Blog ACTION Day: First the bad news……

The buildings we use account for over 40% of all green house gasses. A recent study showed that due to the global recession total greenhouse gas emissions have gone down 1%, the only sector where they went up is from our buildings, nearly 2%. Homes, offices and factories play the biggest role in what is now by all intensive measures the teraforming of our planet. This teraforming event is obviously not on purpose but everyone seems to be running around with some massive plan to either re-teraform (geoengineering) or to reverse the process by slowing emissions.

The ideas for re-teraforming the earth include shading the planet with billions of reflective two foot wide satellites to a continuous injection of sulfates into the stratosphere. Soot that comes from our cars and factories also help cool the planet (really mask global warming). The sulfur and soot from volcanoes are understood to work similarly, so don’t be surprised when artificial volcanoes become a hot topic.

The slowing emissions folks have a grand imagination too. Sulfur-acid batteries the size of a football fields hold and distribute solar and wind farm’s excess energy. These farms will follow our freeways from coast to coast, while our desserts lay claim to hundreds of square miles of mirrors and tubes squeezing the sun’s energy into steam to run generators. Our coal plants become breeders of algae, soaking in all that carbon and squirting out oils we can run our transportation on.

Why is this bad news? Well you can’t be a part of it. You have to sit around and wait for someone else to figure it all out. You as useful as a dodo bird when the Europeans show up. Oh yes, you may also have a while to wait.

Now the good news…..

Technology will not save us. Every time we get clever and implement some great new idea we simply make more problems to solve. Come to think of it, maybe our economy is not based so much on consumerism but more on solving all the problems we created in the first place.

The good news is that right now your involvement and participation in reducing your harmful environmental impact is right in front of you. It’s your house (but you knew I’d say that). Remember 40% of ALL emissions are from buildings. It is relatively easy to cut you homes emissions in half. Even a new hybrid car can’t even come close to the environmental impact of an efficient house. As an engineer friend of mine says, think nega-watts. You are now the center of the solution, not waiting for the wizard behind the curtain pull a few levers and fill the sky with mirrors.

Bad Electrician!

Is your electrician a Jack Ass?
That's better! (with another roll of r-30 on top)

As A Green Building Consultant I Will do Anything But…

I will do just about anything to make green building happen. I will crawl on my hands and knees until your crawl space is insulated. I will get covered in fiberglass and sweat to help you value your attics r-value. I will help design your LEED platinum home. I will argue at the order desk until I get you just the right window. I will put it on my card. I will read LEED books until I become numb with numbers, and even the Manual J. I am not a morning person but I’ll get into town at 7am for my first meeting and stay till 9pm to make my last. I will give advice for free, but pay for it for myself. I will start a non for profit. I will wear work cloths all one week and pressed shirts all the next. I will write it, read it, drink to it, and sing it if requested. If I don’t know about the latest energy saving strategy I will find out who does. I will take the chance that there are others like me who can help out. I will take lead and then gladly follow. I will take great financial risk to do this better. One thing I have decided not to do just yet though is learn how to make a cappuccino.

The seven steps to sustainable building, Location and Site.

Ideally, sustainable building is about setting priorities and moving to the next decision when the previous one has been adequately addressed. Simple as a concept, but often not a reality when you hear different green building folks chime in to say that they have the “green” solution for you. In this spirit, I have tried to boil down what I think of as the core principles that guide sustainable building and how they should be ranked in importance. This is for new and old buildings, large and small. Start at the first step and move your way up the decision chain, making connections between the steps all the time. You may notice that many of the goodies are near the top, which means we are not talking so much about the stuff but how the whole building is going to work. Maybe this would make a good board game, a rip off of Chutes and Ladders. A downloadable PDF is available here of the seven steps.

Step One begins with location. You have to live somewhere. That somewhere is usually inside. That inside is only one of the insides you want to be somewhere today. Those insides have a lot to do with the outside. We have been building our civilization bigger and wider for our convenience and pleasure, but any commuter knows that that pleasure is fleeting when they check the traffic report. Our view corridors and green belts wane. The beginning of sustainable building is to build closer to where you spend the rest of your time. The LEED system calls it community connectivity. Your work, your shopping, your parks and many other things are better simply when they are closer.

A good location is taking advantage of civilization by living in it. Pretending that you don’t and building neighborhoods in the middle of “nowhere” achieves neither a neighborhood nor “nowhere.” Connecting with the community means now you can ride your bike to work on a nice day. You can walk back from the bar. You can walk to your new friend’s place. Community connectivity is not just an esoteric green building point but a lifestyle, and ultimately an entire society.

Urban renewal, building reuse, neighborhood and community development all result from proper location. I have noticed that in the last year cities I have been to, Chicago, San Francisco, and Denver, all have very robust downtown apartment building projects. This indicates that demand for living in a denser environment, using less land and other resources, is once again being adopted by our nation.

Siting is where and how you place your building. The first thing to consider is reducing your environmental impact on a chosen site. Protecting water sheds, sensitive habitat, reducing roads and other hardscapes is the first consideration. Try to minimize land disturbance. I have long had the thought that when you find that special place to build, build next to it, not on top of it. After all, that special place is no longer there when you build on it.

Perhaps the biggest mistake that developers make is ignoring orientation. The value of a home and entire neighborhoods is deeply diminished when the lots and buildings are not adept at catching the sunshine. Poor orientation can cost a building upward of 30% in energy cost. That is a substantial number and almost utterly ignored by your local developer. When you look to buy a building this is one of the first things to look for. Good orientation does not only help keep the building cool in the summer and warm in the winter it also “future proofs” your investment. As solar technologies come into their own it would be obvious for you to be able to take advantage of them by having your roof properly facing the sunshine. Oh yeah, it’s cheaper than paying a gas and electric bill.

Siting has some very subtle aspects to it. Prevailing winds are good to capture in the summer and avoid in the winter. A wind rose is a localized chart of seasonal wind characteristics of a location that can help you understand your site. Noise, by way of traffic or other sources, can be addressed and avoided. Sight lines and views have long influenced a building’s siting, but remember those change when that tree grows up or your neighbor gets ready to “pop the top” (a turn of phrase that should perhaps be outlawed). Water runoff has a very real impact.

Before you place a building, sit on the land. Spend real time watching the environment. You will intuitively know where the best place to build will be. There are stories of people who spent years studying their land, the subtleness of the terrain, views, wind and light. They were looking for a way to best harmonize their living with the land they wanted to live upon. Perhaps they are a bit obsessive-compulsive or maybe indecisive but you can bet they have a better home as a result.

Ultimately you do not own land, you borrow it. Being stewards of this borrowed land and keeping it healthy and abundant is a generational effort. When you place your building thoughtfully you have the security of light, heat, cooling and air that will be free for the taking.

You know what. This can be complicated stuff. I am going sit down and ask some experts what they think. The Seven Steps to a Sustainable Building have 12 distinct subjects, so I’ll start with a conversation about each of these. Some, like energy efficiency, may require a few points of view. I’ll also have conversations with experts about integrated design, how to actually use a green building, how to make it happen financially and some other big thoughts. These recorded interviews will be available as an mp3 and CD series available early next year. Stay tuned to what will be a very interesting collection.