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Want to get a home energy rating?

emKem — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:52:45 +0000

…Well if so, let me know, because I’m at a conference with several hundred home energy raters this week!

First of all, you may want to know what a “home energy rating” consists of. The funny thing is, there’s actually LOTS of home energy ratings. There’s the HERS, which is given by ResNet, which is the group hosting the conference I’m attending this week; there’s a BPI rating; there’s the ENERGY STAR designation; there’s the LEED for Homes; there’s the NAHB Green Home Standard; and I’m pretty sure there’s a few that I’m forgetting.

An example of a HERS score: image courtesy of ResNet

Each of these rating systems use a set of standards that are either administered during the construction or remodeling of the home, or they are checked after the home is completed. To adhere to these strict standards, your home needs to have properly installed insulation, tight construction (so that your home doesn’t leak too much air), an air/moisture barrier (again with the leakage), properly sealed ducts, and it wouldn’t hurt to have good windows, weatherstripping, very efficient HVAC equipment, and … basically your home should be a well-constructed, high-performance house.

I would regale you with the details of the various sessions that I’ve been attending but I can almost guarantee that you would get bored and fall asleep reading. I’ve been having a hard time staying awake myself, which I attribute to the warmth of the rooms and the fact that I’m operating three hours ahead of my home time zone. Nevertheless, it’s an incredibly informative conference and I’m getting to meet a lot of very knowledgeable people who are working to help homeowners save energy.

Now, back to watching the Olympics!

Do-It-Yourself projects are good for the environment

emKem — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:29:05 +0000

Lately I’ve been on a big Discovery Channel kick (it’s hard NOT to watch when Bear Grylls is on the TV), and I wanted to briefly mention one of their partner companies, called Planet Green. Hopefully many of you have the Planet Green channel on your cable because it is full of great environmentally friendly-programming, like a show with my favorite “green” celebrity Ed Begley, Jr (who is busy helping Penn State with their Solar Decathalon house). Also I wanted to point out a page on the Planet Green Web site that could be a great resource for people: it talks all about green DIY projects. Green do-it-yourself projects can range from home maintenance to creating something from recycled materials. In fact, if you take a used material and make it into something better, you are “upcycling” – aka, you are increasing the value of the material from what it used to be. Last Christmas, my best friend took about 30 plastic bags from the grocery store, cut them into strips, made a “yarn” out of the strips, and knitted a wine bottle carrier for me. Talk about upcycling! Those plastic bags have never looked so good!

Plastic bag-woven wine bottle carrier!

I’d like to think that the t-shirt quilt that I’m trying to make is upcycling, but as with many sewing projects for me, it’s turning out to be hairier than I initially thought. You see, I already had this fleece blanket from IKEA, so I thought I would size the patches that I cut out from the t-shirts to fit the blanket, and everything would be great. Except that the tag for the blanket said that it was 51″ x 67″ – which I trusted – and as it turns out, it’s closer to 51″ by about 56″. And this is a problem because I sized the patches to fill the blanket along 60″ of length! So I’m going to have to sew the patches about an inch short each. Three cheers for improvisation!

T-shirts pre-cutting

T-shirts after I've cut out the good bits

Patches after they've been ironed onto stabilizer backing and laying them out onto the blanket

If you know me, you’ve probably seen one of these t-shirts before… or perhaps you’ve even given one of them to me! The point of this exercise is, they’ve outgrown their usefulness in my wardrobe but they all mean something to me, and I wanted to hang on to them without having a large pile of unused t-shirts in my closet. So I am putting them all in one place, and the scraps are being donated to either the rag or recycling piles.

Anyway, here’s to DIY projects and keeping something else out of the wastestream! (And if anyone has any t-shirt quilt suggestions for me, by all means post them below, I could probably use the help…)

How do you recycle a car?

emKem — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:38:20 +0000

Tucked away in Wednesday’s edition of All Things Considered on NPR was a short bit where they discussed listener letters, and they answered one letter that was sent in after a report on the Federal Government’s “Cash for Clunkers” program. Specifically the listener wanted to know “what happens to the ‘clunker’ after it is turned in and junked?” Well, I never would have guessed that you could recycle cars this way, but essentially the vehicle is stripped down for parts; it then goes to a special handling facility where it is flattened; and finally, it is sent into a “car shredder”, which shreds it into hundreds of fist-size pieces of metal, plastic, and wood (if applicable). Much of the metal is actually sorted out and reused, but some bits of it, like the plastic, end up in a landfill. Still, it’s good to know that this metal is making it back into the manufacturing cycle! Listen to the story here for all the details.

Portland is awesome!

emKem — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:48:14 +0000

Look at what I found while perusing the city of Portland’s various pages about sustainability: it’s a handout that details things that you can do, both at home and at work, to reduce your impact on the environment. It’s great!

And this is why Portland is leading the country on sustainable design issues! Awesome.

Gray (Grey) Water

emKem — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:36:36 +0000

I’m now in Portland checking out the job market here. Portland is one of the most “sustainable” cities in the United States, a point proven to me after less than 2 days when I visited a restroom that uses a graywater system. Graywater systems recycle water that is used in washing hands and dishes to be used again in flushing toilets. Why more cities don’t have these is beyond me, because it’s brilliant!