Practical Eco

US government pushing a boom in green retrofits, according to the Pike Research

Pike Research has released a study called "Energy Efficient Retrofits for Commerical and Public Buildings." It shows that the business of greening commercial buildings is booming. This is driven mainly by strong activity in the federal sector. The report predicts growth will continue at least up to 2013, and emphasises that high-performance buildings command premium rental and sales prices.

According to the report, commercial building retrofits range from less than $1 per square foot up to $40 per sf. At the low end owners gain a simple energy efficiency program that can save 10% of their energy costs. At the high end, from $10 to $40 per sf owners can get up to 40% savings on energy costs and also performance enhancement for the occupants.

For more information on the report see Pike Research here.

It Pays to Install Green Roofs

Nate Kline's post on The Green Economy Post summarizes the many tax credits and incentives available for the installation of a green roof. Several locations including NYC, Chicago, LA, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. Plus, there are proposed programs for Boston and the state of Pennsylvania as well as a Federal bill that proposes a 30% tax credit for green roofs that cover at least 50% of the roof area.

A study by a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, from last year suggests that white roofs across all major cites would curb climate change. See the story here on the Christian Science Monitor.

Clearly, either greater use of both white and green roofs has major benefits and is comparatively inexpensive. Of all the things that can be done with the tops of buildings, it's a shame that black is such a prevalent choice. There are several green roofs here in the Raleigh/Durham area and a few people I know have gone with white for their home roofs. One person I've spoken with has painted black shingles with white acrylic paint and is very happy with that. I'd love to hear from anyone planning a green roof in the area.

I also noticed in Nate's own GreenDldgBlog.com a recent story that neatly lists all the various tax incentives already in place for energy efficiency measures. This is useful for anyone considering energy efficiency renovations.

Green Make-over for a 3 bed Wilmington NC home

A Wilmington home is about to get a green gut rehab and expects to be the first LEED certified gut rehab in the state and only the 31st in the country.

Some of the strategies they aim to employ include:

• Harvesting rain from the roof for irrigation and flushing toilets.
• Using ground-mounted photovoltaic panels to generate 3 kilowatts for a net zero energy home.
• Eliminating the garage in favor of a carport to avoid the potential contamination of indoor air.
• Preparing an operating manual for the home.

Read the full story here on Star News.

Green Historic Preservation Workshop - Greensboro Feb 10th

Participants of a workshop sponsored by Preservation Greensboro will learn how to preserve our environment by going green.

The event will be chaired by Carl Elefante, Director of Sustainable Design with QUINN EVANS ARCHITECTS from Washington DC and lecturer on historic preservation.

The workshop will meet in the Carolina Cadillac Building at 304 East Market Street  downtown Greensboro. Participants of the workshop will review plans for the building; explore state and federal tax credits; learn of green building initiatives in Greensboro and examine the potential for LEED certification. The case study will familiarize architects, developers, and downtown property owners with the process for qualifying for both tax credits and “Green” initiatives.

Attendance for this event is FREE. The doors will open at the Carolina Cadillac Building at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 10th, followed by review of the following topics:

• Historic Preservation and Tax Credit Projects
• Sustainability / Green Building in Greensboro
• Cadillac Dealership Project
• Green building and LEED certification
• Cadillac Dealership Project Case Study

This workshop is for anyone interested in investing or improving downtown structures, citizens and businesses interested in sustainable architecture and design.

For more information about this workshop, please contact Judi at 272-5003, extension

IBM to create green data center in RTP

IBM plans to renovate a building on its RTP campus in North Carolina to create one of the most technologically advanced and energy efficient data centers in the world. It will will reuse up to 95 percent of an existing building and meet stringent environmental standards.

The project is expected to cost $360 million, and received a $750,000 incentives package from Durham County commissioners this June. The new data center will be the first in the world to be built with IBM's New Enterprise Data Center design principles. 

This new RTP data center is a key component in IBM's Project Big Green initiative to dramatically increase energy efficiency in the data center, as companies face escalating energy costs and the requirement to handle a rapidly rising amount of data. It is expected to be a core part of delivering a technology known as cloud computing, harnessing a network of computer systems around the world.

See the full IBM press release here.

Crabtree Area Office Builing Going Green

Private investors last week paid $3 million for the 32,000 square foot Navigant building at Creedmoor Rd and US 70, known for its time-temperature display.  Greg Sanchez, a partner in the ownership, said the renovation is aiming for a LEED certification, but the details are still being worked out. Sanchez is also president of Durham commercial real estate services firm Tri Properties, which will manage the building and conduct the renovation.

A LEED certification could attract new tenants who are happy to pay a premium for green offices because of lower operating costs and a healthier environment. "A lot of tenants want to be in an energy-efficient building," Sanchez said.

See the full story in the News and Observer here.

New Energy.Gov site offers home efficiency tips

The Federal Government wants us to save energy so they've set up a cute new site to show us how.

The new site at www.energy.gov, by the Department of Energy (DOE), shows a cutaway of a house with clickable points that offer up energy saving tips. Tips like, install CFLs, get an EnergyStar dishwasher, or EnergyStar windows.

Much of the advice at the main page is pretty basic. But as you dig in a bit to the DOE site the information gets more advanced. The tips are categorized by Automobile, Appliances, Heating & Cooling, Insulation & Air Sealing, Landscaping, Lighting, Summer, Water, Winter. And they're pretty well considered.

Charlotte Clean & Green

I'm off to Charlotte to give a presentation on Green Remodeling. It's at the first annual Charlotte Clean and Green event being held at the Central Piedmont Community College campus.

For those who attend and those who can't I've drafted my own set of green remodeling priorities here.  It is broken down into small, medium and large projects plus a number of small but important behaviors which I think are important to maintaining a green home.

I know there's debate on certain issues like powered attic ventilation and several other issues. So go on and tell me what you think the most important remodeling issues are. Comment here or email me at pjnery (at) practicaleco.com.

Here's a more detailed summary of my presentation with links to documents I mentioned to help you seal and insulate more effectively.

Home Energy Audits for Greening In Place

Earlier this week I tagged along with an energy auditor, Bill Klotz from Eco-Anthracite. I wanted to see how it all works and besides it was an interesting project which I'll be writing more about soon. A group of UNC Fraternity brothers are forming a non-profit venture to green-up fraternity and sorority houses in the region.

Two of the fraternity brothers and I followed Bill,the energy auditor, around the building from basement and crawlspace area up to the attic looking for a wide range of signs and clues. We found clear indications of moisture condensing on the stone walls in the basement, not far from the kitchen. And we found plenty of leaks in windows, doors etc.

In the photo to left Bill does what he calls the "door dance" which is a tricky maneuver to fit the blower door into position. This enables the house to be pressurized and helps find leaks as well as measuring the overall seal of the building.

In the end the owners get a detailed report indicating areas of concern and recommendations. In this case it was recommended that a $2000 spend (this is a very big house remember) on sealing and tightening would save half that each year in energy costs. Which is a great ROI anywhere.

 

USGBC & ASID to unveil Green Residential Remodeling Guidelines

The Nation’s First Green Residential Remodeling Guidelines will be unveiled March 14th at the INTERIORS 08 event.

The news guidelines to be called REGREEN, are a collaboration between The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Foundation and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The USGBC,  coordinates the well-known LEED guidelines for the construction of green buildings.

The REGREEN program is a series of guidelines designed for use by residential designers, construction professionals and homeowners alike.  It includes best practices, learning programs and other resources for those looking to green up an existing home whether it’s room by room, or an entire house.

The website at, www.regreenprogram.org, is still in development but it is intended to house all REGREEN related resources and will include interactive links to case studies, products and educational materials.

ASID Executive Director Michael Alin, Hon.FASID, said, “REGREEN is not just a set of guidelines, it’s much more than that. We are developing
a curriculum for learning programs and designing a comprehensive and user friendly consumer and professional website to assist in green residential remodeling.”

ROI Tables for Green Tuneups and Remodelling

I've just discovered GreenAndSave.com which offers ROI tables for various improvements you can make to your home. These show the expected costs versus savings and return on investment (ROI) you might expect from making such modifications.  This is a great resource for comparing the value of improvements.

There are a few points on which I might differ such as windows and skylights. Windows show a payback of 2.3 years which seems very short to me. When I've looked at changing windows I've worked out payback at nearer 10 years. Skylights are another point. In the South they're more likely to cost you money for extra cooling. Skylights a great at adding heat in Summer because they're oriented horizontally for peak Summer sun; and loosing it in Winter because heat rises. Another issue is insulating walls. The cost of tearing out sheet rock in older homes is much higher than the tables indicate. It looks to me as if the cost shown is only the insulation itself not the associated cost of remodeling. But hey, if you're ripping out the sheet rock anyway it has to be done. 

My final gripe is solar attic fans, which do nothing to reduce the cooling demand. 95% of the heat that enters the attic comes through radiation. Increased ventilation does very little to change that. See my Vented Attics post.

Apart from those few issues the resource at  GreenAndSave.com is fantastic. Quite probably much of our differences come from the fact that I'm concerned only with the mixed humid climate of the Southeast which has its own unique challenges.

For the complete ROI tables and topic page with details on over 50 ways to SAVE Money and the Environment visit: Home Remodeling ROI.

My Leaky Ducts Suck

We had been experiencing very dry air at home.  To the extent that we'd wake up with very dry noses and feel uncomfortable.  I should have done this a long time ago, since I know the issue and how to deal with it. But life can derail my best intentions. I finally got down into the crawlspace last week with a bucket of mastic and a can of great stuff. What a great way to spend an afternoon! I got back into the lowest craggiest parts of the crawlspace where I'd never yet gone, and I'm sure I'll never forget.

Basically, I applied mastic to every seam in the air handler and plenum, and I applied it to every part of the duct system that had anything that looked like a seam, right up to the boots. The boot is the part where the duct meets the vents above. The application is not exactly pretty (see photo of my air handler), but who's looking at it? The whole job took me about three hours. Be sure to wear knee pads, a mask and coveralls or very old clothes. One of the initial challenges that slowed me down was simply finding mastic. The big stores around here don't seem to carry it in stock. I eventually asked an HVAC guy where my nearest supply store is and got it sorted out.

While I was down in the crawlspace I found some nice big holes where pipes of one sort or another go up into the house. These were all plugged up nicely with great stuff insulating spray foam.  This will help reduce air leakage some more and keep pests out of the wall cavities.

The most easily accessible part of the floor area is insulated with fiberglass batt. I can only guess it was too much trouble for someone to bother with the rest of the area. Where the fiberglass came up against the duct boots it was badly darkened. This indicates that air was being sucked in and "filtered" by the fiberglass. And that just proves there were leaks where the ducts meet the boots.

The end result is, with a week of cold days to test the changes, we're experiencing much more comfortable air. And we're not waking up every morning with dry chapped noses.  There's a great description of this very same situation by Arnie Katz at Advanced Energy, here.

How long will it take for your house to complete fall to ruin?

I thought this article on How Stuff Works, was worth highlighting. It's basically an object lesson in the importance of home maintenance. The article explores the forces at work in a house's decline into ruin if left completely unattended.

So what happens if you simply stop doing the dull household maintenance things like fixing that roof, clearing the gutters, painting etc.? It's no surprise, I'm sure, to readers here that the major agent of destruction is water.  But read the article here for a great exploration of the demise of a structure.

Homeowners investing in green features

So apparently the weak housing market is turning out to be a good thing for green products and interior designers. With the weaker market, homeowners are staying put and renovating instead of moving. And with the widespread growth in green products this sector is really benefiting.

The Daily Green reports on an article from the San Francisco Chronicle - read the full story here.