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Monday, March 8, 2010
Building Green, thinking green
Posted by Grant Rimbey CNU on Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:00 AM
For the past month or so I’ve been reading books and watching a series titled Building Green which documents California builder Kevin Contreras’ efforts to build his new dream house using green and sustainable building practices.
The series is a great overall primer to green building, although I have to admit that the green building practices mentioned (but not utilized) in the new house are often the most intriguing to me, such as earthen floors and rammed earth.
There is also a healthy dose of greenwashing going on with the actual house: the 4,000 square foot straw-bale "McMansion" that Contreras ultimately builds replaces a smaller house on the same large lot in the far-flung suburbs. The final house is similar to a home you’d see on a Builder Tour in Nuevo Tampa or Fishhawk Ranch (but much better designed), as opposed to a compact green and sustainable dwelling in a more sustainable context. As “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” (LEED) is slowly learning, where something is built is as important as how it’s built.
The series includes thirteen videos (each twenty five minutes long): "Breaking Ground", "Foundation", "Framing" and "Roofing", "Straw Bales", "Doors and Windows", "Exterior Finishes", "Interior Finishes", "Floors and Closets", "Lighting", "Water", "Landscaping", "Interior Design" and "The Finale". They are well worth the watch if for nothing else than to get a feel for the scope of the options out there. (All thirteen episodes can be viewed online here.)
“1. The demand for oil will gradually increase and will continue to increase as the global middle class expands2. The oil that remains in the earth will be more and more expensive to locate and extract.
3. The price of gas will climb to prices far past where we’re at right now.”
This is not your typical doomsday downer environmental tome, and although some of the future changes that will occur from climate change will be dire (rising ocean levels and what it will mean to barely-above-sea-level Florida comes to mind), there is a silver lining in that the future global oil market will determine folks' behavior, and probably for the better. If you’ve ever felt frustration considering the future problems the world faces with climate change, while at the same time being stuck in traffic next to a Hummer, read this book, the future is a brave new world.
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