Passive House could move to the head of the line in Thurston County WA.

Thanks to a Federal Grant, Certified Passive House Consultant Tessa Smith, and a host of others, along with Thurston County, There is a draft document circulating Thurston County that clears the way for Passive House and other green building method permit applications. The document recognizes Passive House by name. If adopted, the documents states:

“This policy sets forth the process and procedures in reviewing a recognized green certified building permit application.

Purpose: To provide a collaborative and expedited review of green certified building permits with a goal to promote development that seeks the greatest possible reduction in environmental impacts.

1.            Any reference to “green certified building permit application” means only such applications that have been certified through Built Green, LEED, NAHB, Passive House, and Energy Star programs

Incentives to repair that leaky home

Resources: Program examines house’s efficiency

JOHN DODGE; Staff writer | • Published June 01, 2010

Olympia – Eli and Molly Levitt were among the first homeowners in Thurston County to sign up for a program to help area residents and businesses use energy wisely.

When the couple bought a 1913 home nearly two years ago on Wilson Street in Olympia, they knew it wasn’t the most energy-efficient home around.

They insulated the attic and basement, installed compact fluorescent lights and placed weather stripping around the doors, but they knew they could do more.

So they paid $95 for an intensive home energy audit offered by Thurston Energy, a program offered by the Thurston Climate Action Team and Thurston County Economic Development Council fueled by a $1 million federal stimulus grant from the federal Department of Energy.

After months of program development, the two partners are ready to roll out their program to the larger community, hoping to conduct up to 40 home energy audits a week, program director Ramsey Zimmerman said. The audits provide homeowners with a detailed report of the steps they can take and projects they can pursue to conserve energy, save money in the long run and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

www.thurstonenergy.org

“I hope the audit identifies some hidden energy leaks that we can seal,” Molly Levitt said on the eve of the assessment. “We’ll definitely follow up with some of the recommendations.”

After the audits are completed, Thurston Energy will support the customers by identifying grants, Puget Sound Energy rebates and tax incentives to ease the financial burden of energy-saving projects. The nonprofit also has a list of 12 contractors available to do the work, which is where the job stimulus piece of the equation fits in.

“This program is definitely going to keep me busy,” said Bernie Miller of Quality Renovation and Carpentry. “I’m already looking to bring another employee on board.”

Miller spent nearly four hours at the Levitt home Thursday, working up the home energy assessment. His conclusion: If the Levitts insulate around the base of the basement, replace their old hot water heater and insulate the duct work for their natural gas heating system, they’ll cut their home energy costs significantly.

Included in the assessment by Thurston Energy is an offering of up to 50 compact fluorescent bulbs, a 6-foot length of hot water pipe insulation and a low-flow shower head.

The program is also available to area businesses that are customers of Puget Sound Energy.

The climate action team, a grass-roots group in South Sound concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the community, came up with the idea for Thurston Energy about 18 months ago.

They approached community civic leaders and the economic development council, which, in turn, applied for the federal grant.

The program is housed in the Thurston EDC’s business resource center in Lacey.

“It’s hard for people to argue with saving money, especially in this economy,” said Michael Cade, executive director of Thurston EDC. “When it’s a local group and local people trying to make a difference – all the better.”

“The message is about jobs, keeping money in the community and improving the environment,” said climate action team member Sam Garst.

Thurston Energy has scheduled a public meeting Wednesday night in Olympia to spread the word about the program.

“We’re issuing a call to action on climate change and providing a pathway to savings for residents and businesses in Thurston County,” Garst said.

John Dodge: 360-754-5444 jdodge@theolympian.com

For cabinet selection, here’s one good way to know if your cabinet of choice is sustainable:  The  Environmental Stewardship Program Seal (ESP) is an environmental certification program that specifically targets kitchen and bath cabinets, developed by The Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association (KCMA).  This Seal is what assures you that the manufacturing practices and materials used meet stringent criteria. The program is based on 5 areas:

1. USE OF CERTIFIED AND SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS
(i.e. using wood from FSC certified sources, rapidly renewal materials like bamboo and Lyptus and veneer, using materials that are made up of recycled materials –particle boards, etc.)

2. ENERGY EFFICIENT MANUFACTURING PRACTICES
(i.e. plant upgrades like high-output/low energy factory lighting and motors, automated high-efficiency machines/ retraining workforce in efficient work practices, reclaiming and reusing solvent products, purchasing recycled secondary products, hybrid autos, using LEAN principles)

3. WASTE & RECYCLE MANAGEMENT
(i.e. supporting any and all recycling programs (paper, cardboard, beverage containers, scrap metal, wood fiber, etc.), using recycled cardboard for packaging, recycling waste product – use for heating, pet beds, etc.)

4. CONTROL OF AIR QUALITY & EMISSIONS
(i.e. low formaldehyde-emitting materials, low, ultra-low, or no voc VOC finishes)

5. SOCIAL STEWARDSHIP
(i.e. paying employees a living wage and providing benefits, taking part in the local community, and sponsoring missions and charity work vulnerable counties)

There are well over 100 manufactures who have worked to achieve and maintain this certification. All three of our main lines at The Artisans Group (Crystal, Columbia, and Woodland) have been awarded the Environmental Stewardship Program Seal (ESP). When shopping for cabinets, there are several green options to look for:

• Cabinet box content options: 100% recycled, no VOC’s, plywood made with soy-based resins
• Good wood choices: Lyptus, Bamboo, Ipe, Fast growing wood veneers with a ‘green’ substrate
• Laminate Finishes: Choose a laminate that uses water based resins and some recycled paper content in their manufacturing process, couple with a ‘green’ substrate
• Edge Banding: ABS edge banding instead of PVC (ABS is a chlorine free edge tape)
• Finshes: Look for UV water based self-seal top coat in a  natural finish

If all of that still feels a bit overwhelming, come on by our showroom and talk to Brenda, we have lots of samples that will demystify the world of ‘green’ cabinets.

Update 6.10.10

Here is a link to a great website, the US Green Building Council  Green Home Guide. The guide is an information clearinghouse created  to help us make better choices when confronted with all the ‘green’ options out there these days.

The public is encouraged to submit questions which are then reviewed and answered by someone in the  national pool of industry experts.

Click on the question below to get the answer from David Bergman, a NY architect.

Queston:

I am wondering about reconstituted wood. I am redoing a kitchen and want greener options for cabinets/flooring. Is reconstituted wood green?

By Randy Foster, Owner, The Artisans Group

I recently completed the first three days of training as a Certified Passive House Consultant last week.  During the first day of class, I was struck by the fact that there are a lot of really smart people studying the Passive House approach.  I was impressed by that, and I felt really honored to have been accepted into this year’s training program!  Each of the 25 students in my class seemed to fully grasp the fact that designing and building a Passive House is rooted in attention paid to many small details culminating in a very simple yet ultra high-performance home.

Passive House is about the creation of buildings that use less than 20% of the energy consumed by typical buildings; buildings that offer superior indoor air quality and comfort, buildings that are inexpensive to own and simple to operate.

The training program is my first in-depth look at the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), which is a house modeling software, a compilation of research and development tools 20 + years in the making – tools that are integrated into a somewhat massive computer model that allow a Certified PH Consultant to select and balance each detail of a Passive House.  The model allows an experienced user the specific ability to drive down the cost of the home being designed, while identifying the details that must be retained if a Passive House project is to be successful. Once a Passive House is built, in order for it to be certified, it must pass specific performance tests, the PHPP is the most precise tool available to design for a certifiable outcome.

The Artisans Group currently has three Passive House projects in design development, created by our Certified Passive House Consultant, Tessa Smith. It’s really very exciting to see the market ready and eager to accept these standards. It’s not a tough decision once people get a sense for the comfort, beauty, endurance, performance and amazingly short payback of a Passive House, relative to a code-built home.

For more information about the Passive House standards, go to the PHIUS website.

I will report back occasionally as our projects become more fully developed!

Randy

Passive House Design- The Artisans Group

Our Preferred Approach

Recovery 1

Tacoma, WA (800) 949.5852

This one works great for construction site debris, but the scope of their work is much broader than just that. A pretty cool outfit, worth a look at their site.

Reuse Building Materials

To purchase materials for a project or to drop off (tax deductible) materials from a remodel, we have two local businesses that specialize in reused building materials.

Olympia Salvage

113 State Avenue, Olympia Wa.

(360) 705.1300

Add’l services: deconstruction and partial salvage

ReStore

415 Olympia Avenue, Olympia Wa.

(360) 956.3456

Operated by South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity. Proceeds fund affordable housing projects.

Links to other useful sites:

• www.WhereDoITakeMy.org Low cost and free reuse and recycling opportunities in Thurston County
• www.2good2toss.com (items $200 or less)
• www.seattle.craigslist.org ( no price limit)
• www.freecycle.org (all items free)
• www.govlink.org/hazwaste/business/imex (King Cty Haz Waste Program)

I hope you find these links useful… I’d also like to hear from you if you have any links you’d like to add.

Thanks!

Zeta

FROGBOX is a sustainable alternative to the resource-rich effort of moving. If you are are relocating your belongings whether from your home or business, FROGBOX supplies movers with plastic re-usable totes that can replace regular cardboard boxes.

People can order the amount of boxes needed from the FROGBOX website, FROGBOX will then deliver the re-usable boxes to be filled by you and when ready, they will come back to pick them up and drop off at the new location. It’s so obvious and such a great idea!

The article sites that 18 to 26 percent of landfill material is made up of cardboard and paper waste. FROGBOX is motivated to help reduce that number; plus, the company donates 1 percent of it’s gross revenues to frog habitat restoration. Ya gotta love that.
Curious, I went to the FROGBOX website looking for the genesis of the name, I didn’t find that, but I did find a friendly little pitch on the state of the frog nation. I didn’t know…

“FROGBOX donates 1% of gross revenues to frog habitat restoration. According to amphibian experts, frogs are the most threatened vertebrate group on Earth, with nearly one-third of the world’s 6,468 amphibian species in danger. At their current rate, frogs are disappearing faster than dinosaurs did.

Certain frog species in the Pacific Northwest are at high risk of becoming extinct, such as the Oregon spotted frog. FROGBOX will participate with different active organizations in the Pacific Northwest to help preserve these perishing amphibians.

Frogs are an indicator species, and the Pacific Northwest is one of the healthiest areas of the developed world. FROGBOX believes that we should all encourage change to help protect and restore the livelihood of frogs in our own backyard.

We hope that 1% of our revenues will make a difference locally.”

Very nice! Zeta

GoodWeave is a company that offers a Child-Labor-Free-Certification on handwoven rugs, which allows you to know at an instant that the product is a ’socially’ good choice.

Beyond being socially responsible, the rugs are gorgeous! The rugs are either custom designed to your specs, or you can choose from a vast selection of designs that were created by a variety of designers.

GoodWeave has an excellent website; they cover the eye-opening statistics of child labor issues, and how to participate or make donations toward improving the lives of these otherwise labor bound little kids. Goodweave also has an excellent tutorial on purchasing handwoven rugs and what to look for and what to avoid. They make the claim that an adult-woven rug will be better quality than one that was made by a 5 year old. That seems pretty reasonable.

I’d encourage you to take a look at their website, just for the interest of it, but especially if you are interested in handwoven rugs. Be sure to go to the ‘buy online‘ section to see the truly amazing creations. The detail is quite unbelievable!

Enjoy! Zeta

Published by Martha Danly under Green Building, Inside Design, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Products

Let’s have a show of hands: How many people do you know who fit the following profile?

A 73-year-old Californian, small and wiry, who is:

• an active surfer, skateboarder, and runner;
• who, without formal architectural training, installed a living sod roof on the first house he built back in the 1960s,
  four decades before living roofs became darling icons of the green movement;
• who built another house using timbers salvaged from a dismantled bridge;
• who constructed a number of geodesic homes, then abandoned the whole concept as being impractical
  (hello-o-o-o-, Bucky!);
• who served as the Shelter editor for the renowned Whole Earth Catalog, and for the past 40 years has been the editor-in-chief of Shelter Publications, producer of books ranging in topics from architecture to fitness to symmetry.

This is not a fictional Indiana Jones of the building trade, but the actual living polymath named Lloyd Kahn.

Last Sunday afternoon Lloyd and his wife Lesley invited me for a tour of their home, garden, and production studio in Bolinas, a small town on the Northern California coast. My jungle guide was Sim Van der Ryn, a distinguished pioneer in ecological design, founder of the Ecological Design Cooperative, and longtime friend of Lloyd’s.

Over a cup of tea at the Kahns’ kitchen table, Lloyd described his recent travels to Costa Rica and Panama, as well as his latest book, Builders of the Pacific Coast.

The book is a celebration of hand-built homes that he has visited from north of San Francisco to Vancouver Island off the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The builders are all one-of-a-kind carpenters who use driftwood and other local materials to create eye-opening, jaw-dropping, and mind-expanding works of art—an open-ended category that embraces ground-foundation houses, saunas, boathouses, treehouses, woodsheds, playhouses, and temples.

The 1,200 images in Builders of the Pacific Coast speak for themselves. Over a two-year period, Lloyd checked out these homes and captured their essence in photographs and conversations with the builders. The taste we offer here may give you a flavor of the delightful creations lovingly represented in the book—including a roof shaped like gull wings, a door decorated with wrought-iron maidens, a sauna shaped like the belly of a whale.

Leaping out on page after page are craftsmanship, practical designs, sustainable materials, unvarnished and unexpected beauty, and unanticipated elements. “This is timber brought to a high art,” says Sim.

Surely, building codes are not part of the equation. Island living has its advantages.

One of the builders Lloyd showcases is a master craftsman named Lloyd House. As he observes in the book, “there was the slightly cosmic fact that when I find the numero uno builder in all my years of photographing houses, his name is not only Lloyd, but Lloyd House”—a patronymic, not a nom de plume.

Interestingly, the resurgence of interest in handmade homes occurred after Lloyd had focused almost exclusively on fitness books during the two decades that followed his initial foray into architecture. His discovery of these carpenters (or did they discover him?) echoes his earlier work—though the current product proves more refined and articulate, and certainly more livable and comfortable, than the raw and passionate abodes that expressed its hippie roots.

In the 1960s, the small cadre of post-war boomers to which Lloyd belonged was interested in more than green buildings. “We were into anything organic, Buddhism, and dolphins too.” It is clear that he is enjoying the recent proliferation of likeminded builders, many of whom cite Lloyd’s earlier work, Shelter, as a key source of ideas and inspiration.

Reviewing his initial efforts at green homebuilding and remodeling, Lloyd doesn’t theorize much. As he put it, “I never thought of myself as being ecological. If I could have found a nice house I could afford in Mill Valley, I would have bought it. I just needed to save money.”

Like most pioneers, Lloyd doesn’t think in terms of leading a movement. He does what he believes in. Decisions on which books to publish are made by heeding intuition, not return on investment. When selecting books, Shelter asks simply: Are we excited about the idea? Do we want to share it with everyone?

Accordingly, some of Shelter Publications’ work falls on the tail end of the spectrum, where print-on-demand is the perfect solution. I can say this for Lloyd: he does not operate out of fear of public opinion, or hope of popularity. After all, among the books he has authored is The Septic System Owner’s Manual. He handed me the new, revised, updated edition to take home. Hey, give me a break, it’s a book I actually need!

Lloyd is also a prolific blogger. His blogs offer a window into a worldwide web of connections and a perpetual-motion-machine life. Wherever he goes, his camera is tucked into his fanny pack, ready to capture whatever he’s discovering at the moment. In one of his blogs I came across this statement that reflects his deep motivation to search for, share, and celebrate what makes us humans in the natural world.

I actually love posting these blogs — it took a few years, but now it’s part of my fabric. I like telling people about what I find, because goldarnit, I run across so much interesting stuff.

As the afternoon winds down and our conversation concludes, I’m reminded of the title of one of Lloyd’s recent blogs, which says it all:

Notice of Intent to Get Irresponsible and Go Surfing

All images used by permission from Shelter Publications, Inc.

Enjoy! Zeta

New home for plastic foam

Recycle: Tumwater site takes stuff that was garbage

JOHN DODGE; The Olympian | • Published November 09, 2009

TUMWATER – Add plastic foam products such as cups, plates and food take-out trays to the list of items that can be recycled in South Sound.

Dart Container Corp., a Tumwater-based manufacturer of plastic foam food and beverage containers, has opened a drop box to accept these items from the public for free.

It’s one of the few sites in the state to provide recycling for a family of products that otherwise end up consuming space in regional landfills.

“This is long overdue,” Michael Westerfield, Dart’s director of recycling programs, said at a grand-opening ceremony for the drop-off center last week. “We’ve been pushing for this program a long time.”

In Thurston County, 1,465 tons, or about 0.83 percent, of garbage sent to the Thurston County Waste and Recovery Center at Hawks Prairie each year are plastic foam products, said Terri Thomas, an education and outreach specialist at Thurston County Solid Waste.

Because the plastic foam products are about 95 percent air, the percent per volume of garbage is much greater.

“We are extremely excited that Dart has brought foam recycling to our area,” Thomas said. “This important initiative arms our community with the ability to proactively reduce waste.”

Westerfield and Thomas said the long-range goal is to expand the South Sound recycling options for plastic foam to include more drop boxes. Some curbside recycling programs in Southern California have added plastic foam products to the list of items they recover.

The increase in plastic foam recycling and re-use comes as a number of communities have imposed or are considering bans on plastic foam food containers and cups. For instance, a plastic foam ban affecting the food-service industry goes into effect in Seattle on July 1.

“It’s important to do it because customers want it,” Westerfield said of the increased industry emphasis on recycling. “People aren’t going to accept a throw-away item.”

The plastic foam products recycled outside the Dart plant in Tumwater must bear the number 6. They include products covered by the trade name Styrofoam and molded plastic foam used to package electronics.

Once collected, the plastic foam products are run through a compactor capable of converting 4,116 eight-ounce cups into a 40-pound block of material the size of a small suitcase.

Recycled foam food service products can be reprocessed into building insulation, plastic lumber, picture frames and other items.

John Dodge: 360-754-5444

jdodge@theolympian.com

Recycling do’s and don’ts

Dart Container Corp. has opened a plastic foam recycling center for free public use at 600 Israel Road S.E., Tumwater. Here’s how it works:

• The bin accepts plastic foam cups, plates, take-out food containers, egg cartons and molded foam used to package electronics.

• Rinse the containers free of food and place them in a clear plastic bag for drop-off.

• The recycling station does not accept straws, lids, or packaging peanuts.

• The bin is available for use seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Reprinted from the Olympian newpaper

The Passive House (Passivhaus in German) concept was created in 1988 by Professor Bo Adamson and Doctor Wolfgang Feist, spurred on by their desire to positively affect climate change while decreasing reliance on a volatile energy market.  Their research combined existing energy efficiency technologies and concepts making Passive Houses the most energy efficient building system in the world.   Today Passive House certifications are administered by the Passive House Institute United States (PHIUS) in America and for other global regions by Passivhaus Institute in Germany.

Passive House designs can realize up to a 90% reduction in heating energy consumption, all without employing “active” technologies such as complex heating, photovoltaics or solar thermal water heating systems.  The extremely rigorous Passive House standards are based instead on well tested energy efficient building techniques of conservation before alternative energy sources are considered.  Concepts such as super insulation, mechanical ventilation, air sealing, and building orientation to take advantage of solar gains, are common in the green building industry.  Yet, Passive House takes these rather simple concepts and goes one step further by accurately modeling these scenarios to achieve the most optimized building.

One of the primary components of the Passive House concept is mechanical ventilation.  Current construction techniques result in nearly airtight structures.  For this reason, Passive House uses mechanical ventilation, not only increasing occupant comfort but also to support healthy living.  The initial expense of building a Passive House is often offset by the elimination of the independent heating systems, which is achieved through an integrated design approach utilizing the space conditioning or fresh air delivery system (such as a heat recovery ventilator) to serve for space heating as well.  For example the cost for an efficient but expensive hydronic radiant heat system would no longer be necessary.   This combined with super high-efficiency windows, innovative highly integrated technology and a building envelope without thermal bridges all interact to form an energy-balanced building.

Passive House standards are a pass-fail system.  Noted earlier, PHIUS is the official certifier of Passive House in the United States.  Although more than 15,000 Passive Homes have been certified around the world, only 8 have received the certification in America.   These forerunners in American energy efficiency meet standards less than 1.4 KWh/(ft2yr) (or 4.75 kBTU/(ft²yr) ) for Specific Heat Demand (the energy required to heat and cool a house) and 11.1 KWh/(ft2yr)  (or 38 kBTU/(ft²yr) for Specific Primary Energy Demand (energy required to heat, cool, provide domestic hot water and all electrical needs, appliances etc.), going far beyond other industry standards including LEED and Built Green, for the ultimate comfort, cost and eco-responsibility.

Reprinted with the permission of The Nisqually River Foundation