I think that Daphne (my bike, above) and Ruby (Erin’s bike, below) would get along well, should they ever have the opportunity to cruise together in person.

Soooo, I know I said that LILAWAC was retired before… consider this post my official passing of the torch and an un-retirement party 

Please visit Erin’s first post here to wish her luck, and don’t forget to add LILAWAC to your RSS feeds!

Image courtesy of Treehugger

Who among us doesn’t now feel a little tinge of guilt when we are confronted with the prospect of drinking from a disposable water bottle?  At the conference I attended a few weeks ago, I went through three in three days, which made me feel awful and basically doubled my total consumption of plastic water bottles for the year thus far.  But, there was no water otherwise available, and I was already dehydrated.  Another thing that’s annoying is that water bottles don’t go well on planes in carry-on bags anymore, although I am usually able to make it on the plane with a reusable plastic one in the depths of my carry-on.  And what about if you do have your own bottle, but the only refill options available are a number of unfamiliar taps?  Frankly, I don’t care if your city has “the best water in America” – I’ve heard that from at least three places I’ve lived, and I still prefer filtered, thank you very much.

Enter the Water Bobble. The Bobble is 100% recycled and recyclable (check), BPA and phthalate-free (check), made in the US (check), good-looking (check), and at just under $10, affordable (check… wait, this thing is less than $10?  Awesome!).  The Bobble has internal filtering device that attaches to the external mouthpiece that provides you with clean filtered water in every drink.  And yes, they are available right now!

Treehugger has a nice write-up about this product and also provides a head-to-head comparison of several self-filtering water bottles.  I’m not sure which one I’ll go with, but the Water Bobble is looking pretty good to me, both for every day use and a probable addition to my recent earthquake kit project. Here’s to being water-bottle-guilt-free for the rest of the year…

From left to right, moi, Quilian from Archinect, and Jill from Inhabitat. Not shown are Barry, our instigator, Joel, our moderator who was actually in Phoenix, and Cameron, the founder of Architecture for Humanity, who was having some technical difficulties.

The panel, despite an audio delay and some serious bandwidth issues in all four corners, was more or less a success, if for no other reason than we conducted a nearly carbon-free conference session!  Think of all the carbon that was saved by all of us not flying to Phoenix.  This was a big incentive to doing this presentation, and if it was going to happen, GreenBuild was the place.

I do want to mention, however… when I get in situations like today’s panel, I have no idea what I’m saying. I was trying so hard to hear the questions, and to concentrate over the sound of the audio echoing, that my mental “filter”, which is usually fairly porous to begin with, was almost nonexistent.  Therefore I just want to say, once again, THANK YOU to everyone in the audience who sat through it!  I hope you got something out of it.  And I hope you can agree with me and my internet friends* when we say that the Web will certainly play a part in the way that designers operate going forward… even if it will take some time to work out the kinks.

*Speaking of my internet friends, Cameron was the only one that I’ve ever met in person, and it was a pleasure to see everyone else’s animated faces today!  Make sure you check them out on their respective sites:

Jill Fehrenbacher on Twitter @inhabitat and online at www.inhabitat.com…

Cameron Sinclair on Twitter @casinclair and online at architectureforhumanity.org…

Quilian Riano on Twitter @quilian and online at Archinect.com…

Thanks again, and see you all on my Google Reader 

The good news is, in the meantime, I’ve been able to upload and catalogue all of my photos from the event and add some commentary as well.  Feel free to check out my Solar Decathlon collection on Flickr, where each house has its own set of photos and my corresponding thoughts written alongside.  Note the overwhelming gray clouds in all of the pictures – made for some pretty gloomy photography :-/

Wow, that sky is ugly

I will now wax poetic on my favorite house in the Solar Decathlon, since I haven’t done it yet.   I want to talk for a moment about Virginia Tech’s Lumenhaus. This house was truly lovely, and I am at a loss to explain their 13th place finish.  I felt that this team used every sustainable system reasonably available to a residential customer to create a truly green, net-zero energy home.  And not only that, they did so without compromising on space – the interior of house was perfectly proportioned in its public versus private areas, with some extra special touches thrown in that really sealed the deal.  Case in point: the partitions in the bedroom that not only held your closet, but they separated to reveal a TV and in doing so, created a partition wall between the bedroom and the living space.

The rainwater collection system/awning over the front door

But I’m not going to stop there.  The exterior screens were cut steel and then bent by hand in a pattern that was meant to direct sunlight into the house but also maintain privacy.  The awning over the front door doubled as a rain scupper, and drained water into catchment basins under the house… which could be recycled in a closed-loop graywater system.  The skylight in the bathroom… the geothermal heating system in addition to the roof PV array… and if all this hotness weren’t enough, to move this house, all you needed to do was put it on a giant set of wheels and hitch it to the back of a tractor trailer, and you’re on your way!

Metal sunscreen and panel system as seen from the inside

I’m not the only one who thought the Lumenhaus was pretty great, however; the Virginia Tech team was approached by NBC during the Decathlon and the team is now in negotiations to move the house to Rockefeller Center so it can be on the Today Show, which may happen in mid-November.  Also, the team of bloggers at Inhabitat did a great write up of the house on their blog, which included some beautiful photos that I will now borrow to show you how nice the house is -  if only it had been sunny while I was visiting!

courtesy of Inhabitat

courtesy of Inhabitat

Everyone loves a section detail! courtesy of Inhabitat

Congrats to VT for such a job well done, and let’s hope they get some of their technology upgraded in time for the Solar Decathlon Europe competition next year – since they are the only team from the U.S. Solar Decathlon to compete overseas too!

courtesy of Inhabitat

Soooo… if you are looking to run out and get in on the Cash for Clunkers this weekend, go as an informed consumer!  Take a look at Treehugger’s Top 10 Most Fuel Efficient Cars to Buy with your government rebate.  I bet you can’t guess what number one is!  Ok you probably can.    But the rest of the list is worth looking at!

Image courtesy of Treehugger: Oh Prius, why must you be so good at everything?

That said, I’ve arrived safely at the first stop on my Unemployment Tour, Palo Alto.  Situated conveniently in the southern part of the Bay Area, it’s within spitting distance of Silicon Valley and just a short drive from San Francisco.  One of my favorite parts of Northern California is the air, which smells of redwoods and general freshness.  I’ve missed it.

Sadly, however close Palo Alto is to the awesomeness that is Silicon Valley, it is not immune from the unemployment woes that the design industry is experiencing right now…I’m staying with another friend who was recently laid off!

Soon, I’ll be trying a new challenge – it’s tongue in cheek, but I’m going to attempt this Top Ten list of things every green blogger must do.  Number one is “create some sort of green top ten list”.  LOL.  Stay tuned!

Ok, not really, but since I put all of my books either in storage or sent them home, I got this issue of Entertainment Weekly to have something to read and was delightfully surprised to find out that Ryan Reynolds’ favorite Web site is Treehugger.com.  Treehugger is awesome and is my one-stop source for all things green, sustainable, and awesome.  Ryan also like the Huffington Post’s Green section, which I frequent as well.  So Ryan has recently been added to my list of “celebrities who are OK by me because they support environmental issues” like Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and the king of environmental issues himself, Ed Begley Jr.

I hope Ryan doesn’t mind coming with me, LOL.

I’m shoving off from LA right now:  next stop, Palo Alto!

Recently, however, as I’m also unemployed myself, the seeds of this project have been growing very quickly in my mind, and have branched out to include other exciting ideas.  For instance, a road trip.  I have always wanted to get a used RV and do a road trip around the country, but I’ve never really had the time or the resources to invest in this endeavor.  Until now… I mean, I’m unemployed!  And I have no solid, immediate plans.  When better to do it, and what better opportunity do I have than to take the GreenDesignCollective on the road and talk to people about the importance of green design principles?

Which leads me to the details.  First, I’d like to get perhaps a couple of other people to come with me to A) shoulder the monthly costs of the trip and B) keep me company.  Driving for hours on end by myself sounds fun for like, a day, but I’m sure I would get bored quickly.

And another thing:  if we are promoting green design principles, how do we stick to them ourselves while we’re on the road?  RVs don’t exactly get good mileage, but if we get a used RV to begin with, then we’re definitely already saving a lot on the carbon footprint of the entire trip.

What are some other green principles to consider in a road trip like this? Post ‘em if you got ‘em!  Here, I’ll start:

1.  Try hitting farmer’s markets as much as possible. I saw Alice Waters on 60 Minutes yesterday, as she waxed poetic on the benefits of healthy living to Leslie Stahl…she is so awesome.  Imagine hitting the farmer’s markets in all these random places throughout the country and then taking them into the RV and making a delicious meal out of them.  Talk about the need for efficient interior space!

What are some other considerations…?