One strategy for addressing impacts associated with urban development is to reduce the functional area of developed surface. The European community, and especially Germany, has opted to do so by re-vegetating roofs. Green roofs have been associated with a variety of environmental and economic benefits, including the ability to retain precipitation, filter pollutants, reduce maximum rooftop …
Lighting can account for 15-20% of your monthly electric bill. With recent advances in LED technology we are able to reproduce the same level of brightness for 1/5- 1/10th the power. This is a huge savings. If we all work together we can reduce this country’s electrical draw by 10%! That equates to a lot …
BuildingScience.com offers a lot of good material. Like the name implies it is the science of building. Air sealing, wall construction, crawl space insulation etc. It is a good place to go to if you aren’t sure what the best way to seal a window is. They have very objective views on common building techniques. …
Building a green kitchen has a lot of considerations. Energy efficiency of appliances, smart counters and of course the cabinets. In Brooklyn a main consideration is making a nice kitchen in a small space. We are designing our green kitchen in the Brooklyn Green Showhouse with a modern style. This will offset the very probable …
The Brooklyn green show house has a green roof, solar panels, and solar water heater panels. Needless to say that is a lot to fit on a 600 square foot space. So we’re looking at ways to fit it all in. Considerations are: Make it look nice from the street and back yard. Make it …
I was discussing with somebody about straw bale homes and how they don’t actually last as long as other well built homes. It made me think that you basically get what you build with. Hold a peice of the material in your hand and it will give you a very good indication of how long …
One of the cool things about being a Brooklyn green contractor with my very own green show house is that I get to have all sorts of visitors to talk shop with. It is like a mechanic showing off his custom hot rod or a farmer with his fields. I get lots of green minded …
One of the confusions about spiral staircases in Brooklyn is whether they can be the only means of egress or does there have to be another set of straight stairs as well. Some architects would say you need both. But the truth according to my sources is that you can get away with ONLY the …
I needed some help designing some stairs in the Brooklyn Green Show House. I knew what I wanted but I didn’t want the headache of calculating all the dimensions. It is basically a double turn and the space was tight so you had to be really careful with the measurements. So I posted an add …
Here is a cool app courtesy of NaturalHomes.org. It shows all the natural homes in the world (at least the ones they know of, which is probably one tenth the real number). The map at first only shows the US, but we’ll forgive them their nationalism in light of our recent and proud presidential election. …
