Quick Bites: Thursday, May 22nd

This weekend, Katie and I went on the Putney Solar & Green Energy Home Tour. We visited an incredible owner built home on Putney Mountain that Katie said was "inspirational." It had a home made solar array supplying only 600 watts to the battery bank, but it was no small house. Everything was well thought out from the siting to the appliances: the fridge was gas, the stove which also supplied the hot water was wood, and they had a masonry stove for heating during the winter. They even had a washer and dryer.

Like pollinators, but don't want to keep honeybees? Why not get a native bee nesting block?

Or perhaps bats are more your style. Most bats in the U.S. are insectivores so keeping bats around is a great way to keep your garden healthy. Sadly bats in the Northeast have succumbed to an illness (currently called white nose syndrome) that uses up their fat stores for hibernation this winter. The bat houses that you can make or buy may not be occupied year round, because many species of bats are migratory, but they can hold hundreds at a time when they are occupied.

If you're thinking of replacing your consumer electronics (i.e. iPods, cell phones, etc) you might be interested in the CExchange. They help you appriase your product, then you mail it to them where they refurbish or recycle it, and send you money. Like Craigslist or eBay without the hassle.

My mom has been happily using a Sun Oven instead of her own indoor stove for the last couple of months and she swears that she'll write a review for me soon. But to tide myself over I found this review of solar ovens by Cooks Illustrated. It turns out that you can even use them as far north as Boston.

Oh Green Consumer, Where Art Thou?

My Glidden Collection

I am a collector. I particularly love collecting tableware. China, glasses, silverware, it's all so wonderful. But I've run out of space and I have everything I need. Katie and I have a full service for 16 even though we only have room enough for four in our cabinet or at our table. When we move, that will change of course. We also have Fabulous menagerie desert plates by Glidden, a company from Alfred, NY in the 1950s. I have a set of eleven red with white polka dot Fitz and Floyd dinner plates with a variety of cups, saucers and accessories to match. And I have a tea service for four. But the desire to find new and exciting vintage tableware and kitchen goods continues.

Fitz and Floyd dots

I hope that my desire can be helpful to some of you. Collecting and using vintage ceramics is great for the environment. Ceramics have a high embodied energy, which means that a lot more energy is used to produce a ceramic plate than a paper or plastic plate. To make them a truly environmentally sensitive option ceramics have to be used over and over again. Except for some glazes or decorations, ceramics are usually chemically inert. All the harm that they caused to the environment was just in making them unlike in plastics where production is just the beginning of the trouble it causes.

My favorite china from childhood

So here's the deal: I want to connect you to the vintage tableware of your dreams. I've categorized a lot of great dinnerware from formal to casual, from rare to common, from cheap to expensive . I hope that I can help those of you that want and need dinnerware to select and acquire vintage pieces or a collection that you feel both fits you better than any other dinnerware and eliminates the waste of excess production. I'll help you find what you didn't even know existed and then I'll help you collect it. With so much wonderful design already in the world, everyone deserves to have tableware that makes them happy to eat off it. The fact that it can be had without manufacturing anything new is truly great.

Georges Briard's Fancy Free tea service

As I was researching this project, I actually fell off the wagon myself and bought a wonderful tea set by my new favorite mid-century designer Georges Briard. Please help me help you to some other excellent tableware, flatware, glasses, and cookware before I have to help myself to it.

Getting your money

Source: Creative Commons image on Flickr by Sabine01

People are receiving their rebates from the IRS now. If you chose to receive your refund through direct deposit, you will be getting your rebate in the next two weeks depending on the last two digits of your social security number. If you are receiving a check, you may have to wait until July.

To see when you will get your rebate by, these handy tables created by the IRS will tell you.

Also, check out my poll about what you will be doing with your rebate check in the sidebar. The poll closes at midnight on May 8th.

The Building Envelope

Source: Creative Commons Image on Flickr by magnetha

One of the most important things that you can do in your home is to seal it tight and insulate it right. A properly weather sealed and insulated home will keep you more comfortable and cost much less to maintain. If you rely on fossil fuels to heat your home, or electricity to cool it, now is the time to get an energy audit with a building envelope specialist. If you're not sure how pressing this is, read this article in the New York Times.

In February I went to a workshop at Yestermorrow Design/Build School called Super-Insulation for Zero Net Energy Homes. I learned a lot during the course, but it can be distilled down to a couple of things. First: Any hole in your home will draw air through it. If there is a difference in pressure which can be heat or wind, air will travel through the hole faster. So the protection your walls offer is usually least effective when you want it the most. Second: Not all insulation is equal. The way that insulation gets tested is not realistic, and some insulations are much poorer performers when installed. The worst culprit is fiberglass batting. This is the insulation that almost every home has in its walls and ceiling. The only two types of insulation worth using are foam and cellulose. That doesn't mean that you have to tear out your old insulation, but it does mean that it is under-performing. If you have insulation in your attic floor, you can spray an additional foot or two of cellulose insulation and greatly decrease the amount of heat coming and going through your roof for a very reasonable price. If you have air leaks and drafts, you can often investigate them and seal them up on your own.

I once again have to recommend the book The Home Energy Diet to anyone who wants to do it yourself. It goes through some of the methods of finding those energy leaks, so you can fix them.

Obama's New Logo

Barack Obama's website just added a new section. Enviros.barackobama.com. I just love the modification of the O flag logo. It's a rising sun on green fields. The lack of the aqua like reflection is also nice.

Happy Earth Day

Source: Nasa Visible Earth Images

I hope you do something good today. At least stop reading this blog and go outside.

-Junio

In The Bathroom

Source: Creative Commons image on Flickr by betsyjean79

First things first: You need a bathroom fan. Moisture is the enemy of houses, and bathrooms produce a lot of it. While you are getting a bathroom fan, you should step up and buy a two speed one that can be used at low RPM full time and high RPM when you are showering. The need for the two speeds will become more important as you improve the rest of your house and it's good to get it out of the way now.

Bathrooms use a lot of water. If you were building new I would tell you to save some of that water by plumbing for gray water reuse from your shower and sink, but it can certainly be a difficult even for new construction just to make it legal, on old construction you also have to get under the floorboards and replace old pipes as well as installing new ones. This is not for the faint of heart.

But you can still reduce your total water use by installing recent low flow toilets and shower heads. Low flow toilets have improved a lot in the past fifteen years, and now they work just as good or better than the old water hog ones. I don't know about low flow shower heads. I don't get a chance to try many and you only really notice if it's low flow if you don't like it. I wish that there were somewhere You could test them all out, like the Home Depot. I would like to try some of these shower heads from Bricor out, when I move I think I will get one but I have no idea which one.

Quickie: Fireplaces and Stoves

Source: Creative Commons image on Flickr by Adam Melancon

Do you have a fireplace in your living room or study? Do you use it regularly for heating? If you replace it with a modern stove, you won't have to cut as much wood, but you'll still be warmer than before. But what if you want to heat more than just one room with a wood stove? Most people I know who use wood heat do have modern stoves, but their warmth is mainly provided by radiation.

First, a little science: There are three types of heat transfer. Conduction is where heat is transfered between two things that are touching. This is not something you want to do with a stove, it burns. Radiation is where energy travels in waves through space and hits an object. This is how you feel the heat of the fire, it is also blocked by any solid object. Convection is where heat travels through the air by an air current created by the different densities of hot and cold air. Convective currents can travel around corners.

If you want to heat more of your house with your wood stove, you need to get the convective currents moving. The best way to do this is with fans. Ceiling fans that reverse directions for summer and winter use are great for this, but another valuable and inexpensive product is a stovetop fan that is powered exclusively by the conductive heat of the stovetop. It's called the Ecofan. It comes in three models and starts around $100. It moves 100 cubic feet a minute (CFM) for the smaller model and 150 CFM for the larger model. It really does make the whole house more comfortable.

Green Renovation, Repair and Remodeling: 3 More "R's"

One thing that you can count on is change. What really defines modernity is that change is constant and unpredictable. Change drives the economy of all durable goods. If something works and is desirable forever then there won't be many of it that need to be made. In American homes, that is why we renovate, repair, and remodel. It is also why we build new homes when there are many old homes for sale, but green renovation, repair, and remodeling, are what it is of consequence to this blog about how you should spend your money, and they are what interest me.

during the next week or so, I will detail some of the ways that you can do the 3 more green "r's" throughout your home. Because Flip That House always focuses on how you should do redo the kitchen to improve the saleability of a home I will start there.

Source: Creative Commons Image on Flickr by betsyjean79

On TV they are always talking about updating cabinets, and often pulling out quality custom cabinetry and replacing it with particleboard or plywood trash. Seriously. All they are doing is bringing VOCs and solvents into the home where there were none before. If your kitchen cabinets are more than fifty years old, I recommend that you keep them. You can paint or replace the doors, and if they are really in bad shape you can replace them, but remember that you are decreasing indoor air quality if you buy cheap cabinets.

Granite countertops are all the rage right now. They're pretty, but you can also get countertops that look like stone and are made from recycled materials instead of open quarries. There are ones made from recycled glass like EnviroSlab and Trinity Glass and even paper from Squak Mountain Stone which I mentioned a few weeks ago.

One place that it almost always make sense to invest is in more efficient appliances. The Energy Star label is a good place to get started. It's a designation created by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to show products that have met certain efficiency standards. Energystar.gov keeps up-to-date lists of the appliances that have received the Energy Star rating, as well as their actual energy consumption. Some Energy Star labeled products are much more efficient than others, so it is a good idea to read the numbers on the models you are considering. If you want to know more about how more efficient appliances can save you money as well as helping the environment, I recommend the book The Home Energy Diet by Paul Scheckel.

Perfect Pollinators I: Bees

It's springtime in New York, and the trees are all blooming. The flowers are pretty of course, but they serve a much greater purpose. All the flowers are there so that those plants can reproduce. A plant can't create seeds, nuts, berries, fruits and eventually more plants without those flowers being pollinated. Some plants can be pollinated by the wind, but the vast majority of them are are dependent on flying animals to do the job for them. Those animals are bees, birds, bats, and some other insects.

You have probably heard of Colony Collapse Disorder, bee colonies are dying off at an alarming rate. They've found that what all the bees that succumb to this are stressed out, but there is no other universal connection. Native bees are also being rapidly replaced by Africanized honey bees in the warmer parts of the country. We need our pollinators, so in the case of bees we must look to the slow movement and start thinking about slow bees. Ross Conrad, a soapmaker and beekeeper in Middlebury Vermont, just published a book called Natural Beekeeping as a guide to this increasingly important field. In Vermont, beekeeping is a hobby and cottage industry for many people. You can often see signs in people's front yards advertising their fresh honey. But I haven't noticed it in the rest of the U.S. If you have a back yard and are at all interested in this, first watch this video, and then consider getting the book and starting your own colony.



There is a new blog about the local beekeeping community in The West River Valley of Vermont which is just getting itself together, but it turned me onto Ross Conrad and his book.

Update: Of course you might not want to keep bees. How can you get in on the natural beekeeping movement? Of course they sell honey. Look for more natural honey at your local farmer's market.