“Our homes embrace the principles of eco-friendliness and cost-effectiveness, without sacrificing beauty. We can ensure that each dwelling achieves a gold or platinum LEED rating, depending on the particular finishes, building systems, and site design an owner chooses.” ~ Michelle Kaufmann Designs

Each Glidehouse home is solar ready with other renewable energy system options possible such as geothermal, wind generator or hybrid systems. Designed for clean, simple living. The Glidehouse is built in a factory, using the most modern and environmentally friendly building methods and materials.

Some eco features of the Glidehouse include:

• using healthy finishes such as non-toxic paints and formaldehyde-free cabinetry.
• it meets the Energy Star® program standards for energy efficient homes and meets the performance standards of the American Lung Association Health House program.
• it’s insulated with an air-barrier, open cell foam insulation, and all wood-to-wood framing joints are caulked, which makes the home airtight, energy efficient, and less likely to produce mold.
• it uses water-saving plumbing fixtures, on-demand water heaters, and a mechanical ventilation system that is 30% more efficient than typical forced-air systems.
• energy efficient, dual-pane glass windows and doors are placed throughout the home to maximize cross-ventilation and natural lighting, minimizing the need for artificial lighting and climate control.

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In a Cliff’s Notes version of the myriad incentives, rebates, and tax incentives GREENandSAVE has created a Federal Tax Incentive Decoder and condensed the material to 11 bite sized pages. Best of all, this resource does not cost a dime and can be downloaded at: http://www.greenandsave.com/homecheckup/free_federal_tax_incentive_decoder

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Even in a Greencentric city like Berkeley, locals and Bay Area visitors would be Green with envy when they see the just opened David Brower Center. It feels healthy just to walk through the Green down-to-the-bones building which combines advanced technology along with simple recycled materials.

When entering for their housewarming party we had a difficult time not noticing the soaring concrete walls which made us think more dot com than gallery. The fact that in creating a building with an oh- so-feathery carbon footprint (when compared to most structures) Principal Architect, Daniel Solomon included up to 70 percent slag in those walls.

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Fly ash is the material left over from burning coal. A waste product with little other use, it is sometimes added to concrete or bricks. However, if the original coal contained radioactive isotopes, those isotopes will be greatly concentrated in the ash.

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The showroom that sold Cathy her granite had a new shipment of Jupurana Bordeaux around the same time.  That stone was more radioactive than the granite they sold Cathy. However, sales staff told customers their granite was no more radioactive than soil or water.

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Erica and her husband are shopping for granite countertops, and Erica is asking questions about radiation. They are both “serious cooks”, and they have two young children. They do not want any chance of increased radiation in their kitchen, but Erica found that granite showrooms do not welcome her questions.

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Cathy Woods’ new granite counters were radioactive. They contained as much uranium as commercial uranium ore. The showroom that sold Cathy her Jupurana Bordeaux granite did not warn her that some granite is radioactive.

When I contacted the salesman, posing as a customer, he assured me their granite “is no more radioactive than soil or water”. However, Cathy’s granite emitted gamma radiation at many times background. The radon gas emitted by the stone tripled the radon concentration in her kitchen.

Jupurana Bordeaux is one of the granites that are likely to be radioactive. Just weeks after having her counters installed, Cathy learned of the possibility and enlisted the assistance of professionals to assess her exposure to radiation and radon gas.

Radon is a daughter product of uranium, so granites containing uranium will emit radon. According to the EPA, radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers. Cathy and her husband both have family histories of cancer, so they were very concerned about elevated radiation and radon in their kitchen.

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Panasonic is fast becoming a brand name not just for electronics but also for green building products.

Eco-Products 2008 recently held in Tokyo, showcased a series of award-winning green products and services. The E Floor, developed by Panasonic Electric Works, was given the Chairperson’s Award. The Eco Product Awards is presented by four organizations including the Global Environmental Forum, a non-profit organization under the jurisdiction of Japan’s Ministry of Environment.

The E-floor is an extremely durable product made from a 100% recycled hard chip board. According to Panasonic, using this material can be equated to saving forest areas that are 135 times the size of the Tokyo Dome, on an annual basis. Panasonic began selling the E Floor product line over a  year ago with a monthly sales target of 170 million yen.

I believe more companies will bring a wide range of their green technologies into their products and services across group companies in coming years.

Related Posts:

• Eco Timber Offers Comprehensive Online Green Flooring Guide
• Natural Building 101: How To Make an Earthen or Adobe Floor
• Eco-Products 2008, One of Japan’s Biggest Environmental Fairs to Open This Week

Related Link:

• Panasonic E Floor (in Japanese)

Panasonic E Floor with Award at Eco-Products 2008

Panasonic E Floor at Eco-Products 2008

Image Credits: Panasonic/Tetsuya Yokoyama

We visited there a few months ago for the Going Green conference but we didn’t get a chance to survey the property much. This time, we got to stay over and even check out the spa. (Life is tough) The lodge, waiting for LEED Silver certification, offers new rooms and the classic ones. Even though the new ones offer radiant heating and the hot water comes via tankless water heaters, which reduce the energy consumed by those dinosaur era traditional water heaters. They installed photo-voltaic panels on 12 of the 14 new buildings’ south-facing, standing seam metal roofs which produce about 75 percent of the electricity necessary to run the buildings.

We cozied up in one of the existing building rooms which offer more charm (like the tine roof ceilings and the detailed antique radiator). By reusing the existing buildings, they already considered their carbon footprint. We can only be impressed by the fact that the brains and money behind the lodge used nearly 100% of the building shells and retained or repurposed roughly 75% of the building cores. We applaud these efforts as they not only extend the life cycle of existing building stock, conserve resources, and reduce waste but it also retains cultural and historical resources.

Although we couldn’t see the insulation we knew that they used blue jean insulation in the contemporary lodging and a portion in the Healing Arts Center. Speaking of the Spa, they constructed the floors and ceilings from rapidly renewable materials such as bamboo, wool or cork. Besides green building attributes they offer creativity by repurposing plastic dry cleaning bags (that come off site) for spa guests to take home their wet bathing suits.

Almost no other plastic can be seen on property and the staff couldn’t be nicer (as well as pretty well informed about the green aspects. Now if they could only get rid of the few incandescent bulbs (in the spa and the lodge) then we would be that much more pleased.

Photo by Kodiak Greenwood

If cabinet manufacturers built simply to qualify for LEED credits, they could use recycled materials or no formaldehyde in their final product, but cause enormous environmental destruction in their manufacturing process.  Rather than simply gauging the final product’s green-ness, the KCMA-ESP takes every step in a cabinet’s life into account.  How was the wood harvested?  How much energy was wasted in its production?   Were the wood shavings, sawdust, or scrap reused for fuel or some other purpose?  Does the final product contain any volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like urea-formaldehyde?

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While sustainability and energy efficiency often dominate the green building conversation, the issue that can have the most immediate impact on your family’s health is indoor air quality.  Green building programs seek to limit your family’s exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs, that exist in some building materials and furniture.  Continued exposure to these VOCs has caused health problems ranging from headaches and nausea to cancer.  Green building programs like the US Green Building Council’s LEED for Homes and LEED for New Construction encourage builders to eliminate these emissions whenever possible.

If building green comes at a slightly higher cost it is because many of these harmful chemicals are so widespread that finding products without them can be a challenge.  In fact, it is the presence of these chemicals in some products that makes them cheaper, as in wood products containing urea-formaldehyde.

Those looking to improve the indoor air quality of their current house can make several changes that will significantly reduce VOCs.

Some sources of harmful emissions in the home:

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When we entered, we couldn’t help but notice the curved leather wall. We even stuck our grills right against the wall to smell the leather. Yep, it smells like leather. It actually is. But the green minded architects didn’t lose their minds, they used EcoDomo, which uses real leather scraps from shoes, and other leather manufacturing facilities, then grind it into shreds. They use water and other natural binding ingredients (mostly natural rubber and acacia wood bark) then eventually deliver them with a sticky peel-off back that requires no off-gassing adhesives.

We never claimed to be interior decorators but we can appreciate the Maya Romanoff paper wall covering that smartens up the treatment area. The covering looks even smarter when considering that it comes by way of stamping rayon fibers on wet wood pulp, which produce an attractive wall covering that displays both texture and depth.  The wall covering comes from rapidly renewable materials, particularly Mulberry, and is 100% biodegradable.

The designers added several other green elements including:  Benjamin Moore Eco-Spec paint, the treatment room dividers come from the 3-form “full circle” line that uses a form of fair trade for the families in Nepal who helped raise the silkworms to create the striking panels, and even the artwork and mirror framing employs FSC certified wood.

One thing kind of bugs us. The marble countertops and shelves come from EuroStone which create these products from and combo of 90% recycled marble chips and a polyester resin as binding agent. Excluding the resin as a natural element, it’s walking a pretty thin line to claim that using marble chips from quarries would be considered green. If they didn’t mine the resource in the first place then no chips would exist.

Who’s next in the waiting room?

Topics in the guide range from legal and illegal logging and responsible forestry to the presence of formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds in the wood and adhesives.  Eco Timber tackles every step in the process from subfloors to floor pads to the panels themselves.  Looking for a specific hardness of wood?  They’ve got a scale.  Do you already have a hardwood floor and want advice on green care and maintenance?  Eco Timber has a section on maintenance, surface scratching, and refinishing.

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When mention of an “earthen floor” is made, one might imagine a dusty, drab dirt floor. Earthen floors are far from this, however; instead they are very elegant, durable, inexpensive, and ecologically sustainable solutions to a typical floor installation. They are varied in construction, but the idea and ingredients are essentially the same across the board. Earthen (or adobe) floors are poured or compacted combinations of sand, clay, straw, and sometimes crushed rock, with pleasantly smooth surfaces resistant to wear and tear, and capable of storing heat from the sun.

There is no one way to construct an earthen floor. They are a natural option for straw bale or cob buildings, but they can even be installed on concrete slabs or preexisting wood floors, as along as the framework is strong enough to support the heavy weight of many buckets full of earthen material.

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After scoring the main trade floor, we hit the Lawrence Group designed and SG Blocks built, Harbinger House, which impressed us more than last years version (despite the fact of its inside location) with its innovative use of shipping containers. Because we export hardly anything anymore, shipping companies have find new uses for these 8,000-pound containers, so rather than ship them back empty they sold them and here they built a 1700 sq. ft two-story house.

The simple yet functional interior fit right to our liking with Vetrazzo countertops, and bathroom vanities, and the Verve lighting control system. The Agilewaves caught everyone’s interest with their web-based Resource Monitor, that monitors electric, gas and water usage in real-time, while automatically calculating carbon footprint. To be honest, we did catch one showerhead that appeared to not be low flow but if it is we want one for our shower.

For the seminars, the always engaging and entertaining Hunter Lovins along with William Hayward led our favorite seminar as they covered The Business Case for Building the Green Way with humor and aplomb. While most everyone continues to question the price of green building, Hunter runs the other way to show the ultimate cost of NON-green building. If you don’t believe us then check out her presentation which she assures us will be uploaded on her website any day now.

Who wouldn’t appreciate Hunter’s humor while the conference center room’s ineffective and noisy HVAC system blasted out wafts of noise cool air? We do.

With the legion of both deniers and alarmists out there attempting to monopolize the discussion over the safety of granite countertops, it is difficult to find unbiased information.  Peruse the comments in the above post and you can see the discussion has devolved into name calling.  The deniers, many of whom work in the granite industry, blast any insinuation that granite could be dangerous as “fear-mongering” and put down the current research as “junk science.”  The alarmists, many of whom sell competing countertops, argue that consumers shouldn’t take the risk that comes with granite.  The truth, as with most heated arguments, can be found somewhere in the middle.

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Being in the major appliance state of mind, we strolled over to Liebherr, makers of refrigerators and the first appliance company to remove CFC’s completely from the production process back in 1993. It’s no surprise to us that ALL of their models meet the Energy Star qualification, and their BioFresh compartments certainly add green value by preserving fruits and veggies (and the nutritional value) longer than normal fridges. The company also marked the first refrigeration company to comply with RoHS and also recovers and utilizes the energy released during production to heat the manufacturing environments. Yes, the company is based in Germany so hopefully US manufactures will chill with this philosophy.

Also on the old school route, Maze Nails only recently started promoting their “greeness” but they have been making nails with 96 percent recycled content (62% post consumer, 34% pre) for 160 years. Nails aren’t the most glamorous aspect of green building but we know that these guys hit the nail on the head.

We saved the best (or most outrageous) for last. Tucked away in the corner of PCBC we strolled past Green Mountain Soapstone and we probably would have kept right on strolling if not for placard sitting on their soapstone counter which proclaimed “Voted #1 Green Product 2008 New England Home Show”. We didn’t attend that show but if this product claimed the #1 prize then we would hate to see the #5 prize. First of all, this soapstone comes from the ground and last time we checked, the earth wasn’t producing more soapstone. Second, they mine it in Brazil (claiming they use fair labor practices) which isn’t exactly light on the carbon footprint scale. Need we continue? They claim it’s chemical free to manufacture and items such as Icestone aren’t (they should check that IceStone has Cradle to Cradle certification) but don’t insult us but claiming this soapstone to be a green product.

Excuse us while we polish our green granite counter tops.

The three categories that determine a product’s green-ness are health, sustainability, and energy.  Health takes into account the product’s offgassing of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, especially urea-formaldehyde.  In order to even consider something as green, it must contain very low to no VOCs.  Sustainability looks at the life cycle of the materials used not just in the final product but in the manufacturing process as well.  Products that are made from recycled materials or renewable resources fall into this category, as well as products whose manufacturing process embraces sustainability.  Energy includes the water and energy usage of products such as plumbing fixtures and appliances, as well as the product’s embodied energy, which takes into account the energy used to produce and deliver the product.

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Serious Materials, an indoor building material manufacturer, successfully raised an impressive $50 million in late 2007 to support its efforts in bringing it’s new green dry wall product to the marketplace. The venture capital funding is in response to Serious Material’s 2006 research and development success that discovered a way to replace the energy-intensive calcine process used to make drywall. What the company came up with was a gypsum-free drywall they named EcoRock.

You may not think much about drywall, but it is the most common indoor building material in the United States. It does have a dirty secret, though. Typical drywall consist of gypsum, a calcined product which, like cement, needs to be cooked. Basically, it’s calcined (a thermal treatment process) and then dried. That energy-intensive process generates some 20 to 25 billion pounds of CO2 a year. The energy used to make a standard sheet of drywall is 100,000 BTUs or more per sheet, 4×8. When factoring in how much the drywall industry produces a year as a whole: upwards of 30 to 40 billion square feet in the U.S. alone, the CO2 emissions become staggering. In fact, the drywall manufacturing process produces 51 million tons of greenhouse gases and consumes almost 1 percent of all U.S. Energy annually.

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