Connecticut Green Building Council

August 27
Connecticut Green Building Council


One of the greatest challenges businesses face is demonstrating value to the potential client. As designers, sales people, business owners and other industry professionals, how do we create, demonstrate and them deliver the greatest value to our clients? Today, the buzz words surround Green Design and Sustainability.

In our area, and across the country new standards are being developed to help guide us and through us, our clients to make better design decisions that will improve the quality of life initially as well as through the years.

We no longer have to sit on the sidelines. We have new tools and resources to learn about and then promote the building of of more energy efficient, less water using, healthier homes.

The Connecticut Green Building Council has recently become the local chapter of the US Green Building Council. The organization website is htp://www.ctgbc.org From the organizations website,

"The Connecticut Green Building Council is a non-profit 501(c3) organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Connecticut through the promotion of intelligently designed and constructed high performance energy efficient buildings.
Throughout the year we hold a series of workshops on green building topics, networking opportunities, membership meetings, educational forums, seminars on green buildings and periodic CT based LEED™ training in connection with the US Green Building Council. The CTGBC also monitors activities in Connecticut related to high performance green buildings and maintains a speaker’s bureau."

This news coupled with the development by the USGBC of "LEED for HOMES" makes this a good time to check out more about this local organization. According the the USGBC Website http://www.usgbc.org ,

" LEED for Homes is a voluntary rating system that promotes the design and construction of high performance "green" homes. A green home uses less energy, water, and natural resources; creates less waste; and is healthier and more comfortable for the occupants. Benefits of a LEED home include lower energy and water bills; reduced greenhouse gas emissions; and less exposure to mold, mildew and other indoor toxins. The net cost of owning a LEED home is comparable to that of owning a conventional home."

You can contact and join either or both of these organizations to stay on top of learning opportunities and help to improve and demonstrate the great value you offer your clients.

Richard Allan Marti Jr

Design | e2

PBS Series titles Design |e2
a Must see if you question the viability of green design

I would love to hear from YOU!

Feedback is so vitally important. I would love to hear back from the readers of this blog so I can provide you with the content you love to read. Please drop me a note and let me know what you think, what you like, and maybe, what you don't like.

I promise I will respond directly.

Richard Allan Marti Jr.

Blog Action Day 2007

You can help change the world. Please join us on October 15th.

Green Design Series Issue 3 - Wall Finishes

It is becoming easier to specify green products for interior design. The options available are growing and more companies become aware that consumers demand both high quality materials as well as performance from suppliers that meet the clients core values and concerns for creating a healthy home environment while protecting the macro environment and preserving our natural resources. In part three of our Green Design Series we take a look at some wall finish options including milk paint, clay plaster, and low voc latex paints.

Milk paint is a beautiful functional and durable wall finish but not the only option for wall low VOC green wall finishes anymore. A variety of extremely high quality and beautiful finishes like clay earth plasters are joining the challenge while the big players including Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams get in the game to stay.

Milk paint, or casein paint has been around for over a century. Historically this paint was made from natural organic raw materials including milk protein, lime and pigments were added for color. The mixture has a short life span ranging from 1 day to up to two weeks. Newer formulation are similar with some variations of the filler materials and pigments. Milk paint can be made at home or the dry materials can be purchased pre-mixed from various sources. You mix the dry materials with water to the right consistency and paint on. Milk paint does not " flow out" like industrial coating produced today. The texture of the brush strokes remain creating a pleasing effect. The Pigment also is not as consistent as a manufactured paint. This inconsistency provides a pleasing variety when dry adding to the hand crafted look.
The finish is "breathable" allowing air to pass through it. When used in areas like kitchens it is advisable to seal the finish with a varnish.

Unfortunately some companies have reproduced this effect using manufactured paints and have labeled the resulting finish a "Milk Paint Finish." These finishes are NOT Green and have added some confusion to actual milk paint finises.

Resources for these finishes include:
The Real Milk Paint located in Quakertown, Pa. http://www.realmilkpaint.com/

Clay-
American Clay Enterprises is a U.S. company based in Albuquerque, NM uses plaster as a base to create a variety of textures from matte to suede to "rustic organic textures." and can be applied by troweling or spraying. Colors for these finishes have a "natural" feel. The clay plaster also has a longer open time and unlike other plasters, it can be crushed and reconstituted with water.

(Sample Images from American Clay Enterprises Website)

The Company also claims that Clay plaster also helps produce negative ions in the air creating an environment more conducive to human life balancing the positive ions given off by electronic equipment found in most offices and homes today. According to the company website, "Negative ions are believed to produce biochemical reactions that increase levels of the mood chemical serotonin, helping to alleviate depression, relieve stress, and boost our daytime energy. Normal Ion count in fresh country air is 2,000 to 4,000 negative Ions per cubic centimeter (about the size of a sugar cube). At Yosemite Falls, you'll experience over 100,000 negative Ions per cubic centimeter. On the other hand, the level is far below 600 per cubic centimeter in an office with computers."


Benjamin Moore recently donated more than 300 gallons of its new EcoSpec interior paint for the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Headquarter office in Washington, DC. According to Benjamin Moore, "EcoSpec products are 100 percent acrylic latex paints with quick drying time and no lingering paint odor. The low levels of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) make EcoSpec ideal for architects and designers interested in attaining LEED certification."

(The LEED Green Building Rating System is the standard of green building criteria developed by the USGBC. The new USGBC office suite opened in February 2007 and earned LEED Platinum Commercial Interiors certification, the highest level attainable.)

Sherwin Williams has two product that meet or exceed LEED's GS-11 Standards. First is it's Duration Home® Interior Latex offering a low voc options and second it's Harmony® Interior Latex offing a no-voc option. Sherwin Williams also claims to have developed a standard for Green coating that goes even "farther than most 3rd party certifications and calls it " GreenSure. More information can be found on the company website.

Richard Allan Marti Jr.

Decision to Boycott goods from China

It is time to take the RIGHT steps. Green Design and Geen Living must start at home.

I have been studying Green Design from many different pespectives over the last 10 years. My Wife Laini and I have started writing articles and are working in our community to promote conservation of our natural resources, energy and live in harmony with our environment.

While thinking and discussing green design within our own family, we have decided to make a commitment to purchase our own goods from local sources and in that process we made a further commitment to avoid any items made in China. The reasons are many including:

1. The terrible environmental impact of Chinese companies.
2. The amount to fossil fuels used in transportation of goods from such a great distance.
3. The poor working conditions of Chinese workers
4. The lack of quality controls for Chinese companies.

We think others will be arrive at this same conclusion and we fully support it. We also know that it will not be very easy. Even now, as I sit here writing with my warm cup of coffee basking in the morning sun pouring into our Connecticut home, I notice that everything I am wearing is made in China ( with the possible exception of my wedding band.) From My Nike socks, my Nike shorts, my Timex Ironman triathlon watch/heart rate monitor, to even my LIVESTRONG yellow bracelet, all are marked "China."

Is globalization really better for the whole world? So many macro economist say yes. I have even beleived them in the past. At the moment, at least for my family, I am rethinking that belief. In the opinion of this humble man I have to say no.

Timex, once a huge employer based right here in my home town, is now reduced to hollow shadow of its former self. What is my benefit in that part of the story? I have a cheap electonic watch that will last about two years before I need a "new" and "improved" model. Meanwhile, hundreds of jobs are lost here in my home town.

The time is now. It is the time for myself and my family to act,to live, grow and learn locally. This includes supporting local farmers and local businesses. It includes using local materials as much as we can. It also includes using less energy and finally as designers it includes promoting these ideas to our clients so we can all live in harmony with our earth.

Richard

New Spaces to Use Cabinetry

New ( or slightly used.. ) ideas for custom cabinetry in the 2007 -2008 Season.

Some of the fun ideas that expanding in every market from the luxury end to the practical include using cabinetry and custom furniture in traditionally utlilitarian areas including garages, mudrooms, potting areas and closets.

Many cabinet companies are expanding markets by making slight changes to their product offerings and engineering them for other purposes. New companies are also getting involved by creating new products. As our clients lives ( and our own) become more and more complicated, we strive for solutions to organize and simplify. The solutions can be as beautiful as they are functional.

In Garage Storage systems, companies like Rubbermaid have introduced components and cabinetry to organize just about everything you can imagine. From Bicycles to tools to all those containers of oil, antifreeze, windshield washer fluid, care care products, etc. The solutions create a space that is much calmer and visually appealing, not to mention how easy it is to find what you are looking for. In Connecticut a new Company, Garage Cabinets of Connecticut, has started and will provide planning, products and installation of compontents.


As we move from the garage and into the mudroom we find a smooth and functional transition. WHen we arrive home from work and school, our kids will have benches to remove their shoes, or cleats or boots before entering the more formal living spaces. They will have their own storage compartments for storing all the seasons sports equipment as well as their backpacks from school and their currently used jackets or sweaters. Some mudroom systems will even include sinks and showers to clean up in. We wont forget about the family pets. Our new Mudrooms have planned spaces for cleaning and pampering our pets and storing their food and supplies. The new mudrooms become sophisicated entries into the santuaries of our home lives. New Cabinetry offerings from many designers and manufactures complete these spaces but providing beautiful, long lasting quality components that stand up to the rigourous use of everyday life.

Potting areas- Occasionally Potting areas are included in mudroom spaces, but even more often now they are allocated spaces of thier own. The old potting shed has found a place in our hearts and homes. Updated with provisions for storing the tools and materials needed to creating flower arrangemetns for the dinner table, repotting plants and even starting seedlings for the next seasons garden or growing a crop of our favorite herbs.

Closets, especially master closets have grown up and become far more sophisticated. Instead of the typical 60" Closet with bi fold doors or the the upgraded 60" closet with bifold doors and a storage system inside, the new Master closet is a room perhaps with an island and organized storage spaces for Ties, Dress socks, pullouts for shoe storage, build in safes for valuables, sitting areas to put on shoes and even beverage stations including refrigerators, coffee makers and even dishwashers and sinks. The new master closet completes the master bedroom suite and transforms it into a santuary for weiry parents or a retreat for amourous couples to escape to.

Whether the style of these spaces are on the utilitarian side or much more sophisticated, opportunities exist to use cabinetry to make these spaces far more functional and help us create beautiful spaces.

Couture kitchens

Notes on CNBC's "High Net Worth" show on Couture Kitchens Aired Sunday August 12th 2007 at 8:00 PM

Hosted by Tyler Mathisen, "High Net Worth" provides avenues for viewers to extend their wealth and get the most out of the assets they have. Simply, there is no other program like this on television. This is a program that speaks to the ultra-affluent. Mathisen and his guests celebrate the very best life has to offer, from exclusive golf resorts and elite boutique hotels to incredible real estate and choice art. Mathisen reports the very latest news on investing trends and opportunities as well as news on taxes, trusts and estates. ( CNBC Website )

In the First Segment of the show Mathisen opens with, " Kitchens to die for that are taylored to your epicurian taste. These new high end kitchens frequently come with a 6 figure price tag." The show highlights some beautiful projects from Christopher Peacock and other luxury designers.

Spectacular spaces typically can encompass over 900 square feet. Prices for these luxurious spaces can range between $200,000 to $300,000 and up. Fast becomming the nerve center of the home, with internet access, and electronics embedded in appliances, luxury kitchens are increasing in functionality as well as looks and feel. "Kitchens must be show stopping, fabulous places to hang out in." says Christoper Peacock . Some of the trends to watch for; Over the next 4 years 300,00 people will have a private cook and by 2015 it is predicted that outdoor kitchens will be standard in high end homes.

The show did an excellent job romanticizing the idea of well designed and executed kitchens. There was also some discussion about multiple kitchens in single homes as well as separating kitchens for entertaining and separate kitchen for the personal chef to work in.



"The Kitchen is where everyone likes to hang out." Tyler Mathisen

Green Design Series Issue 2

Take care of two evils at once! I know that I am a tech geek who also knows, I am not alone. I am on my 24th computer over the last 2o years and close to that many cell phones.

If all that plastic and heavy metal was ending up in a dump instead of being reused and recycled I would hate to think of the waste. Add mine to yours and multiply that by a few hundred million and we have a real mess to clean up. The actual numbers are mind blowing. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that over 5.5 Billion pounds of electronics were tossed out in 2005. ( This number includes TV's, Stereos, Phones and computers.)

This is only half the story. Identity theft is something that is on many peoples minds. When you throw out that Hard Drive with all your personal information on it, or your cell phone with all your numbers stored, it is a pretty tempting and valuable asset to identity theives. I hope you don' t actually beleive that deleting that information provides any protection. It does not.

So, what can we do with this electronic stuff? Ill give you the juicy ideas first. You can actually make some cash back on those old cell phones stuck in your junk drawer ( and free up the space as well!) Visit www.greenphone.com and you can get paid for that little piece of plastic. Also for every phone sold the company will plant a tree. Nice and green.

Just so I don't forget to pass along the other info, those nasty cell phone batteries are full of nasty chemicals hence the notice on them, "Please dispose of Properly." BUT, what is "Properly" how do we get rid of them? Many people don't know that the store or site that sold you those electronic pieces must take them back to be recycled.

Computer monitors, the older ones as us middle agers will remember were called CRT's which stood for Cathode ray tube (I am starting to feel old enough to be recycled myself!) This older technology was also used in Televisions and the tubes used lead which can be reclaimed and recycled instead of poluting our ground and ground water. There are companies that can refurbish and resell computers and Televisions or recycle the components. Some of these electronic items are donated to schools or sold. A good resource for this is http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm. The EPA site has links for donation possibilities. You may even get a tax deduction.

There are also companies like Creative Recycling who serve small to large businesses is asset tracking and can provide services to completely destroy data and insure the safety of your precious information. Another way to reuse old components is Recycles.org. This is a posting site where you can list the equipment you would like to dispose of and readers of the site can connect with you to pick it up. In Connecticut the website is: http://www.recycles.org/states/Connecticut/ I have to caution you that you will be responsible for cleaning your data off the hard drives.

As I was writing this article I learned that Connecticut Govenor Jodi Rell signed a Manditory Electronics Recycling Law.

WWW.Environmentalleader.com for those of you who want to take your participation to a new level.

Richard Allan Marti Jr.

Green Design Series Issue 1

You can join the Green revolution! How, and How can we help? By stimulating converstions between designers while facilitating the flow of information back and forth. To start, we must ask the quesiton, "what is Green Design?" The answer is one of being thoughtful and raising more questions. The answer is a change of mindset and toolset. Through this series of articles we hope to illuminate the mindset and stimulate discussions and thoughts about how to leave a smaller footprint on this earth. We at the same time want to help develope a new toolset that designers and suppliers can use to carry out fanstically beautiful as well as highly functional green designs. The mindset will be one that encourages new questions and new answers, the toolset will include resources for learning about green design, it will include material sources and where to find materials, it will include resources on how to dispose of old materials so that they complete their useful lifecycle. For those of you hardcore designers that are ready to jump right in, there is a Green + Design Conference and Expo on October 1 and 2nd in Atlanta, Georgia at the Hyatt. You can click the link for more information.For the rest of us who want to explore this great project a little at a time, please join me for this and future article and discussionsThrough this series of articles we will include resources that you can use today to talk to your client about Green Design and where to find answers when they ask questions, and they will ask some tough questions. Most of the basic questions are well, basic and that is a great place to start. Most people have heard the phrase, "Reduce, reuse, and recycle." After that, the questions becomes, "well, how does that apply to design?" In our case it is even more specific, how does this apply to kitchen design? Lets take a closer look at reduce. It can mean a lot of things. The first that comes to mind is packaging. (Probably because I hate purchasing veggetables in the grocery store packed in plastic. We take one of natures most beautifully naturally packaged foods and wrap it in something that is made from crude oil.) So, do our cabinets come packaged in plastic and cardboard that ends up in the landfill? Or do they come blanket wrapped? Another question would be do they come from a local source who builds with local materials or are tehy produced in China or Mexico with lumber that is harvested in rainforests and shipped across oceans using tons of oil to get there only to be worked on in factories that use a ton of energy, and then shipped back across the ocean to a dock and across the country in a semi. You get the idea. Buy locally, or as locally as you can to reduce transportation costs. Speak to your supplier about packaging materials so they are easy to unpackage and be sure the packaging can be reused. ( how about asking them to pick up the cardboard boxes to reuse. It can save them money and reduce your landed costs. Before we get off the topic of reuse, there is one more consideration I think is worthy of thinking about, product design. Some of us design the actual products ( as opposed to designing the kitchen, we design the cabinet construction. ) Here too we need to think about the idea of not over designing. We can design very high quality products using less material. Re-Use. This one is easy in our market ( Connecticut and New York.) we have wonderful charity companies that will come to a clients home and remove the old cabinetry, appliances and countertops. They sell them for re-use in other projects or use them for Habitat homes, etc, and the best part is that our clients get a prety nice tax deduction for their donation. This system also saves demolition cost too. Two of the companies in our area are Restore ( a Habitat for Humanity program) and Green Demolition.Recycle- It is better to recycle than to throw items in our landfills. One obvious reason is as global warming increases and carbon in our atmoshere increases, we are using more and more trees to produce paper. Recycling paper is so easy to do there is little reason not to. Another great resource for finding recycling places for all kinds of materials is the Northeast Recycling Council.Today we took a look at some very basic ideas on the design and implementation side of executing a design. The same principals apply to the way our clients will use their new kitchens. We are called as appostles to talk to them about these ideas as well as suggesting that they too may want to buy food with less packaging and to plan for recycling ( I am amazed in out area how many people pay 5 cents per soda can, bottle and beer can and still just dump them on the side of the road or in the garbage.) To plan to install a water filter instead of buying bottled water ( it probably comes from a better water source anyway.) I have to admit, I have purchased a LOT of Poland Springs bottles - When I really think about having that water pumped to a truck, driven to a bottling plant, shipped to the warehouse then the store, then driven to my home and placed in the refrigerator...WOW that is a lot of energy. Yes, it is convient, no? Is it really easier than taking a glass out of my cabinet and filling it from my Water filter? As the popularity of the Green design has taken flight, the profitability has also risen. A win/win for everyone including designer, producers, installers, clients and most importantly, our children and the future of our planet.Please stay come back often for even more ideas or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed, or ATOM feed and these ideas will be delivered right to you're desktop.Richard Allan Marti Jr.

KBIS Las Vegas 2007

Notes on our Trip to KBIS ( Kitchen and Bath Industry Show) May, 2007

What a Trip! From the accomodations to the food, entertainment, atmoshpere, and of course the KBIS show, everyting was top notch. Watch for more news, pictures and reviews to come.

Richard Allan Marti Jr.