One of the most important factors in green building is sizing the building appropriately. Making sure it's not being built any larger than it really needs to be is one of the most effective ways to respect other people, other creatures, and the planet while at the same time saving money.
Everything we do to make a building more energy-efficient and to select responsible and earth-friendly materials is undermined any time we size any part of the building larger than it needs to be -- and use more materials and energy.
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| Large windows and french doors makes conservatively sized bedrooms appear bigger |
The Common Fire building is modest in size -- providing a home for up to 11 people plus guests in 3600 square feet.
Indeed, we made things just about as small as we thought we could and then did a few things to compensate for that so people wouldn't feel cramped. We provided 10 foot ceilings downstairs and 9.5 foot ceilings upstairs (which also gives people the option of lofting their bed if they want a lot more space for a desk or art or yoga, etc. We provided large windows and french doors for every room, allowing in lots of light. The french doors provide every room a door to the outside, whether it be to the courtyard or a balcony, giving residents a psychological sense of more space by allowing them to "expand" the scope of their rooms in good weather. And we provided a cathedral ceiling in the living room.
Selecting "Green" Materials -- Balancing Four Key Factors
Once the building is sized correctly, there are four key factors to consider in selecting green materials
- The amount of energy used in extracting, producing, and transporting the material.
- Impacts the material has on the people, places and creatures it affects during it's life cycle. These include the impact on the ecosystem where the material is extracted -- for example mining of minerals or cutting of trees -- the impact of pollution or the use of other resources in processing the material -- for example air or water pollution -- and the impact of the material both during its life in the building and after -- for example how biodegradable or recyclable is it.
- Cost. For anyone with a limited budget, decisions have to be made about where limited dollars can have the greatest positive (or least negative) impact.
- Perhaps the most difficult factor to calculate, yet one that is equally important, is to consider the policies and actions of the companies that are involved in providing the materials.
This is all pretty simple to spell out, but it can be very difficult to find materials that do really well in all four of these criteria. Much more common is that a material is very good in one or two of these categories but not so good in the others. This has definitely been the case with the Common Fire Building where we had to often weigh one factor against another.
Location, Location, Location...
The most important place to start in thinking about materials is right where you are -- that is to say, your location. The less distance your materials travel, the better. This plays out in two ways. First, when choosing your building site, consider rehabilitating an existing building.
Every bit of material that is reused on-site is that much less material that has to be extracted, produced and transported to your site. It reduces habitat disturbance from building on a new site. And it often requires less new infrastructure development for utilities and roads. It may also help to preserve historic resources whether it's a historic building or a building style that gives a community character. All of this can mean a significant savings in building costs as well.
However, there can be significant drawbacks to rehabilitating an old building. It may not be structurally sound, the materials may not be in good shape, the building may not be easy to effectively insulate or to take advantage of passive solar and daylighting strategies. It can sometimes actually cost more money.
The US Green Building Council awards points for using 75% of a building shell, 100% of a building shell, and 100% of a building shell & 50% of other structural elements such as floors, walls, and columns. Common Fire didn't score any of these points because we built our building from scratch in an undeveloped locaction. It was important for us to have a setting that was sensitively integrated into nature and to have a building that fit the unique needs of a housing co-op.
Think Locally...
Once you've decided whether you might be able to use an existing building, arguably the most important factor relating to materials is to use as many
regionally extracted and manufactured materials as possible.
A massive amount of energy is consumed in transporting materials. For example, transportation of Sheetrock accounts for 10% of its total embodied energy (the total energy used to get the material, process it, and move it). By contrast, mining accounts for less than 1% of its embodied energy. That means that from an energy standpoint, transporting materials across long distances, even if they are salvaged or recycled, may completely outpace any benefits.
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| Rough sawn lumber for porches donated by Boiceville Lumber, a local lumber mill that uses sustainable harvesting practices |
A key reason for thinking locally that is often overlooked is the web of relationships and accountability that exists locally. Local businesses are accountable to the local population who tend to know what the business is up to and are impacted if they have negative environmental or social effects. Buying local also helps to support your local economy.
Approximately 20% of the products in Common Fire's building were manufactured within 500 miles, and of that 20% over half were made from materials that were also extracted within 500 miles.
We did indeed choose to ship some things long-distances. In some cases we just felt it was worth it, like with the straw walls, which are made out of straw, a rapidly renewable waste by-product, and covered with 100% post-consumer recycled paper, making it so we used less wood framing in the building interior. In some cases we were hoping to help increase local demand for an important product (like FSC-certified wood). In others it was about recognizing that some products that come from far away are popular enough that people are going to keep buying them anyway. So we wanted to model choices that were good in other ways, like our recycled glass tiles.
Are You Done With That? Using Salvaged and Recycled Materials
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| Kitchen with salvaged wood counter tops and floor |
Salvaging previously used materials has a lot of benefits. It reduces the need to harvest new trees or mine new materials. If the salvaged materials are from nearby, it saves a lot of energy transporting them. The amount of energy needed to get the materials back into good shape is often less than it takes to process them the first time around. And it keeps good materials from just adding to already stressed landfills.
Sometimes salvaged materials have the added bonus of being cheaper, but sometimes they are in high demand and often cost more.
Beware salvaged windows which often provide such poor insulation value that they will cost you a lot more money in the long run and will suck energy from your home!
Over 10% of the materials in the Common Fire building were salvaged. All of the wood floors, the countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms, and the furniture in the entryway are from gorgeous salvaged wood, most of it doug fir from old buildings in New York City. All of those woods were salvaged and provided by
Antique and Vintage Woods of America. They know and love their woods and care passionately about the business of saving wood. We also used a lot of insulation scraps and got a salvaged redwood door for the front.
At the end of the day, there are only so many materials and products you are going to find that are salvaged. So the next best thing is to find materials with a high recycled content. It often takes a lot of energy to take old materials and make them like new again. But it is usually a lot less than it takes to work with new materials, and it helps avoid all of the damage that comes with having to harvest those materials or get them out of the earth.
USG has Sheetrock that is made of 99% recycled material (that actually comes from "scrubbers", the contraptions that collect soot in the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants to help lessen the impact of acid rain and pollution, so they're making use of a waste material that is itself part of keeping our air a bit cleaner). One of the plants that produces the 99% recycled Sheetrock is in Aliquippa, PA, not too far from us here. It uses 100% recycled paper backing (making USG one of the top 15 users of secondary fibers in the country), and uses corn and wheat starches as binders.
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| Sandhill Industries' recycled glass tiles pictured with local slate |
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| Stone Source Debris tiles |
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| Lunada Bay recycled glass tiles |
There are gorgeous glass and ceramic tiles available that have a high quantity of recycled material in them.
Eco-Friendly Flooring is a distributor of 100% recycled glass tiles produced by
Sandhill Industries in Boise, Idaho.
Lunada Bay Tile has glass tiles that have less recycled content (80%), and are manufactured in China, but they are cheaper and are beautiful. And
Stone Source has some "debris" tiles that are composed of granite dust (23%), broken window panes (5.8%) and recycled brown and green bottles (17.5%). They are manufactured in California.
Lumber Alternatives - Rapidly Renewable Materials and Engineered Wood
Using rapidly renewable materials helps reduce the world wide depletion of finite raw materials and materials that have a long growth cycle, such as trees. A rapidly renewable material or product is defined by the LEED standards as being made from plants that are typically harvested within a 10 year cycle or less. Bamboo flooring, wool carpets, straw board, cotton batt insulation and sunflower seed board are some examples. In the Common Fire building we used straw walls, from Durra, and have a wool rug with jute and rubber backing from Earth Weave Carpet Mills, Inc.
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| I-joists replaced traditional floor joists in the building |
Engineered wood is designed to be stronger, straighter and more consistent in performance than solid sawn lumber. It is also more efficient in its use of wood. An engineered I-joist has greater strength vertically than a standard floor joist and uses 45% less lumber. Waste wood and trees, irrelevant of size, age or species can go into engineered wood, greatly reducing the amount of waste typically created when processing trees for lumber. Usually young growth trees are used to make engineered wood products, in approximately a 15 year cycle. OSB (oriented strand board) is an engineered wood product that is stronger than plywood. It is composed of many strands of wood layered and oriented in cross directions. We used it as our subfloor and it was a part of the Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) that were used for the upstairs exterior walls. |
Demand FSC Lumber!!!
Picking up some lumber at the local home improvement store seems harmless enough, but all too often it has direct links with ecological destruction, human rights violations, and labor abuses. Traditional logging is often done without the consent or compensation of local indigenous people. Frequently it's done on a massive scale, clearcutting entire mountains and devastating local economies. Some prominent companies even log species threatened with extinction and distribute wood illegally logged in protected rainforests.
There is another way...
The next time you're buying wood products, look to see that the wood is "FSC-certified". For over a decade the
Forest Stewardship Council, an international non-profit, has provided rigorous and independent verification that wood is being harvested according to 10 important principles. These include compliance with local and national laws, respect for indigenous people's rights, fair compensation and organizing rights for locals and employees, and protection of biological diversity.
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| 100% FSC Trusses |
While FSC-certified wood is not always easy to find, even the big retailers are carrying more of it these days. The Hudson Valley is lucky to have the Stevenson Group, the second largest independent lumber yard in the country, with a store in Newburgh. While they are not yet certified to officially carry or produce FSC-certified products, they are happy to help source FSC-certified wood to meet specialized needs such as truss manufacturing. Thanks in part to their help over 50% of the wood in the Common Fire building that wasn't salvaged was either FSC-certified or FSC-sourced.
Whenever you're shopping for lumber be sure to ask for FSC-certified, and if they don't have it tell them to get it!
And What About That Pile Of Waste Over There?!?
In the US alone the amount of waste produced from construction and demolition generated 136 million tons of waste in 1998. The sizing of a building also has a direct impact on the amount of construction waste produced. Building smaller of course plays a key role, but so does sizing the building to best fit the dimensions of the lumber and other materials to be used in the building to reduce the amount of scraps.
Regardless of how much waste you produce, you can also very easily ensure that most of it does not end up in a dump. In the Mid-Hudson Valley we are blessed to have the state-of-the-art Taylor Recycling Facility located in Orange County. They accept mixed debris and recycle over 95% of it. They provide roll-off dumpsters, demolition services, waste disposal and specialty hauling, and sell the resulting mulch, stone, gypsum and more.
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