September 2010

ASES National Solar Tour, Saturday, October 2!

by nan on 2010/09/29 · 2 comments

You need to reserve the first Saturday in October every year for the National Solar Tour! This is a wonderful event around the country showcasing solar homes and businesses. It’s also a great time to volunteer and get to know like-minded folks.

There is no excuse, either, like ‘Our family is going to on vacation,’ because this is a national event! Practically everywhere you go in the United States, you’ll be able to attend a Solar Tour.

From the website:

The ASES National Solar Tour is the world’s largest grassroots solar event. This event offers you the opportunity to tour innovative green homes and buildings to see how you can use solar energy, energy efficiency, and other sustainable technologies to reduce monthly utility bills and help tackle climate change. More than 160,000 participants will visit some 5,500 buildings in 3,200 communities across the U.S.

Now in its 15th year, this event is coordinated nationally by the nonprofit American Solar Energy Society in collaboration with dozens of outstanding partner organizations. It takes place annually during the first Saturday in October in conjunction with National Energy Awareness Month.

> Find out the details of a tour near you.

> American Solar Energy Association (ASES), based in Scottsdale, AZ

> Find a local chapter, and get involved!

Here are the southwest area chapters:

> New Mexico Solar Energy Association (NMSEA)

> Arizona Solar Center (AZSC)

> Solar NV (Southern Nevada Chapter)

> Utah Solar Energy Association (UT Solar)

> Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES)

Get out this weekend, and learn! Having worked the Solar Tour and the Greenbuilt Tour of the New Mexico Chapter of the USGBC, I can tell you that homeowners LOVE to talk about their green homes! You can get quite an education by visiting these buildings and asking questions. And like I said before, you will meet a lot of like-minded people. I have made long-time friends on these tours!

Volunteer, not just on the tours, but for your local chapter. They are always holding educational events at schools, businesses and festivals, and volunteers are like gold. Solar education, as in all green building, is key to getting people to know about it, understand it, see the benefits and use it!

Have fun!

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Garden Journal – Fall

by nan on 2010/09/29 · 0 comments

I took a cruise around the gardens the other day. It has been the weirdest gardening year ever!

> It was cold and snowy in May.
> June got unusually hot, even before the trees were leafed out.
> Summer rains came in July and August, and it was warmer than normal.
> September has been dry and hot with temperatures at least 10 degrees above normal.
> We had a major rain storm last week, and there should have been snow on the 13,000′ peaks afterward, but they are bare.

My plants have had a difficult time growing in this bizarre weather. Everything got a late start, the apple and apricot blooms froze, the tomatoes did poorly, the lettuce bolted from the heat, and the perennials are stunted.

The only plant that is thriving is the Russian Sage. Its profuse blue blooms are still covered in honey bees, because we have not yet had a hard frost. This plant is the most fail-safe of any I’ve ever grown. It is drought tolerant, needs no fertilizing, reseeds easily (that can be a curse or a blessing, but I see it as the latter), and takes just a bit of pruning in late spring. It never lets me down! (photo: flickr pmarkham)

What else is going on in the yard?

> The asters are blooming on stunted plants. They are gorgeous, especially combined with aspens and the yellow chamisa (that most people are allergic to). I’ve been deadheading Moonshine Yarrow, which blooms most of the summer and will go until a hard frost. This is another low-maintenance plant, but be warned – not all yarrows are like this! The pink ones I have are like weeds, and I am constantly thinning them out.

> I’ll leave the hollyhock flower stalks for the winter, because they are bird food. They attract woodpeckers, who cling to the sturdy stalk and peck at the seed pods. This is a joy to watch from the kitchen window!

> There is one hummingbird still feeding. This is very late for them to still be here, but he is enjoying our warm weather. I have feeders filled with black oil sunflower seeds and thistle for the sparrows, finches and red polls. Usually the yard is filled with wild sunflowers, but they were another weird-weather casualty.

> I am still picking strawberries here and there. They are like candy. Once you grow your own food, it’s hard to buy it from a store. There is no comparison! I’m also cutting side shoots off the broccoli plants – another tasty delight that store-bought cannot compare to. I have a couple more rows of beets and carrots to harvest, but I’ll pick those when I’m ready to use them. If hard frost threatens, I’ll dig them all up, scrub them, and put them in the fridge. They’ll last into winter.

> I had a container with two pepper plants outside. I brought it into the greenhouse when frost threatened earlier in the month. One is now producing bell peppers, the other has jalapenos. I couldn’t ask for a better combination!

> If this dry weather keeps up, I’ll keep watering. I have a feeling it is going to be a warm, dry winter, and that means continued watering.

> Fall is the best time to plant trees and perennials. They can put their energy into root growth without competing for energy needed for flower and leaf growth. I’d be planting if I knew I’d be here next season, but until I move, I’ll maintain the trees and gardens I have. A good watering next month and a layer of mulch will carry them into winter.

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Green Building Recap 9.23.10

by nan on 2010/09/23 · 1 comment

Here’s a new twist on my weekly recap – I’ll feature five green buildings once in a while. Gotta shake it up some. I found these while I was surfing around this past week. I read about many beautiful and innovative homes, and posted a lot of them on Twitter and Facebook already. Here are a few more to share!

Architecture inspired by trees.

Sweet, petite and LEED in New Orleans.

Curvy home office or studio.

A rooftop garden, and built around existing trees.

The high insulating properties of hemp.

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Making a Difference

by nan on 2010/09/22 · 4 comments

I went for a walk the other night with my 83 year old neighbor, who out-walks me, by the way. She is very outspoken and does not mince words. We got on the topic of climate change, natural resources, conservation and the ‘green movement’ (for lack of a better term).

She does not feel hopeful.

She feels there are too many people on the planet to offset her recycling, and water and electricity conservation. She wonders why she bothers doing those things, when our population is too great for our resources. Her point is: What’s the point?

In 1985, in Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management, I read that our resources could maintain 2% of the then current population. That meant 98% of the 4.85 billion people inhabiting the Earth had to die off for the planet to be in balance. Over-population.

Today we sport almost 7 billion people on the planet, and naturally, we have fewer resources than 25 years ago. As long as too many people are sucking up too few resources, the earth’s massive ecosystem will not be in balance.

So do our small, personal recycling and conservation efforts offset the imbalance between resources and the number of people on the earth? My neighbor thinks not. She feels her efforts are a waste of time. She does them, but wonders why.

A colleague of mine feels his efforts to educate people through his progressive website are for naught. When he digs up information such as Monsanto and BP donating money to The Nature Conservancy and Halliburton being named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in the Global Oil Services sector, he wants to give up.

He does not feel hopeful, obviously.

It’s frustrating to be working towards reducing CO2 emissions, cutting back on consumption, educating everyone around you, and feeling you’re making progress in restoring and maintaining the health of the Earth, only to find out that some big corporation has more sway than you do. Much more sway!

So do our efforts make a difference?

If several million individuals:

> recycle
> close lights in unused rooms
> drive less, carpool or cycle
> build or remodel energy efficient homes
> not fly
> bring reusable bags to the store
> turn down the thermostat
> buy local and organic food
> etc,

will their actions offset one dirty, underhanded, non-transparent, anti-environment corporation greasing the palm of a non-profit that is supposed to be protecting and conserving nature?

What are your thoughts?

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Eco-living Tips – Keep Your Tires Inflated

by nan on 2010/09/21 · 1 comment

I was out on a bike ride last week, and it was accidentally a true workout. I hadn’t ridden in a few days, and I struggled to get up a small hill that I can usually buzz right up. Was I out of shape after a few days of much sitting? That didn’t make sense.

I rode for about an hour, and it was hard work all the way. I thought about how I could rearrange my schedule to get two rides in a day, how I could stretch and do some walking to get in shape. But I still wondered how I was so out of shape in such a short period of time!

When pulled up to my house, I held onto a post on the walkway and looked at my tires. The back tire was low with me sitting on the bike. Ah ha! No wonder that ride was so hard! This happened a couple of years ago, and as soon as the tires were inflated, riding was easy again. I pumped up the tires, and the next day was a normal ride.

I correlated this phenomenon to a car. If it took extra energy for me to pedal with a low tire, then it must take extra energy for your car to move itself with under-inflated tires. You always hear that you should keep your tires inflated for the best gas mileage, and I believe that, but now I’ve personally, physically experienced it!

So… eco-living tip of the week: Keep your car tires inflated for the best gas mileage!

(photo: flickr Willie Lunchmeat)

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Eco Recap 9.17.10

by nan on 2010/09/17 · 2 comments

Lots of great eco news this week! Here is a sampling. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for the rest!

> This is the best story I have read in a long time. Helping others and recycling warms my heart. When both are done on a large scale, it’s humbling.

> Fall is the best time for hiking. Temperatures have dropped, so it’s more comfortable, and signs of changing seasons are everywhere. Use this checklist before you venture out.

> Last fall I wrote about the ecology of Manhattan in the 1600s. I have personal ties to the area at that time and had found a website about the island and the indigenous people who lived there. Now an interesting project has been launched that will carry that information further. The Welikia Project is ‘an effort to document the historical ecology of all of New York City and compare it to the current biodiversity of the city.’

> Most of my furniture is second-hand. I love yard sales, flea markets and thrift stores. Recycling furniture is eco friendly and lots of fun! Here are some excellent tips on furnishing your home with second hand furniture.

> I grew up in New England and appreciate what it stands for. This is a story and a slideshow of a unique custom home in Maine designed by a Harvard educated architect. New England is embedded in it.

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A Small Home is a Green Home

by nan on 2010/09/16 · 0 comments

Once again, the discussion about house size has come up – what constitutes a green home?

A friend sent me an opinion piece about a 5,000 square foot home that was declared eco-friendly, because it was built with green methods and had a monthly electric bill of only $50. The point of the article was to say an ‘eco-mansion’ is not green, because it unnecessarily uses extra materials.

My friend didn’t agree. She said there is nothing wrong with a large space. She thought the green movement was going overboard to declare large homes not green.

This is a really good friend of mine, so an interesting conversation ensued and inspired me to bring up this topic again.

A green home is a smaller home. Compact is more eco-friendly.

> There are fewer materials are used to build it, which conserves energy and water.
> There is less waste at the construction site, saving landfill space.
> The footprint is smaller, taking up less precious and finite land space.
> Energy use is lower resulting in lower utility bills, stretching the lifespan of our natural resources.

These are actually things taken into consideration and rewarded in the various rating systems, such as LEED. A smaller, compact home will gain more points than a larger home, garnering a higher certification level.

My friend said she and her partner need a bigger space than their 1000 sq ft home. They are both work-at-home artists, and we determined they need more studio space, not so much living space. She thought 3,000 sq ft might suit their needs, instead of separate out-buildings for studios.

There is nothing wrong with a large space as long as it’s getting used! A lot of these 5000 sq ft homes have extra living and dining areas, bedrooms that never get used, large rooms all the way around, probably useless hallways, and so on. Do you need a breakfast nook, a dining area and a formal dining room? No. Do you need a den, a media room and two living rooms? No. The waste of space and therefore materials is maddening. And not eco friendly, no matter how cheap the utility bills are.

So I add that point to the idea that small homes are green homes. Extravagance is unnecessary, but if you need that much space and will actually use it, then it’s not extravagant at all. Building big for the sake of building big, though, does not a green home make.

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Eco-living Tips – Buy Food in Bulk

by nan on 2010/09/15 · 2 comments

There is a LOT of waste in product packaging.

I was buying groceries yesterday, and I needed flour. I usually buy this in bulk at the natural grocer, but I was in the chain supermarket when I was thinking about it. I thought, ‘I could buy a small package of flour here and save myself a stop for that one item.’

I was haunted about the packaging, though.

I could buy a two pound bag of flour, put it into the container I keep at home in the freezer, and throw away the package. Well, actually, I’d put it in the pile of paper trash to burn this fall. But still… To take a tree to make a package that is not going to be reused? I couldn’t do it. Most everything that comes into my house gets reused.

I made the extra stop to buy flour in bulk.

Stores buy in large quantities to sell in bulk to you. They have a set-up of bins that you dig into (photo: flickr bcmom), putting your items into other bags (the most eco-friendly thing to do here is bring your own container). Imagine – 100 pounds of flour sold in 50 2-pound bags, or 100 pounds of flour sold in bags or other containers that:

> Someone has brought from home
> Are new and provided by the store, used by someone environmentally conscious enough to reuse that bag until it has no life left (that would be me)

Think of the waste NOT generated by buying this way! The thought of 50 small paper sacks going in the trash makes my skin crawl!

Other things you can buy in bulk:

> tea
> herbs and spices
> beans – pinto, kidney, garbanzo, white, etc
> seeds – sunflower, pumpkin, etc
> nuts – cashews, almonds, peanuts, walnuts, etc
> grains – rice, quinoa, buckwheat, barley, etc
> pasta
> treats and snacks — from candy to sesame sticks
> cleaning items – shampoo, conditioner, liquid hand soap, etc

Most supermarkets now have bulk bins of these food items. Some may be organic, some may not. Either way, bulk buying is a better way.

Store your bulk items in glass containers at home. I have always stored food in canning jars. I used to do quite a bit of canning, and there were always jars left over. I put them to use, instead of buying new containers. Keep them out of the sun (I know – they look pretty on the counter, but light is not good for the shelf life of any food), and buy as much as you can use in a short period of time.

Not only will you be reducing the world’s trash load, you will also be saving money. Since a retailer saves money buying in bulk (paying for less packaging), those savings are passed down to you. Bulk food is always cheaper per pound than packaged food. Do some comparison shopping if you don’t believe me!

Save money and the planet by buying in bulk whenever you can!

Oh, yeah, if you were wondering why I was in the chain supermarket, I was buying cheese. At the natural grocer, the cheese I like is $7/# and cut into half-pound blocks, then wrapped in plastic. (Ugh. You can taste the plastic film when you eat it, but that’s another post…) At the supermarket, that same cheese comes in a 2-pound block, wrapped in something you can’t taste. Normally it is $10, or $5/#, but it was on sale for $7 – a two-fer, really! So I bought in bulk, saved money and consumed less packaging. Win/win for me, the planet and you!

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Is Radiant Floor Heat the Most Efficient?

by nan on 2010/09/14 · 4 comments

As most of you know, I’ve gone back to school for Residential Planning, because I want to design and consult. I love to talk to people about the building projects I’ve done or dreamed about. People frequently call me to ask how to remodel their homes and incorporate solar and energy efficiency. I may as well put my experience and love of talking to use!

In class last week, we were drafting HVAC plans (Heating, Ventilation, Cooling). In the discussions, the question came up:

What sort of heating is used in your area in new construction?

Here was my answer:

All new construction here now has radiant floor heat. The ground is graded, insulation is laid, then tubing is laid about 6″ apart. Separate rooms or zones are on separate loops that begin at a boiler. Sometimes solar is used to heat the water, but I don’t see this very often, sadly.

photo: Wikimedia Commons

The loops are then embedded in concrete, which is the floor. Hot water circulates through the loops, which in turn heats the concrete, an excellent heat sink. Once it gets warm, it stays warm. You don’t adjust the heat several times a day.

The main problem I have seen with radiant floor heat is that you can’t control it. When you turn it on, it takes a couple of days to warm up the concrete slab. So if you have a chilly morning in fall, you can’t just turn it on for the day or night. I also see people with their windows open in winter, because the system may be sized too large for the house, or maybe they have the thermostat on too high. You can’t turn it down with immediate results.

Similarly in spring, when the days warm up a little, you can’t turn it down.

Friends say it is incredibly expensive to operate, too. Installers will tell you it’s the most efficient, but personal stories tell me otherwise. I know people who have bought wood stoves and space heaters, and turned off the radiant floor heat. I think solar would be really efficient and cost effective in this situation.

I have seen small stand-alone condos with electric radiant floor heat. Electric cable is embedded in the concrete, instead of water, and it is timed to go on during off-peak hours. The builder told me that one unit stood empty for a winter, and he could actually see the cost of operating it. For a small place (900 sq ft maybe), the electric bill was about $120/month. Not bad for electric heat!

If homeowners could get educated about radiant floor heat:

> maybe they would use it more effectively
> they would not have to open the windows in winter, which uses more energy
> they would install it with solar hot water
> they would demand something else
> they would start building more airtight, passive solar homes, with less need for a huge, expensive heating system (think Passivhaus!)

Me? I am happy with my cast iron wood and gas heaters, which radiate heat in their own way. Wool slippers keep my feet cozy.

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Green Home Recap 9.9.10

by nan on 2010/09/09 · 0 comments

What a short week! Even being self-employed, I can feel the effects of a Monday holiday. This week, I have all home things to share. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for a variety of eco news.

> I’m a huge fan of solar. I have solar hot water and passive solar heating as well as a solar greenhouse. I love them all! I don’t have PV, because it wouldn’t pay for itself in my lifetime. My electric usage is minimal, and my bill is about $30/month. But if you are in the market fo PV, here are some simple solar options.

> I have gone back to school for Residential Planning, because I want to design and consult. More on that later, though. The last class I took was Color Theory. I have always loved color, so I enjoyed this piece about using color for various effects in your home. Be sure to use low VOC paints!

> We had a discussion in our drafting class about how furniture needs are changing. My input was that people are more mobile, choosing smaller homes, and want compact, affordable and portable furniture. Then I ran across this!

> Remodeling junkie am I! I have a slew of stories to tell, and some of them sound like this one.

> A picture is how many words? Structural Insulated Panels, or SIPs, are a great way to build efficiently. It’s a modular system that produces a very cozy home with excellent insulation. Here are a series of green modulars built with SIPs. Scroll down about half-way to see how they are installed. People ask me about them all the time, and it’s hard to explain. This is a great shot.

> Frank Lloyd Wright built with the land. I also believe a home should take inspiration from and fit into its surroundings. This New Zealand home uses local stone, recycled timbers and native plants. It is also built into the hillside.

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