In Eco Brooklyn’s brownstones we are still weighing the options of using rain water or gray water for flushing the toilets. So far we have always decided on doing the gray water, letting the rain water drain into a dry well in the back yard. Here are two sketches Joe Schafer my water engineer drew up to […]
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Sheet rock isn’t very green. It requires a lot of heat to make it and the ingredients are not great. I’ve had little luck finding sheet rock alternatives. Plaster and lath is one but the labor costs make it hard to compete with sheet rock. The best I do so far is use salvaged sheet rock.
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One of the things Eco Brooklyn is focused on is eliminating the use of concrete. Concrete is normally used in the following areas of the brownstone: the foundation footings, the cellar floor, front sidewalk. Concrete and its ingredient of cement is not green. It produces massive amounts of CO2. So we are eager to find
A green roof is engineered to partially duplicate normal soil only without the depth. In normal soil the earth is deep but with a typical shallow green roof (aka extensive) the soil is no more than 6 inches at the very most. You replicate an earthen environment using drainage mats and water retention mats so
It is striking that despite the many green building going on in the US that there still remains some blaring gaps in our knowledge and available products. I encountered another of these gaps recently in my search for a good front door for a Brooklyn Passive House style brownstone. I was looking for something super
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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
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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
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Every Brooklyn brownstone should have a gray water system to feed the toilets, green roof, living wall and garden. Unfortunately there are few systems to choose from. They range between $2,000 and $7,000 for the unit not including running the extra drains from the shower, bathtub, sink and washing machine. Right now in the US
What Gray Water Systems are available? Read More »
Green Home NYC is featuring Gennaro Brooks-Church as a guest speaker. He will be speaking on two key concepts he coined: Build It Forward and the Zero Brownstone. More info below on the event next week. August forum: Working with contractors (AIA credit)August’s forum will discuss working with contractors in both residential and commercial projects.
Upcoming Speaking Announcement Read More »
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
