Miscellaneous Schmidt – Sustainable Schmidt

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Guest post: Sustainable Living – A Daybreak Case Study

Sustainable Kyle — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:17:45 +0000

Philip J Reed, on behalf of Daybreak, has put together an interesting article for us:

Sustainability is, and should indeed be, a popular topic right now. We hear the word everywhere, and sometimes it seems to get tossed around so frequently that it starts to lose meaning. Any company (or organization, or even individual) can claim to do their part when it comes to operating sustainably, but it may be wise to question them before taking them at their word.

The Daybreak community in Utah is taking sustainability seriously, and they’re making their efforts very clear to anybody interested in what that entails.

For starters, they are working closely in conjunction with Garbett Homes, who makes a point of using solar panels to generate energy for the houses that they build. That in itself might not sound too revolutionary, but the real significance lies in the fact that this solar energy is built standard into each home that they construct, resulting in around 300 new homes per year taking advantage of sustainable energy.

We spoke to one solar-friendly resident while preparing this article, and she reported that her energy bill for one entire summer month was a measly $7. (Just in case you think this resident is a significant exception, nearly all solar-friendly residents of Daybreak average between $10 and $15 per month for their energy bills.)

Daybreak is also the first community in Utah to require that every home be built to EPA Energy Star standards, and they are also the first community in the United States to require that all new homes be tested and rated by HERS (Home Energy Rating System). In addition, the community is designed to maximize a car-free lifestyle, taking into account walking and biking distance for employees, shoppers and even elementary school children. Their “5 Minute Rule” means that no resident will live further away than five minutes’ walking distance from a park or trail.

Sustainability is also being embraced by Daybreak in their standard, day to day practices. After all, sustainable living doesn’t end when the home is built; it needs to continue forever! To this end, they plant 35 trees each week, employ a storm-water retention and reinfiltration system, and recycle more than 75% of their construction waste.

The Daybreak community is doing its best not only to negate its own environmental impact, but to assist the healing process of the environment overall. It’s a great start to what could really become a new standard in community development.

How many nights would you sleep in a bed with real, actual, honest to goodness bedbugs biting you?

schmidt — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:48:59 +0000

I ask this question to people from time to time. I have pretty much always gotten the same answer, which is to say “Zero nights you moron, who sleeps in a bed with bedbugs?

I mean if you knew that the bed had an actual bedbug, let alone a freaking colony, once you get done screaming and running around stripping off your PJs, checking every inch of your body several times over, most sane people would bring out the flame thrower and torch their bed lest the nasty little creatures somehow escape and infest the entire room, apartment or house.

While pointing the nozzle of the flamethrower at said bedbug infested mattress may not technically be the greenest option out there, there are solutions that sometimes transcend the need to be ecologically sensitive. Anyways I am sure you can buy a carbon offset for the burning bed.

So when, for example, I hear from one of my building managers that during a routine, annual smoke alarm/CO monitor swap out the nice tenants down the hall mentioned that they have had bedbugs for a year, and that there solution has been to smash the bugs and wipe their remains on the walls and then go back to sleep, and that the bedbugs were in their old apartment but thought when they moved, bringing of course their old mattresses WITH THEM TO THE NEW (i.e. mine) APARTMENT who would have thoguth that the bedbugs would be there too.

What are the odds?

Its not like this is the only bunch of Einsteins I have had lengthy discourse with regarding this subject. I bought a building once, and the nice lady and her daughter who lived down a different hall showed me the water bottles that they sprayed on the bedbugs to “make them go away”. That the bedbugs had been in the apartment for some years might have been a clue that away was not nearly as far as they thought it was, but who am I to point out such fine points?

So while sustainable living is always the preferred option, there are times when you need to break out the no holds barred chemical warfare gear. Not mustard gas mind you, though it is appealing – your pest guy (if he does not totally suck) will be able to show you the right stuff and should have a cleaning protocol to follow. But seriously, if you had these things in your home, would you just roll over and go back to sleep?

The Garbage Goldmine

Sustainable Nikos — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:24:14 +0000

Throughout my time working for SRELP and blogging on “sustainablechmidt.com,” I have continually referenced my goals of reducing “black bin” or garbage waste and increasing the volume of compost waste. However, I have only touched on or vaguely mentioned my project without going into any detail about the nuts and bolts of my task. I refrained from providing detail because although garbage is an undoubtedly important area of our lives, it isn’t particularly exciting. However, having come to the conclusion of my garbage project, I can definitively say that garbage IS something that can be exciting.

Garbage can be exciting in that one can save a boatload of money through careful and responsible waste management. In the case of SRELP’s building garbage profile, for example, Helmut was spending $3,878.05 per month to provide garbage services for the 6 buildings he manages. At several building locations, he was providing more garbage space than his tenants required. Available garbage volume is calculated by adding up the volume of available bin space (2 96 gallon bins provide 192 gallons of available bin space) and multiplying that sum by the number of garbage pickup days per week. 2 96 gallon bins picked up 7 times per week=1344 gallons of weekly available bin space.

By traveling to each building location repeatedly over the course of 2 wees and recording the amount of available volume that was being used, I was able to determine that most of our buildings use far less space than we provide. In other words, we were paying to provide garbage volume that wasn’t being used. We then worked to come up with a new available garbage volume that would better fit the habits and necessities of our tenants. Upon finding said number, we called and changed our building garbage profiles for 3 out of the 6 buildings that we manage. The results were as follows:

Original price for waste management: $3,878.05 per month

New price for waste management: $2,479.37 per month

By reducing our garbage bin reliance and applying a more eco-friendly waste management program, we saved (and will continue to save) $1,398.68 per month. If saving almost $1,500 per month doesn’t make you excited, then just think that you can save a lot of money AND save the environment by becoming more compost and recycling conscientious.

Signing off,

A very excited SRELP intern

Mission Accomplished!

Sustainable Nikos — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:31:54 +0000

I am back! Recently, I went to our building on Bush Street with Steven and one of his colleagues from the SF Department of the Environment. We traveled from door to door, offering compost pails to the residents. 2/3 of the residents we met took the compost pails! The other 1/3 of the residents told us that we were (and I quote) “barking up the wrong tree.” 15 of the 33 residents answered the door during our entire voyage through the building! On the whole, 11 out of the 33 residents were at home and accepted the compost bins– a 33%starting point. I still consider this mission a success for both economic and environmental reasons:

Economically, the introduction of the compost bins allows for a reduction of garbage pickups. After traveling to Bush street regularly to check the volume of garbage bin space that was being used with the SRELP group, we came to the conclusion that we could reduce the garbage pickup schedule by 3 days (which saved more than $800 per month). The compost bin will provide a new space for biodegradable waste, giving us the ability to reduce our reliance on the black bin, which saved us money. Fortunately, San Francisco’s Recology policies ensure that compostable and recyclable waste management is a free service. In this way, we can divert what was once garbage volume into composting volume, saving money.

Environmentally, even a 33% increase in compost use is beneficial. True, it’s less than we would have hoped– but I am certain that through persistent phone calls and communication with our tenants, we can still convince some of the Bush street residents to help us save our planet.

Next stop, compost at Guerrero!

Kyle’s Kitchen: Rebates, Trees, Cradles

Sustainable Kyle — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:23:33 +0000

In addition to my internship here with Sustainable Schmidt, I’ve been spending some time interning with San Mateo County government for their Energy Upgrade program. This statewide incentive program provides rebates for homeowners who want to increase the energy efficiency of their homes. This program is unique in that it helps you to “upgrade” the comfort and efficiency of the home as a whole – not just single products like PG&E’s rebates. Each county in the Bay Area has their respective branches to this program. Rebate amount goes from $1000-$4000, depending on how much you improve your efficiency by. My goal by the end of the summer is to convince my dad to retrofit our home with this program. With any luck, we’ll be able to combine them with other rebates and tax credits. If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of all the different rebates in your area, check out the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency.

Ever really thought about what that tree in front of your house does for you? The Colorado Tree Coalition has written a comprehensive list of the Benefits of Trees in Urban Areas. I understood the obvious benefits of urban forests like carbon sequestration and reduced run-off, but had never considered how trees in neighborhoods would strengthen its community, or helps slow traffic.

I’m halfway through Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. These two authors introduce an interesting concept for product life-cycle that draws inspiration from nature itself. Rather than creating products that create unusable waste and degrade the natural environment, a product design that encourages integration of its life with the rest its environment. For example, whereas conventional roofing degrades, overheats, and eventually has to be thrown away, green roofs covered in plants “maintain the roof at a stable temperature, providing free evaporative cooling in hot weather and insulation in cold weather, and shields it from the sun destructive rays, making it last longer.” William McDonough gave a good lecture on TED Talks of this design concept:

All the different shades of green

Sustainable G — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:04:35 +0000

Every week I try and give these posts some form of organization and give these posts a smooth flow to them. This week, there is no smooth flow, it is merely a compilation of random articles that I found to be cool and interesting. The waters of this post are choppy, you have been warned.

With the death of guitar hero and the imminent rise of the next generation of video game consoles, people are going to start having old, plastic guitars and outdated consoles piling up. Find out how to discard your used toys here.

I like being able to hear news about our government and be able to say, “fail” (with added face palm), this time is no exception.

I did not realize that this was such a big dilemma but, evidently, some parents have a hard time choosing between biodegradable and cloth diapers. This article is a little old, but that’s okay.

In more recent news, the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit by several states which attempted to make utility companies reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

PG&E is trying to guilt trip its customers into saving trees for an additional sixty dollars a year. Bad PG&E, bad.

Ugly or Not Ugly

For more on this house click here.

The lighting breakdown

Sustainable Nikos — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:20:16 +0000

Hello readers,

Today, Helmut, John, and I went to the Pacific property in order to meet with a representative from the SF Department of the Environment. The representative was helping us understand some of the rebates and programs put in place by the city. He was also at the property to do a compliance audit for our piping insulation installation. However, while he was there, he also alerted us to the existence of some of the services the city would also provide to help buildings stay “green.”

The most fascinating of these projects was the city’s project of incandescent to LED replacement. The city of San Francisco offers a program wherein they will replace a homeowner’s incandescent bulbs and cans for LED ones. LED lights are very energy efficient, but are also potentially expensive. Whereas standard incandescent bulbs use an average of 60 watts, fluorescent bulbs use 23 wats, and LEDs use only 4. To increase the number of people using LED’s and helping the environment, the city offers to replace the incandescent bulbs with LED’s to help achieve greater sustainability. Unfortunately, they won’t subsidize the transition from incandescent to LED.

All in all it was a very informative meeting. And, if you have incandescent lights, and wish to be more sustainable, call Ryan Chan at the SF Department of the Environment to switch them out!

Stay Dry,
Malachi

Kyle’s Kitchen: PCBC

Sustainable Kyle — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 22:12:54 +0000

On Wednesday I got the opportunity to check out the Pacific Coast Builders Conference, PCBC, for the first time. The Moscone Center was jam-packed with an impressive variety of tradespeople advertising their product. Despite this, Sir Helmut was tripping pretty hard about how few people there were (and sober, no less!). Apparently, PCBC has been struggling with attendance for the past couple years since the economy went south. The numbers aren’t out for this year’s conference, but this article discusses past attendance issues the conference has had in previous years. Nevertheless, I was introduced to a lot of new, innovative products at PCBC that I’d like to share with you:

Cabinets: Executive Cabinetry has come out with a line of cabinets, “EcoFriendly.” This product is certified to the highest GreenGaurd standard: Children & Schools. The cabinet is made with FSC certified wood, and finished with water-based products that emit zero Formaldehyde.
Insulation: Owens Corning has released a new insulation product that is also GreenGaurd Children & Schools certified. Their pink EcoTouch insulation also helps prevent indoor air pollution by being Formaldehyde free.
Solar water hearing: The Velux solar water heater was something I found particularly innovative. This is an Energy Star qualified system that should drop energy consumption for heating your water by 50-80%. I really liked this system because it could be installed in conjunction to a skylight you could use for your bathroom.
Roofing: I’ve never really thought to use recycled rubber and plastic to roof a home, but EcoStar has provided us this service of sustainable roofing with a line of tiles made out of 80% post-industrial recycled materials. I saw for myself at PCBC that these products look almost exactly like the tiles or wood shake they emulate. This roofing is warrantied to last 50 years. This product is recyclable, so once that time is up just toss them in the blue bin.

Kyle’s Kitchen: Green Building Bucket List

Sustainable Kyle — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:13:18 +0000

I’ve been busy at the office researching/googling a host of different aspects to green building–in the hopes of gathering research for my sustainable apartment kitchen project. I have stumbled across a good amount of interesting websites and articles, and thought it would be a good idea to share it with you all. My first “green building bucket list” goes as follows:

GreenPoint Rated: If you think you own a “green” home or are considering building one, try putting that “green”-ness to the test with the systemized rating system from The Green Building Council. This GreenPoint Rated system certifies that the property you own or plan to build is more comfortable and healthier, while simultaneously lessening your impact on the environment.
PG&E sham(?): An interesting article from SFGate exposed a PG&E carbon offset program to be more marketing sham than sustainable function. This “ClimateSmart program highlights the complex and murky relationships among big business, state regulators and conservation groups working on climate change – a relatively new and untested system in which a huge amount of money is traded without much public scrutiny.”
Noise Abatement: If you are looking for some way to muffle your neighbor’s noise next door, Keene Building has a line of products called Quiet Qurl that are made out of 40% recycled content and are designed to absorb sound in apartment or dormitory complexes. This polymer matrix that you apply between walls or under flooring in conjunction with gypsum concrete can also help if you are looking for LEED certification.
Alternative Countertops: On the subject of kitchen countertops, few consider using butcher block. “Butcher block countertops are natural, beautiful, practical, renewable, economical, and, contrary to popular belief, one of the safest, most sanitary kitchen work surfaces available.” Helmut has also noted other cool alternative countertops to the traditional laminate or granite.

That is all I got for now. More soon.