February 24, 2009
by Environmental Building Strategies
in Uncategorized
Tags: philosophy, sustainability
In keeping with our philosophy of writing every other day we decided to skip a week… Wait that makes no sense – well true. But in our defense it was a week full of vacation time, powder skiing and a Holiday.
So the title Friedmans on my mind is reflective of the fact that I’m about half way through his book, “Hot Flat and Crowded.”
The main premise of the story is the demonstration of what has undergone in America in the last 30+ years and why it is not in any way sustainable. He brings up 3 important topics in the first several pages.
One: The US has become a country that has disconnected themselves emotionally from the rest of the world and in doing so become a world where we “export our fears” instead of exporting our “hopes.”
I feel like this is a pretty important issue today. We just decided to spend more money overseas in this stimulus package and in doing so send more troops to fight people we truly don’t understand (and don’t care to which is worse). We aren’t making an investment in ourselves when we go to fight. Where is the return? Maybe you could argue its in the safety for our future generation but what you need to ask yourself is, “is going around swinging swords and slinging guns a way to make friends?”
Two: “dumb as we wanna be.” A motto our previous President follow to a T. It’s the ideal that we can get to solving the problems ruining our way of life when we feel like it – in doing so we’ve placed this massive chip on our shoulders that has influenced every decision for the last 10+ years.
How many people do you know who bragged a few years ago about how well they were doing in the market or how much value they had in their two houses, or how they were getting into the “fix-it and flip-it” market. We really got out of control cocky and it came crashing down on us.
Three: “nation building at home” – Friedman says this one gives him hope. I’m guessing its because we still under all that cockiness have the ability to recreate ourselves and invent new ways of coping. Hopefully those new ways don’t come in the form of something as ridiculous as mortgage backed securities. But he has a point. America is working to solve the problems we have today – unfortunately it is coming from the bottom. This bottom up approach is great but this country has made it so difficult to see the bottom up survive and blossom – the incentives aren’t in line. The real question is when will they be? When will the administrations of Washington realize that innovation is what we are great at and small business operations are an enormous part of our philosophy and heritage. We need to cherish this and remember where we’ve come from and how we grew.
–The EBS Team
February 12, 2009
by Environmental Building Strategies
in Energy, Green Building
Tags: CFL, Lighting
So I started writing a comparison/death match between LED’s and CFL lamps and I realized it is a terrible comparison. The more I learn about lighting the more I understand that lighting fixtures are like women – they come in all shape and sizes and the best one depends on the correct application. This post I’ll focus on CFL’s. One important thing to do is likes and dislikes about CFL’s. Recently I was in a class and we did a survey about this topic exactly The following is what we came up with.
Dislikes:
Hard to dispose (they have mercury in them)
Long warm up period
Flickering
Humming
Color
Dimming
Initial Cost
Position sensitive
Temp sensitive
High Lumen Depreciation
Limited
Unattractive
Flat
Non focal ability
Storage challenges
Benefits
Wide range of color
Wide range of size and shape
Cool to the touch
Efficacy
Life Cycle
Long Lamp Life
Rebates
Good Color Rendering Index
Good lumen maintenance
At first glance it looks like CFL’s have more negatives, but the more you learn about CFL’s and when to use them these negatives quickly turn to positives.. The first big point is that CFL’s are intended to light a space not an object (repeat: space not object). An example is if you want to light up a painting CFL’s are not the best choice, BUT if you want to light an entire room with even lighting CFL’s are an excellent, outstanding, or even fantastic choice. Next important fact is CFL’s produce a very natural light that is much closer to the outside or true daylight than incandescent and they also have wide range of color choices. So they are great in class rooms, living rooms, hallways, kitchens or anyplace where you don’t want shadows.
Next I must defunct some common dislikes. With the new ballast the flickering and humming are not noticeable (actually it is impossible for the human eye or ear to detect). Back in the first version of CFL’s this was a great argument, but it’s a mute point now. CLF’s now dim you just have to make sure you buy the ones with the dimming feature and make sure they have an electronic balast. You shouldn’t even see the CFL if you install it properly.. The light isn’t flat it’s just very even and has several different color combinations – something that cannot be said about incandescent. They only operate at that yellow color/temperature we are farmiliar with. The problem is that familiarity issue – we just need to get used to the fact that CFL’s have more color choices and often resemble the colors we are naturally used to seeing in outdoor environments.
It’s pretty clear when/where to use CFL’s so stop hating and start using in the right application. At some point I will go into the whole mercury thing, but that’s another blog. So check back and I’ll tell you why that’s not as big of an issue as advertised. Hope you enjoyed
– The EBS Team
February 10, 2009
by Environmental Building Strategies
in EBS News
I can’t stress how useful this place is. PGE that is.
Years after the blow up they had with the whole Erin Brockovich blow up, PGE has really taken energy under their wings. Who knows whether this is just another ploy or what, but I sit here today listening to a true genius, Ryan Stroupe, wondering why everyone isn’t here (3 day comprehensive commercial energy audit class). . .
Maybe I just truly enjoy learning. I feel like if everyone was able to learn just a piece of what I have here we would have the real ability to change the world. At the end of the day thats the point right?
I know it is for Eric Corey Freed of Organic Architect who I met with yesterday. He said, “That’s the point right? At the end of the day I have the same goal as you – we both want to change the world. We want every building to be green.”
He has written a book called Green Building for Dummies
I thought what he said was quite profound and obviously very ambitious. But at the end of the day how plausible is that. Well it would be if we could just find a way for people to become engaged in the issues at hand. There are so many problems outside of the personal bullshit in our lives we should be concerned about – the problem with not recognizing those problems is that their isn’t incentive alignment and their is this small, minor problem we call self-interest.
That being said – anyone who reads this in the northern portion of California should be contacting PGE to find out about educational sessions to learn how you can contribute to reducing the footprint you consume. If you don’t live in California then contact your local utility company and find out if they are offering sessions. Also – start reading about this stuff. Pick up a book like Eric’s or something similar. If you know something about energy consumption or carbon footprinting, then share your knowledge. It will only help the greater good. The more you talk about it the more people will engage you. Ok, I’m rambling – just a passionate day I guess.
–The EBS Team
February 6, 2009
by Environmental Building Strategies
in Energy, Green Building, Renewable Energy, Uncategorized
Tags: Green Building Examples, Green Builoding, PGE, Teaching
For those of you in San Francisco interested in learning about energy efficient buildings go to the PGE headquarters on 5th and Howard. It is really one of the best resources to learning about all items related to green building. They have great demonstrations on lighting, windows, HVACs and many more. It really is a true hidden gem for our industry that is totally underutilized.
An example of a demonstration they have is two panels of glass one is LOW-E and the other is spectrally selective LOW-E glass. Behind the glass are about a 100 incandescent bulbs. When you turn on the switch you can feel the difference of the heat transmitted through the glass. It becomes very clear that for a commercial building it is crucial to have spectrally selective glass because commercial buildings are cooling dominated. Residential it is more important to have passive heating, so heat transmission is helpful, meaning that regular LOW-E glass is the right choice.
Just a cool little bit of information for all you green building enthusiasts.
— The EBS Team
February 4, 2009
by Environmental Building Strategies
in Energy, Uncategorized
Tags: Energy, energy, Energy Star, Green Retrofit, sustainability
So I never like to give away trade secrets but it isn’t like this puppy should be locked away in some vault – it really isn’t all that secretive. And besides our proprietary information involves a much much more conclusive approach to sustainability (just kidding we use this calculator all the time!)
You wouldn’t believe it but there are so many tools out there people can use to analyze what “greening” strategies can do for your life, health and bank account. Below is just one of those strategies … oh and several of my opinions of course
LED ROI Calculator
This tool is quite powerful and here is why:
1. LED’s are better than CFL’s – especially for new construction. When implementing a lighting plan for your new office, building or home you need to be spec’ing for LED. Below are a few links that may be helpful when trying to understand how incadescent, CFL, and LED’s work. They are quite different and you should read up on the differences. Financially they make sense over the long term – big time sense!
2. CFL’s are terrible choices in the long run but like everything we need a game changer – the government implemented the ban of incandescent bulbs which is great -we are going to save bundles and gobbles of money but destroy our oceans and poison our children in the meantime. This law is about as smart as the government saying lets all put lead paint on our walls or lets insulate with asbestos. The fact is that mercury has been phased out of thermostats yet we’ve all the sudden decided its ok to re-implement its use in every lighting fixture in America. Sounds good to me!
3. LED’s last for over 6 years – that is if you leave them on 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week – THAT IS SIX times longer than CFL’s are rated for. Did I forget to mention they use half the energy a CFL does.
Another quick note we often forget – 94% of the energy an incandescent bulb uses is lost as heat. LED’s don’t get hot!
Seriously take a look at this calculator and tell me they are fiscally irresponsible and I’ll tell you your crazy.
The numbers make sense, the color rendering and lumen output make sense, the dim ability (not all CFL’s can dim) features and spotting possibilities make sense yet our government mandates something that doesn’t. What a f–ing surprise – although it was the Heckuva Job, Bushie guy who designed the ingenious plan. I mean you can’t blame a Texan for trying right. . .
Until next time – change out those incandescent s already would ya!
–The EBS Team
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