Green Reads

I thought I'd share some of my favorite books on green living and homemaking. I'll still be giving you all the key tips here, but if you want to get a little more in-depth on a specific topic, try these out. Enjoy!

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REMODELING
Green Remodeling: Changing the World One Room at a Time
David Johnston and Kim Master

Did you know that Americans spend more money annually on home renovation than on new-home construction? With buildings being responsible for 40 percent of worldwide energy flow and material use, home renovation represents a huge opportunity to decrease your environmental footprint. And if done correctly, green remodeling can, over time, allow you to recoup much of the money invested in the work. Upgrading to a more energy-efficient furnace, for example, can help lower your fuel bill, while installing low-flow toilets can save on water bills. So it pays to think ahead when remodeling, which is why this book is so useful.

Green Remodeling discusses simple green renovation solutions for homeowners, focusing on key aspects of the building including foundations, framing, plumbing, windows, heating and finishes. Room by room, it outlines the intricate connections that make a house work as a system. For example, it explains how new windows may affect the building's mechanical systems, the health of the occupants, and the future of old-growth forests. Then, in an easy-to-read format complete with checklists, personal stories, expert insights and an extensive resource list, it covers ways to save energy, conserve natural resources, and protect your health. This book is a useful resource for homeowners, architects, and remodeling contractors.

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HEALTHY HOUSEHOLD

Creating A Healthy Household: The Ultimate Guide for Healthier, Safer, Less-Toxic Living
Lynn Marie Bower

Lynn Marie Bower is an expert on healthy interior decorating, furnishings, hobbies, and cleaning practices. Her book, Creating A Healthy Household: The Ultimate Guide for Healthier, Safer, Less-Toxic Living, is packed with useful information. A multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) sufferer, Bower writes with deep personal knowledge of the issues. The book includes a comprehensive resource list with full contact information for each reputable company or organization mentioned. With chapters devoted to cleaning products, personal-care, clothing, linens, interior decorating, life-styles, housekeeping, air and water quality, and reducing electromagnetic radiation, no other book matches its thoroughness.

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BIOPHILIC DESIGN

Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection
Stephen R. Kellert

Ecological Design
Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan

The theory of biophilia states that there is an innate bond between humans and nature. The term has recently been the subject of much attention in environmental and design circles. Yale social-ecology professor Stephen Kellert has published a book titled Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection. In this book, Kellert states that a connection with nature is "instrumental in human physical, material, emotional, intellectual, and moral well-being." Kellert also attests that our fractured relationship with nature can be ameliorated through what he calls "restorative environmental design." The benefits of biophilic design are being acknowledged by a growing number of architects, designers, and public health officials, and can be applied to many facets of your home.

For a somewhat more practical read on biophilic design, pick up Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan's book Ecological Design. This book is a thoughtful discussion of the theory and practice of ecological design, covering the following five principles: "solutions grow from place," "ecological accounting informs design," "design with nature," "everyone is a designer," and "make nature visible."

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ENERGY USE

The Home Energy Diet: How to Save Money by Making Your House Energy-Smart
Paul Scheckel

The Home Energy Diet was designed to help readers take control of their personal energy use and costs so they can save money, live more comfortably, and help reduce environmental impacts. The book also explores the possibility of using renewable energy for meeting home energy needs.

The crux of the book is a series of lessons on how common household systems (hot water heaters, heating/air conditioning systems, refrigerators and freezers, and other household appliances) use energy, but more importantly, how they lose energy through inefficiency, and what you can do to minimize such losses. The book then spells out a "diet" for each system. For instance, the electrical diet lists 16 tips, including:

• Call your power company and ask if they provide an energy audit service. Older homes can often reduce energy bills by 50% or more by implementing energy audit recommendations.


• Use only compact florescent light bulbs (CFLs). For every 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) used by a conventional, incandescent light bulb, a CFL bulb will use only 333 kWh, reducing your lighting costs by one-third.


• Know what is on, when and why.


• Eliminate your phantom loads (phantom loads are energy leaks from appliances, like those with a digital clock display, that draw small amounts of power even when not in use) by using power strips with on/off switches. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that phantom loads add up to nearly 10 percent of U.S. household electricity use, or approximately $4 billion per year.

Top 10 Green Building Products - Part 1

BuildingGreen, the publisher of the GreenSpec Directory and Environmental Building News, has released a top-10 list of Green Building Products. The selections are drawn primarily from new additions to the GreenSpec product directory, to which more than 250 product listings were added during 2006. Products are selected for inclusion in the GreenSpec directory by editors of Environmental Building News based on criteria developed over the past 15 years. Manufacturers do not pay to be listed in GreenSpec, and neither GreenSpec nor any other BuildingGreen publication carries advertising; both are supported exclusively by users of the information. Five of the products on the list are described below.

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Polished Concrete System from RetroPlate

Polishing concrete is a technique for turning both new and old concrete slabs into attractive, durable, finished floors. RetroPlate pioneered this process of grinding, polishing, and chemically hardening concrete in the 1990s, and its system has now been used on more than 100 million square feet of flooring. The process involves large walk-behind diamond-wheel grinders, which remove a thin layer of the concrete floor surface. Consecutively finer-grit grinding and polishing wheels achieve a fine polish. During the polishing process, sodium silicate is applied, which reacts with the concrete to form a layer of calcium silicate hydrate. The resultant concrete surface is highly durable, easy to maintain, free of VOC emissions, and more reflective (which can reduce light level requirements). The system enables the concrete slab to serve as the finished floor surface, thus reducing material use.

What makes this product green?

• Reduces impacts from construction or demolition
• Reduces heating and cooling loads
• Alternative to hazardous components
• Releases minimal pollutants
• Exceptional durability or low-maintenance

Underwater Standing Timber Salvage by Triton Logging

Triton Logging harvests underwater standing trees from forests that were submerged decades ago by reservoirs created by hydroelectric dams. The company uses its proprietary Sawfish logging submarine, which is tethered to a surface ship and controlled remotely. The Sawfish clamps onto a tree, attaches inflatable floats, then cuts the trunk with an electric chainsaw. Because the trees are cut above the reservoir floor, sediments are not disturbed. The company recovers Douglas fir, western white pine, lodgepole pine, hemlock, and other species. All of the milled wood is certified as SmartWood Rediscovered by the Rainforest Alliance. The company produces a range of lumber products and is launching a line of glulam beams made from underwater-salvaged timber.

What makes this product green?

• Salvaged products

SageGlass Tintable Glazing from Sage Electrochromics

SageGlass is an electronically tintable exterior glazing that provides glare control on demand while preserving views. SageGlass is more durable than earlier switchable glazing products, which degraded with exposure to UV light. Used with typical clear glass in an insulated glazing unit, SageGlass significantly reduces visible transmittance and solar heat gain. Sage Electrochromics is partnering with numerous window, skylight, and curtainwall manufacturers to produce both commercial and residential products with this glazing control options; these products can provide energy savings, control peak electricity demand, enhance comfort, and potentially result in higher worker productivity.

What makes this product green?

• Building components that reduce heating and cooling loads
• Improves light quality

PaperStone Certified Composite Surface Material from KlipTech Composites

PaperStone, from KlipTech Composites, is a dense, hard, water-resistant, solid-surface composite material used for countertops and exterior rainscreen siding. It is made from paper fiber and a non-petroleum resin derived in part from a natural oil in the shells of cashews. There are two versions of the product: standard PaperStone contains at least 50% post-consumer recycled paper, while the newer PaperStone Certified has 100% post-consumer recycled paper. PaperStone Certified is certified by SmartWood to carry the Forest Stewardship Council recycled-content label. Overall, the product is 60% paper fiber by weight and 40% resin. While PaperStone Certified today includes some coal-derived resin, the company expects to convert to 100% natural resins this year.

What makes this product green?

• Post-consumer recycled content
• Rapidly renewable
• FSC-certified wood
• Low-emitting product with no formaldehyde

Varia and "100 Percent" Recycled-Content Panel Products

Two interior panel products from 3form offer interior designers a wide range of design opportunities coupled with recycled content and low emissions. Varia is 3form's line of transparent and translucent panels made from its 40% pre-consumer recycled-content Ecoresin, which is chemically similar to the plastic used in beverage containers. Some of the Varia products include plant materials—collected by indigenous peoples using environmentally responsible practices—that impart biophilic design features to the product, helping building occupants feel more connected to nature. The opaque 3form 100 Percent product is made from 100% post-consumer recycled high-density polyethylene. Available in a range of colors and patterns, 100 Percent is appropriate for such applications as toilet partitions, interior workstations, and interior trim. The company has recently added UV-inhibitors that make the product appropriate for outdoor applications. Scientific Certification Systems has certified the recycled content of 3form Varia and Greenguard Environmental Institute has certified its low emissions; similar certifications for 3form 100 Percent are expected this year.

What makes this product green?

• Post-industrial recycled content
• Post-consumer recycled content
• Does not release significant pollutants into the building

The Biophilic Home - Part 2

In a previous post, we spoke about the biophilia hypothesis, which states that humans have a primal affinity for the natural world, and that the modern weakening of the human-nature connection, especially in urban environments, can lead to personal and societal feelings of dissatisfaction and alienation. Biophilic design encourages the use of natural, even living, materials and the mimicry of natural forms (biomimicry) to reestablish this connection.

One striking account of the benefits of even a visual connection with nature is found in Roger Ulrich's book Biophilia, Biophobia, and Natural Landscapes:

[Hospital] patients were assigned essentially randomly to rooms that were identical except for window view: one member of each pair overlooked a small stand of deciduous trees; the other had a view of a brown brick wall. Patients with the natural window view had shorter postoperative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes (“patient is upset,” “needs much encouragement”), and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication.
(Ulrich 1984: pp. 106-107)

Of course, living in New York City, we often don't have the luxury of a natural view, but that doesn't mean we need abandon biophilic design. One way that nature can be brought into our homes is through the use of design elements that mimic natural forms, and options abound. Gore Design Co.'s Signature Erosion Sink, for example, is inspired by layers of rock worn down over millennia.


The LEGEND bookcase, designed by Christophe Delcourt for Roche-Bobois, evokes the form of a tree. New York City-based Clodagh Design produced a custom concrete conference table with a C-channel groove positioned lengthwise down the center of the table and planted with wheatgrass (photo by Daniel Aubry).













Some of the most innovative fusions of nature and furniture are still in the development phase. In a project at the Lycée Jean Monnet in the French city of Vendée, industrial design students designed and built prototypes of furniture incorporating live plants. These designs were displayed at an exhibit titled Espace Inspiration at the 2005 Salon du Vegetal horticulture show in Angers. Projects included Ter'Happy, a "haven of greenery" where an arc of bamboo forms a living curtain around a seating area to facilitate relaxation and other quiet activities.

The Biophilic Home - Part 1

The theory of biophilia posits that there is an innate bond between humans and nature. The term, coined by psychologist Erich Fromm and popularized by biologist Edward O. Wilson, has recently been the subject of much attention in environmental and design circles. In 2005, Yale social-ecology professor Stephen R. Kellert published a book, Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection, in which he states that a connection with nature is "instrumental in human physical, material, emotional, intellectual, and moral well-being." Kellert attests that our fractured relationship with nature can be ameliorated through what he calls "restorative environmental design." In a recent podcast, he describes the theory and practice of biophilic design.

The benefits of biophilic design are being acknowledged by a growing number of architects, urban designers, public health officials, and experts in business productivity. Homeowners are also taking notice. A New York Times article from September 2006, which calls biophilic design the "quirky, lesser-known cousin of green design," describes several residential applications. In one home described in the article, a company called The Sky Factory installed sky-simulating panels in the bedroom ceiling, where the light is computer programmed to mimic sunrise, noon, and sunset.

The use of natural lighting and materials, such as wood, stone, and natural fabrics, can also foster an increased feeling of connection with the natural world. Even something as simple as opening a window to increase air flow can have a positive effect.

Stay tuned for more posts on the theory and practice of biophilic design in the home.