It is the largest creator of CO2 in the building industry. Enough said.

Basically, the connection of hemp with weed smoking hippies is a farce. Hemp has too many positive attributes, from paper, oil, wax, cement (the list is long) for it to be considered negatively.

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