Archive for February, 2011|Monthly archive page

On-Post Housing gets a Green Facelift on Ft. Belvoir

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

Clark Builders Group puts sustainable construction practices to use on the revamping of On-Post Housing on Ft. Belvoir.

It has been several years in the making, but Ft. Belvoir is finally getting its green facelift for on-post housing thanks to work by Clark Builders Group (CBG) and Clark Realty Capital (CRC). As the developer on the project, CRC has outlaid millions of dollars into creating a community that is energy efficient and functional for our soldiers and their families who are stationed at Ft. Belvoir. In 2008, the Huffington Post noted that  ” according to green tech blog Clean Technica, the Department of Defense is responsible for over 1.5% of all U.S. energy consumption” and they were looking to make the shift to energy independence. What better place to start than where our soldiers live?!

The development period, which is slated to continue into 2011 includes thousands of homes that Clark Builders Group (CBG) is constructing, remodeling, and renovating to be more energy efficient; there are some homes which are being fully gutted to the studs, and others which do not require as extensive of a renovating process. These homes are undergoing a third party verification system through the EarthCraft Virginia program which is the regional green building program; energy audits are performed on the homes to ensure that specific standards are met for each individual unit in the project. The homes are getting significantly stronger insulation, HVAC systems and EnergyStar fixtures and appliances throughout. The interesting thing about the process of greening the military housing is that the superintendents on the job sites are so very into this program that it has almost become a competition between the different communities and how tightly built their specific product is!

In 2010 CRC released this article sharing in their triumphs with the Ft. Belvoir community initiative: “On October 7, Fort Belvoir Family Housing won the 2010 GreenGov Presidential Building the Future Award at a White House reception, earning recognition as an exemplary community that embodies America’s movement towards a clean energy economy. Chosen for its sustainable practices, renewable energy, innovation, community engagement and education, Fort Belvoir was distinguished among over 300 nominees nationwide by The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Clark Realty Capital, Clark Builders Group, and their Army partner accepted the award, which recognized Belvoir as a project truly representative of CEQ’s mission.”

CRC and CBG have put a lot of work into creating a more energy efficient product for the Ft. Belvoir on-post housing.  Their dedicated team has aimed to remain true to the history and strong sense of community of the Ft. Belvoir villages, all the while striving to make the community a healthier, more sustainable place to live for our soldiers and their families.

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Geothermal Energy and Your Home

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Find us on ProudGreenHome.com as the Green Home Gurus and join in the conversation! This was the first entry- just to get you started…

What could be more natural than using the consistency of the earth’s geothermal energy?

When was the last time you got into a discussion about green building? Did you talk about the “s” word? Sustainability? Did you happen to get into an enthralling conversation about heat loss and energy efficiency? Have you ever had to talk about geothermal energy? Well, on a flight back to the DC Metro area, I was thrilled to talk to my new found in-flight-friend about the energy efficient home he and his wife plan on building out in Lynchburg, VA. Not necessarily known for their sustainable building practices, the good folks of Lynchburg are starting to take advantage of the geothermal energy option for heating and cooling their homes.

What exactly is geothermal energy? If we roll ourselves back to 6th grade science class, some of us may remember the Greek words geo, meaning earth, and therme meaning heat, so- the earth’s heat. What’s so great about geothermal energy is that it comes straight from the earth’s core and we are able to create systems to heat  and cool whole buildings. By finding areas of constant temperature through the practice of digging down into wells and piping the naturally heated water, we can harness the earth’s own energy to sustain our heating and cooling. This is a concept as old as the earth itself (since it comes from the earth). Ancient cultures used to use water from the hot springs to bath and find warmth. In 1904 (not to say that it ancient by any stretch of the imagination) machines were experimented with such as the one found above to create electricity from geothermal energy.

My new buddy out of Lynchburg mentioned that they are not going to be drilling a deep vertical well; however they will be utilizing the technique of digging about 7-10 feet down in the earth, to where to earth is a constant temperature and creating a system of coiled tubes that will be filled with water. This is much like the radiant heating systems that people put into the flooring to heat and cool their homes. The horizontal system is much less expensive than the vertical counterpart; however does require more land space for the excavation and implementation of the coiled tubing.

The US Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has proclaimed the use of geothermal energy the cleanest, most cost effective way to manage temperature. It is interesting to note this since President Obama announced the plan to have the US running on 85% clean energy by 2035. The US currently leads the world in geothermal energy production, with most of the deep geothermal wells being out west in California, Nevada as well as a few other locations. No matter where you are, be it Lynchburg, Virginia, or LA, there is the opportunity to discover the benefits of this clean, cost effective energy option.

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Moving Toward Net Zero – Part 2 of a Series

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Adventures of a Home Energy Nerd continued with our Arlington based Contributor

The Energy Audit – Step One  in the Renovation Recipe

If you are reading this, you have probably already done things like switched out your incandescent bulbs with compact florescent, plugged your TV and its 500 peripheral toys into power strips, turned up or down your programmable thermostats, and made some other basic energy saving changes in your home. We will focus on some of those basic things in future articles, but for now we will take things to a different level.

Put simply, every homeowner should consider having an energy audit. This is especially important if you are considering an addition or renovation and might have access to the inside or outside of walls, ceilings, or ducts (including residing or reroofing projects) to be able to plug leaks or add more insulation.  An audit will give you the information you need to begin to turn your 1950’s Swiss cheese box into a highly efficient machine. The result should be a report that gives you specific information about where you are losing energy in your house and what actions you can take to reduce the loss.

I have to admit that energy audits were not on my radar when I began planning my addition 7 years ago. I did not have an audit performed for my house until after my renovation work was completed, when I realized it was too late to seal up some of the exterior walls of the existing part of my home. Lessons learned.

Even if you are not considering an addition or other major home improvement, an energy audit will still offer you a road-map guiding you along a series of useful energy saving improvements throughout your home.

Top 5 Things to Do or Consider Before You Start Home Renovations:

1.  Have a full Energy Audit Performed by a RESNET or BPI certified auditor who seems to know what they are doing – getting references is also a good idea.

2. Think about any walls or ceilings that you might be able to get into to make more airtight or add more insulation to during the renovation.

3.  Hire a good insulation company to make the insulation and air sealing improvements, unless you feel confident that your general contractor has experience doing this type of work (this is not too common).

4.  If replacing appliances or heating and cooling systems, choose only Energy Star rated equipment or those with equivalent energy usage.

5.  If you are married or live with a significant other, pre-order some relationship counseling for the stress that will inevitably be created in living through a renovation together.

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Genetically Modified Foods. Discuss.

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

An Omnivore’s Dilemma, Indeed. We don’t always talk about home energy efficiency around here. Sometimes I like to get into healthy living, as it is totally a part of what we do in our homes- right? We live. We play. We sleep.  We eat. I just started reading the multifaceted Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food. I have to say that I had originally been opposed to reading about the way that our society has decided to go all crazy GMO on us because I like food. Let me rephrase that, I like clean, healthy food, and I don’t eat fast food, because it freaks me out. I know it sounds silly, but I didn’t want to hear about all of the terrible things that happen to our slab of roast beef before it hits the plate; I didn’t want to hear about the monoculture and how it was probably going to have us all wind up with curly horns and prehensile tails in our next generation of children. I just wanted to eat my (non-chemically treated, real) food in ignorant, gluttonous bliss. In our household, we shop at Whole Foods quite frequently because they tend to usually have the most eye-catching and seemingly tasty produce selection and -oh- (sort of excited here) gorgeous butcher section complete with organically raised, grass fed beef, bison and beyond. Meat, glorious meat and veggies which are strikingly beautiful and yummy, for the most part. Sticking to the tradition of trying to do the “right thing, the sustainable thing, the green thing,” when it comes to food- seems to be getting trickier and trickier. With the announcement on January 21, 2011, in the ” profoundly misleading email” to their customers, the folks at health food 800 pound gorilla, Whole Foods Market is “surrendering” to the GMO giants (the 850 pound gorillas) Monsanto. Whole Foods Market has asked that farmers be given “compensation” for their Monsanto contaminated fields; meaning: these once organic farms have been tainted and there is no way to resurrect the soil to amend it to not have the terrible, toxic and mutant Monsanto seed. This is their so called “hush money” for having the Monsanto GM seeds contaminating their organic fields. Wow. Enter feelings: Shocked. Saddened. Scared. What does this mean for the future of organic produce? If Monsanto’s seeds are nudging their way into the Whole Foods Market, what will happen to all of the other small-scale, organic, and even biodynamic farms who have so far  avoided the  Monsanto seed? Having just got into the book, In Defense of Food, I was starting to get excited about finding these amazing organic veggies to overpopulate our fridge; but now I’m not too keen on buying those luscious vegetables from Whole Foods. Back to the CSA… but wait, are they in danger, did any of our local farmers get a pay off check yet?  I wanted to live in that ignorant, gluttonous food-oriented bliss- but I am pretty glad to have finally enlightened myself. What are you thoughts on this? Leave a comment, or join the discussion on Facebook.

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A NOVA Green Builder Gets Personal

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Custom home builder, Mark Turner is no stranger to the green building process. Having mastered the art of the high performance, carbon neutral home, and the luxury and art behind the sustainable interior selections, Mark and his team at GreenSpur have taken building sustainable homes to a new level. They strive to bring together community, family, hearth and home in each of the structures they build while honoring the sustainable building process. Take a note: Sustainability- it’s a personal thing to the home builders at GreenSpur.

Sustainability – it’s a personal thing.

When I was asked to write a blog about green building techniques, products or a top ten list of do’s and don’ts – many concepts came to my mind but none of them struck me as particularly interesting. Many builders and architects, smarter than I, have written good articles and blogs on such subjects.  So not to bore you or myself I would like to talk about the personal side of green building which to me is more interesting and hopefully worthy of a good bar conversation.

The personal side of green building or sustainability – what the hell right? What’s personal about energy star roofs, icenyne insulation, geothermal, solar hot water and cork flooring? Nothing. Nothing personal about concrete, roof eve details, low e windows, and low flow water fixtures. These are just building commodities – nothing to get our shorts in a ruffle about right? Right.

What about global warming? Anything personal that the World Meteorological Association saying that the ten hottest years since we have started recording earths temperature in the 1860’s have been the last ten years. Anything personal about odd weather trends, record flooding, and loss of glacial activity at record pace. Perhaps if you have been directly impacted by some of these items, for most of us nothing really personal right. The science of global warming seems to be pretty real and perhaps there is some truth about the other side of the fence who says we are just in the natural cycles of the universe and has nothing to do with man. Hell I don’t know – and I am not anyone can definitely say. All I know is that we got a lot of people on this planet, doing and using a lot of things so anything we can do in terms of getting along and becoming more sustainable can only be a good thing.  The scientific debate does not motivate me to get up in the morning. What does motivate me is my kids, the kind of work I do, and selfishly my legacy I hope to leave as a designer and builder. These personal incentives, translate to my passion, which hopefully with any luck can inspire those close to it and set in turn set in motion another series of personal decisions.

So regardless of where you stand with cork flooring vs hardwoods or the real cause of global warming, I make choices based on things that are personal to me. And what I am finding is that our clients are making decisions based on what is personal to them. I think its part of our DNA make up as humans to make all our decisions on a personal level. I don’t push the green agenda or tell them they will decrease global warming by their individual decisions – I tell them to make decisions on what “they want.” Not a novel idea I understand – sorry. But the incredible difference between a government or group preaching their agenda on what is green and what is not and an individual making personal decisions is that one is sustainable in the long run and one is not. One evokes the beauty of imagination, the connection to family, to values, to community, to where we drink our coffee, to where we work, laugh and dream. The other does not. I am betting and trying to live and to work the former – I guess time will tell.

-Mark Turner, GreenSpur

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