I’ve been discussing a lot with my colleagues how best to reach Passive House standards in a green Brooklyn brownstone renovation. Passive House (a German building system not to be confused with passive solar) is a good benchmark because if you do it correctly you really don’t need a heating system. Here is one comment […]
Brooklyn Passive House Read More »
Here is a pretty scary list of health effects documented by BeyondPesticides.org, a Washington based non-profit. Pesticides are anything that kills a pest: Herbicides, Insecticides and Fungicides primarily. You’ll notice from the list below that the health effects run the gamut from Cancer to Birth Defects. Of course if you use these chemicals then being
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There is a little book called “Simple Shelters: Tents, Tipis, Yurts, Domes and other Ancient Homes” by Jonathan Horning. It is part of a group of books called Wooden Books that the NY publisher Walker & Company puts out. From the web site, Wooden Books are Small Books with Big Ideas: “Historically, in all known
Here is an interesting cost comparison between LED, CFL and incandescent. I have not checked the numbers but they seem pretty accurate. They clearly show that over the life of the bulb it makes a lot of sense to buy LED. What the numbers do not show are the quality. I’ve tried a lot of
LED lighting is (almost) there Read More »
How feasible is it to green renovate a Brooklyn Brownstone along Passive House standards? After looking into it the main issue I see is the lack of space. A brownstone has a fixed building line, usually something along the dimensions of 20×40 feet. At least a foot of that is taken up by bricks, leaving
Passive House in Brooklyn’s Space Craved Brownstones Read More »
This web site has a great list of all mechanical modes of transport and their passenger miles per gallon (number of passengers the vehicle can hold multiplied by its MPG. For example a 20 MPG car that can hold 4 would be 80 passenger MPG). The most efficient are trains. They get great passenger miles
Transportation Miles Per Gallon Read More »
350.org is a site worth knowing about. It is at the helm of a very sensible movement to get the CO2 levels of the world back down to 350 part per million, which is a safe level. Right now they are at 387 and it isn’t very clear whether they will keep going up or
350.org and Turn Brooklyn Green Read More »
Here is a useful booklet on green roof installation. It lays out the different options depending on the growing medium thickness and drainage requirements. Although it is a booklet created by ConservationTechnology.com to sell their product it is an excellent booklet on how to install green roofs. We are green roof installers in Brooklyn, which
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We’ve had a good deal of experience with natural wood applications and the Polywhey product by Vermont Natural Coatings is one of our favorite natural alternatives for wood and surface applications. You can’t buy PolyWhey in Brooklyn (yet, ask Green Depot and Bettencourt if they can start carrying it) but you can easily order it
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Like most people nowadays we think Solar PV is sexy. When you have a Brooklyn brownstone it isn’t like you can have a lot of it, though. Especially now with the new fire regulations requiring a large area of the roof be left open for fire fighters. And if you want a green roof or
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