Benefits in Green Building

Guest post by Krista Peterson

Sure, everyone seems to be getting out and going “green” these days. From driving hybrid cars to living vegan lifestyles, many people are taking different steps towards better living throughout the world recently. In the area of green building, using these types of building materials can be not only beneficial in cost effectiveness and sustainability, but also in some more important areas. Minor substitutions and green materials used in the building process can be particularly beneficial in improving overall health and cutting down on the risk of disease for the future.

Paint is often one of the primary materials throughout a building or remodeling process. What many people are unaware of is that most common paints are high in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) which present health risks and threats to air quality when constantly inhaled. Given the repeated exposure that would be likely during a remodeling or building process, the associated health risks with VOC’s are a possibility for builders and remodelers. The range of health problems can span from extremely minor to some more permanent and long term issues. Repeated exposure to VOC’s have been shown to sometimes lead to health risks such as fatigue, headaches and dizziness, as well as more dangerous risks like kidney or liver damage.

Alternatives for paint products are relatively easy to come by. Most common hardware stores carry great options for normal paint products that are usually high in volatile organic compounds. The best alternative is to look for organic and low-VOC paints. This will certainly reduce risk of exposure and health risk.

Insulation can also be a great way to replace potentially toxic products with green building materials, while reducing health risks in the process. Many older homes, up until the 1970’s and 1980’s were built using asbestos as a common material in insulation purposes for houses and buildings. Unfortunately, although being extremely versatile and trustworthy as a building material. Asbestos began to be known as one of the primary developers in health problems such as mesothelioma, asbestosis, respiratory problems and other minor issues such as fatigue and dizziness. While both of these may seem inconsequential as far as health problems, the other risks are not to be taken lightly. For example, mesothelioma life expectancy is usually only between eight and 14 months after diagnosis. Having older homes checked for asbestos in the insulation and looking for new alternatives can be a major step towards better overall health. Even in the case that asbestos may not be a problem for your individual house, insulation is a great option for green building because of its ability to increase a home’s sustainability and reduce the carbon footprint, while still being cost effective.

Green options in insulation present some of the best forms of sustainability in houses today. As previously mentioned, making the switch to these green options can certainly decrease possible health risks, but they can also be high in sustainability and extremely cost effective at the same time. Some of the options in green insulation include the use of cellulose and lycnene. Cellulose is usually the most popular form of green insulation. It’s made from 80 percent of recycled paper and parts of newspaper, and comes complete without the dangers of formaldehyde. It’s also one of the cheapest options of green insulation as well. Lycnene is a form of spray foam insulation that is often the most sustainable form. Because it’s sprayed into seeps and cracks, its ability to keep air trapped in the house is excellent.

Certainly there are other easy steps that can be taken to help out in green insulation, but these two are some great ones to look at, primarily because of their ability to replace products that may have health risks, while still adding to the overall sustainability of the home.

E-Waste? No Problem.

This is "Timmy."

Timmy is full of e-waste.

Where should Timmy go to put all this e-waste? Is there a place nearby which will take this e-waste from Timmy? Yes, there is! I found ecollective.com through Google, and then Mobius Computers through ecollective. Chris answered my voicemail in under 5 minutes, and within an hour I was dropping off 300 pounds of wires, cables, computers, monitors, and a printer. "If you'd have told me all this was going to fit in that little car I'd have never believed you," said Aaron, the supervisor. He was super friendly and knowledgeable and made the process painless and easy. "The state pays the charges for CRT recycling, since we're a certified recycler."

While The crew at Mobius unloaded Timmy, the other company I'd contacted to get my goodies called me back. Too late! Mobius Computers Corporate E-Waste Recyclers wins this round!

Next!

So what now? We have so much technology... is that what is going to save us?

No.

It's getting to know each other more, releasing each other from our fears and pains and blocks... it's courageously looking at my relationship of 25 years and acknowledging "We've been working on this for years and we're still stagnant and it's just getting worse;" it's trusting that a higher Power is at work; it's realizing that I am free in a way I've never been; it's searching for and doing whatever it is I am uniquely here on the planet to do; it's encouraging you to do the same; it's seeing that we are all saints already and our fears hold us back from expressing that; it's unplugging from Facebook and taking a friend out to dinner--

We will be saved not because of technology but because we finally stop being driving by our fears and then hitch our souls to our dreams.

What Did I Learn?

My coach said, "I've worked with you for nearly ten years. You were very different when we started. You took on the Home of the Future project to learn something. What is it? What was so important? What did doing this teach you?"

In the space of two heartbeats, I recalled who I'd been, who I became as I tried so hard to fit into the life I'd arranged up until then; I recalled the changes wrought in me through yoga and meditation, through my permaculture class, through buying and living in this home in this cohousing community; I recalled what I'd put my family through, the sacrifices they made and continue to make; I recalled the gifts of the Spirit and companionship that have been bestowed upon me; I recalled the various housemates and meetings and challenges and celebrations and conversations and healings I witnessed and participated in; I recalled the children I'd played with, the women I'd loved, the men who befriended me...

A lump rose in my throat.

"I learned that I'm 'Dad.' Not some autocratic figure, but 'Abba;' nurturer, holder of space, appreciator of what is and what is becoming; teacher, student, facilitator; the bringer of something to the planet that didn't exist until I called it into being with the help and inspiration of those people around me."

"That's huge," she said.

Back into Foreclosure

I was very depleted after five years of so much effort to manifest the Home of the Future. I took a break. Last week I decided to come off break. I made a list of pros and cons regarding making the effort to keep this project going in this incarnation, and what actions I would need to take in order to sustain it.

The pros outnumber and outweigh the cons.

As if to reward me for pulling my head out of my navel, I got a Notice of Trustee Sale taped to my front door yesterday. The timeline is super short; December 13th. I'll call the bank and see what's up.

I'm in a pretty good mood about it. I really feel God's love and support. The "right" thing is going to be the thing that happens. The right thing is already happening. I'm feeling His presence within me. With Him as my center, my heart, my shelter, my shield, whatever happens out in the world cannot undo me.

Sustainable Consumption Musings

I'm pondering galvanized pipes.

Oliver Cannell, a student currently studying environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., asked me for a definition of sustainable consumption. I gave him one, and in the writing of it realized that we have, in addition to a constant input of energy from the sun and time from the Universe, an ever-increasing resource in terms of human ingenuity.

We've been transporting water for all of recorded history, and along the way have discovered lead poisoning and hydraulics, created new methods of organizing people and making people pay for something that is inherently free, and other marvels. We've used materials science and social science to solve the problems we encounter.

A lead pipe is completely recyclable, but the side effects of water transported in lead are hard on folks. An steel pipe will rust; dipping it in zinc creates a material that when scratched will heal itself. Unfortunately, the zinc is a contaminant if you want to recycle the steel.

Recycling wasn't as important 150 years ago. Delivering clean water was. Now we believe recycling is important, too. With the power of human ingenuity we'll come up with another material that is "better" than hot-dipped galvanized pipe (or PVC pipe, or ABS, or any of the other non-recyclable materials) for delivering water.

The Pause

I hired my coach again.

Years ago, Nika Quirk helped me reach into my yearnings and pull out an action plan that got me to today. I'm caught up with the steps we outlined. Many manys of rewards and unseen consequences have occurred; for example, I have oodles of opportunity before me and my family has moved out and the big old house is effectively empty.

So, what's next?

Don't know.

But I'm curious to find out.

Prop 23 and co-opting the Tea Party

San Jose Mercury News:

Shirlee Pierce, a tea party activist in Solano County, says she contacted the Yes on 23 campaign on her own after doing research about the ballot initiative on the Internet. She's now organizing people to hand out Yes on 23 fliers at a Fairfield Safeway. "To begin with, nobody knows if there really is global warming or if it is just a big scam to enrich the solar companies,"said Pierce, who is retired.

Apparently, enriching out-of-state oil companies (who are meddling in our state's politics) is preferable to enriching local solar companies who are actually providing new, green jobs.

EV Event at the Craneway

You're invited to join 3Prong Power at the Green Drive Expo this Saturday.

Normally the event is $10 per adult, but as an exhibitor at the expo 3Prong Power is able to offer you free admission to the expo. To print off a coupon for FREE admission go to http://greendriveexpo.com/greendriveexpocoupon and use the coupon code 3PRONG.

Green Drive Expo is a new consumer expo happening in the San Francisco Bay Area on Oct. 9. It's the first green car show of its kind in the Bay Area.

It's taking place in the Marina District of Richmond, right on the waterfront, at the Craneway Pavilion -- the location of a former Ford auto factory where the company built Model Ts and Model As. (The Craneway Pavilion is located at 1414 Harbour Drive, Richmond, CA. The Expo runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.)

At the expo will be exhibits, test drives, speakers and more! See Plug in Priuses and other Electric vehicles from major manufacturers including Nissan, Toyota and Ford.

Public programs include a session on the real-life experiences of EV drivers--including a Tesla owner who will be driving up from Southern California in his Roadster for the event.

Additional session topics include green car conversions, manufacturer's forums, consumer incentives, and bicycle commuting.

The keynote panel will be Chelsea Sexton, a long-time EV advocate and key figure in "Who Killed the Electric Car".

There will be activities throughout the day including opportunities for people to sign up as VIPs and show off their green vehicles. For more information visit the Green Drive Expo website atwww.GreenDriveExpo.com .

Electrically yours,

The 3Prong Power Team

Will the Arctic really melt?

The thought of the Arctic Ice Cap melting is pretty scary. It's likely Europe would be plunged into an ice age as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt gets shut down or re-routed.

However I noticed that the minimum, while getting lower, always turns around by the equinox. And when I sketch in a trend line for the minimums, it intersects the ice extent at right around 3.5 million square kilometers of ice. Analyzing the data this way suggests the Arctic Ocean won't become entirely ice free.

What actually determines the minimum? If it's the amount of ice that builds over the winter, and that amount continues to build up as it has in the past, then it sure looks like we're going to have ice in the Arctic.

Pop Culture

When my Nana told me a few years ago that she wouldn't even consider going to a movie because she's been uninterested in pop culture for so long that she doesn't understand the references in movies and wishes they could be self contained stories like they used to be, I was a little horrified. I'd never known anyone to opt out of current culture and then never ever bring it up- usually people are very excited to share that they are opting out, until they stop the next day.

But now I have let pop culture pass me by. There are huge swathes of it that I can't really access. I tried to share in my boyfriend's hobbies this weekend and it was really hard. First we saw Mr F.A.B at a reggae concert that was actually a rap concert, and I didn't like it because I like calm things where I am in control of the volume and no one crowds me and I can leave when I want to. Then I tried to play Halo 3. I wanted to play Wii tennis, but apparently gamers don't insist on cross compatibility and so you can't play Wii tennis on an Xbox 360. I didn't ask about Guitar Hero, because I only like to play that with the guitar, not messing around with the controller. Anyway, I got all set up and I was a soldier fighting aliens. The navigation was really confusing because it was all one color to show that it's dystopian, and also up and down were reversed on the controller. But after 10 minutes I was able to follow Andy if he walked into my vision frame and then didn't move too fast. He figured out on the map screen where we had to go and he groaned and said "That's such a long walk!" I have always suspected gamers say things like that while they sit on their couches, but I am sad to have it confirmed. Anyway, aliens shot at us and Andy killed them really fast while I tried to turn and face them. At one point I was planning to shoot two aliens who walked right up to me, (so I had a good sight on them), and then they were gone! I was proud and I bragged that I scared them away but it turned out Andy shot them while I was getting my bearings. When we got to the mission place, Andy said my job would be to stay in the car while he shot things and drove around. I fell out of the car twice because I thought I was pressing the trigger but I was really pressing the fall out of the car button. And every time I fell out it was a hassle because Andy had to shoot everything away from me while driving up to me, and then I had to hop in without pressing the fall out of the car button. Anyway, I fell out 4 more times but I don't know how because I was really careful not to press that button. One of the times I wasn't even touching the controller. I think. It was happening really fast. Anyway, the sixth time he had to circle back to get me he said "Babe, stay in the car!" and since I had been trying with everything I had in me to stay in that car I got a little mad and threw the controller down and yelled "You stay in the car!" and we turned it off. Then I had mild anxiety all night and drank calming tea.

The last pop culture thing I tried to do was watch the movie Inception. I never go to movies because I never like them. They are loud, and long, and I feel trapped. And I always bring things to do, but it always seems like i could get those things done much more easily if I weren't at a movie theater. Anyway, Inception (probably spoilers): First I watched a bank robber preview with about a million explosions, which I misremembered as being the intro to Inception. That got me a bit worked up and so I guess I didn't get to give Inception a fair try. The dialog was bad but not campy, the costumes were great but I wanted to see them closer up. There were loads and loads of characters because each layer of dreams left behind a character to act as a more awake guardian, and I have trouble keeping track of characters, but it turned out not to matter in this movie because all of the recurring characters were on the same team. The plot is that Leonardo Di Caprio's character kills his wife, but he felt sorry so he got to live and see his kids. She would get run over by a train for him, because they were so in love, but he wouldn't jump out of a building for her. The other plot is that a good way to convince people of things is to seamlessly give them the idea while they are dreaming. Not by just whispering it like those tapes that hypnotise you in your sleep, but by going in your dream as a character and engaging the person in the dream world. The other plot was that a japanese man wanted an american man to dissolve his company. It was a nice wrap up I thought. It took a really long time because everything everyone was dreaming happened at one time with lots and lots and lots of cutting back and forth. The movie was 2 1/2 hours long, and I watched one hour of it altogether. I think they could have got it down to 90 minutes easily by not over explaining things.

In conclusion, I like gentle and productive pass times.

A whole clothesline of salvaged clothes

For summer I am getting a dorm ready for fall. When we move the furniture I find a lot of stuff, mostly books, papers, and clothes. I take home about a fifth of the clothes I find, figuring that if they don't fit I can make them into something, and today I washed this week's findings in the bathtub and hung them out to dry in the sun.

There were 2 skirts,
12 shirts,

and two sweaters.

I thought I'd post over here instead of on my regular blog because I reduced waste in two ways, by salvaging clothes and by line drying. Tangent- This redeems me from the fact that today I drove 12 feet for almost no reason- parking is very tight on my street and the neighbors don't like to see a neighbor's car parked in front of their house for too long so my housemates and I all switch off which neighbor we park in front of. Q: does it really hurt anyone to have to walk a little extra to get to their car? Isn't it just petty, and therefore being petty back is called for? A: I have no way of knowing other people's physical limitations, and I have at least 3 friends for whom a comparable distance is a difficulty, and they are decades and decades younger than my neighbors. So I move my car.

Litho-capture

This journey towards true sustainability has taken some big twists and turns. I've learned I feel sustainable when powerfully supported by other people. Yet when those relationships fall away, where is my sustenance?

Just this past weekend during a Reiki session I found a connection to my own rootedness that is brand new to me. I've ached for it since birth, and sought to fill it with so many diversions and delusions.

I've been pinwheeling out over the chasm for so long, Wile E. Coyote-style...

It feels good to let the earth rush up to enfold me.

The Saga of the Hot Water Heater.

Xena and Caitlan bought a water heater and brought it home in the tiny car. Gently. I heard all about shopping at Home Depot in high heels. Caitlan wondered, "Why was everyone calling me 'Dorothy?'"

A couple days later while unboxing it I saw the bottom was crumpled, as though the unit had been dropped from a great height. It had been purchased on Caitlan's debit card, so I called her away from spending the day with her boyfriend. She brought him and his van. The box fit much better in that vehicle than in our Geo Metro.

At the store I explained it was damaged. "Not a problem. Go find a replacement and we'll swap it out." We could only find a different model. They didn't have a replacement; this damaged one was the only unit. They couldn't swap it, and I didn't want a different model.

"When will you get the next shipment?' I asked.

They checked. "We can't tell. But there is an identical model at our store down the freeway. Here, let's credit you back this purchase." We drove to the other store, picked out the unit, talked our way into the same great price that Xena had gotten on the first water heater, and went to pay for it. The card got declined, since it takes 24 hours for the reimbursement to process. "Don't you have another way to pay for it?" Not then we didn't!

I dropped into a really crummy mood, but I made sure the kids knew I was very grateful for their help.

More time passed, without hot water in the kitchen.

Our tax refund came in. I rented a truck, drove to the hardware store (no project is complete until I've been at least three times) and bought the unit. I couldn't get them to give me the $90 discount that Xena and Caitlan had managed. On the same excursion I picked up a mattress and box spring from my friend Nika. "How's it going?" she asked.

"Well, I have a funny feeling about the water heater I'm installing tomorrow," I confessed.

The next day, rusted-solid pipe joints yielded to WD-40 and stern words from Xena. We got the old heater out and immediately drove it over to the scrap metal yard and then returned the truck. All day long my wonderful neighbors kept offering to help. "Is it time yet? Do you need help?" The project was so linear that I didn't, but it felt great knowing that if I needed something they would be there for me. I got the new unit in position. I went to hook up the gas and realized I'd left the connector in the other water heater. I drove back to the scrap yard and unscrewed it.

Back home, the cold water pipe (with the shut-off valve) couldn't quite align with the parts I had. I went back to Home Depot and got a longer flexible copper connector. There on the warehouse floor was the damaged unit I'd returned, with the box very definitely the worse for wear! They had also received new identical models! Oh, well.

Back home, everything all connected, I pressurized the system. A few minor leaks appeared. A quarter turn here and there and the pipes seated nicely.

I read the lighting instructions. Cool! It's got a piezo-electric igniter! I fired it up. Nothing. "Continue clicking the igniter until the pilot lights. Do not attempt to light by hand." Fine.

Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.

Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

"OH FOR PETE'S SAKE! XENA!" I roared. "IT'S YOUR TURN!"

"What's wrong?"

"THE DAMN THING WON'T LIGHT AND I NEED YOU TO TAKE OVER RIGHT NOW!"

In an extremely reasonable voice she asked, "Isn't there a phone number you can call?"

But I was beyond reasonability. "PROBABLY, BUT IT'S UP TO YOU NOW. I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS EVEN ONE MORE SECOND!" I stormed away.

God bless her, she let me go. Betsy asked what was up. I felt so much better now that I wasn't in the same room as the water heater. "Oh, I've installed it and it won't light. So I've asked Xena to take over."

"That's pretty great, that she is doing that. Once, not too long ago, it would have been your job and she'd have told you, 'Just march yourself right back down there and take care of it!'"

I've got to agree, this was much better. I'd have burst an aorta if I'd been unable to hand off the project at that moment.

Xena and Nicholas fussed with it for a while and couldn't get it to light either. Xena came back upstairs and I went down to hang out with Nicholas as I was feeling much better. He and I fiddled with it for a few minutes, and it lit!

As far as I know, he and I didn't do anything unique or different. But it lit. Random elements at play, as they have been for some time, in my life and home and family.

So now we have hot water in the back half of the house again. There's been something of a rush on washing dishes. "Oh, it's so nice to wash dishes in warm water!" everyone keeps saying. I predict the novelty will wear off before i even finish typing this post, but it's fun to hear people excited to wash dishes instead of dragging themselves to do it.

A final footnote: Xena has found that the next model larger is now $10 cheaper.