Posted by Sloan Ritchie on March 29, 2010
Air Tap is a hot water heater retrofit heat pump. It cuts your hot water heating energy consumption by 70%, and only costs $700, so the typical family of 4 will recoup costs in less than 2 years.
Heat pumps use the latent energy from the air to heat the water, and are inherently 2-5 times more efficient than other methods of heating. It works well in the Seattle climate since our temperatures are pretty mild year round.
Pretty cool.
Posted by Sloan Ritchie on March 17, 2010
Finally an energy monitor that captures circuit level data. Most of the products on the market today are measuring total house consumption and providing it in a web-dashboard or similar. PowerHouse now offers the eMonitor which measures electric consumption at each circuit so you can set parameters to notify you when something’s not performing as expected, and it can even remotely control thermostats, and has an iPhone interface.
We’ll be offering this as an accessory to the pre-designed green Backyard Cottages from Backyard Box, as well as for custom home projects at Cascade Built. It’s around $1,000, which is more than the $200 ones but has so much more functionality for those with the need for information.
Posted by Sloan Ritchie on March 3, 2010
Saw a nice listing of 10 green counter top products to choose from. Right away I found out that one is only available in California – BottleStone (wish I could get it in Seattle for my Backyard Cottage project), and some others are not really for wet kitchen use like DuraPalm, but the nice thing in here is the price per foot is listed to give you an idea about their relative costs.
Check it out on Jetson Green
Posted by Sloan Ritchie on February 27, 2010
Responding to Seattle’s new ordinance legalizing Backyard Cottages, Backyard Box has designed a line of Backyard cottages for Seattle area residents. Seattle homeowners can now build a separate dwelling unit in a side or rear yard to use as a guest house, rental property, home office, or extended family and multi-generational living.
And did I mention that these are built to the highest energy efficiency standards – they use about 85% less energy to heat and cool versus “standard” code construction.
Posted by Sloan Ritchie on February 14, 2010
The FTC is taking a look at updating its guidelines around false or misleading claims in the green or sustainable arena. Kmart was busted for calling one of its products Biodegradable, when it in fact was not. Other misleading claims like “50% more recycled content!” that really mean an increase from 2% to 3% are also being reviewed.
It would be interesting if we could get a standardized nutritional facts type of labeling so consumers could compare products just like we do in the grocery store, at a glance: “hey, this one’s the same but has twice the sugar and half the protein” could also be: “They’re the same price but this one has 80% post-consumer content and the other has none.”
Read the article:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/the-coming-crackdown-greenwashing
Posted by Sloan Ritchie on January 15, 2010
Just came across this recently: Paul Hawken’s commencement address to University of Portland’s 2009 graduates. Sure it’s a tad off topic, but it’s inspirational and far reaching.
As a builder/developer, there’s a market reality out there, and there’s constant pressure (called market forces) to revert to the mean, and do exactly what everyone else is doing, which results in more of the same old energy wasting homes being built. Hey, if it’s behind the walls and under the slab no one will ever see it, so why work any harder to make it airtight, why insulate better than code, why strive to build something more than the market is currently demanding? And then your competition who builds code minimum Legal Boxes claims to be “leading the industry in sustainable building,” because they used a can of low VOC paint and bamboo flooring. But I digress.
Paul Hawken captures the essence of why we have to do what we have to do:
Healing or Stealing?
The unforgettable Commencement Address 2009.
By Paul Hawken
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.
Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing….
read the rest
http://www.up.edu/commencement/default.aspx?cid=9456
