Today’s modern home is loaded with toxic and polluting substances designed to make domestic life easier. The cost of these commercial, chemical-based products can be high — long term health concerns for the family, and environmental pollution caused by their manufacture and disposal. In the US, for example, 1 in 3 people suffer from allergies, …
Here is a great image. It shows the true value of a Brooklyn brownstone green renovation. This is something you can’t put a price to. It is like the credit card advertisement: Insulation $10 Radiant floor $15 Fiberglass Windows $12 Watching your baby play naked while it snows outside: Priceless This photo really shows the …
I was just speaking with an Eco Brooklyn intern who is an architect for a non-green firm in Queens. She was lamenting a current job she is working on where they are tearing out beautiful cherry wood details to turn the building into crap rentals. All my workers have similar stories and one of their …
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 …
“Sustainability is like teenage sex. Everybody says they’re doing it, very few people actually are doing it. Those that are doing it are doing it badly.” -Aussie architect Andrew Maynard Here at Eco Brooklyn we definitely aren’t getting enough sex. Lucky for us green building turns us on almost as much and we have plenty …
Quote of the Week: Sustainability is like teenage sex… Read More »
Sixty Minutes ran a very interesting and sobering segment on the state of real estate now and to come. According to them there is a second wave of collapsing mortgages as some more exotic mortgages like the option arm readjust their interest rates, spiking the monthly payments on people. If for some reason the movies …
I don’t know if it is a mainstream thing or what but I don’t get LEED. I even became a LEED AP in the hope that I would see what the big deal is but I still don’t get it. Why would you want to spend all that money and time so that you can …
HAVC manufacturing companies throw a lot of info around without consumers really knowing what is true. As an energy efficient HVAC installer we are very interested in the real energy efficiency of a unit. Is it really a SEER 25? How did they do the test? Does it retain that rating when the temperature drops …
There are several glues on the market now for attaching wood flooring to the sub floor, considered green glues because they have very low VOC’s compared to typical flooring glues. They tend to be water based instead of chemical based. We have experimented with them but haven’t had good results. Firstly, using anything water based …
Here is a funny video. I like it because it takes the piss out of people who take themselves too seriously. It isn’t exactly about green building but it has that tree huger feel. As a tree huger myself I appreciate the self deprecating humor. Also notice the guy charging money for hugs actually gets …
