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August 21, 2008
Your roof is only as good as the original invoice...
...or at least that's what we learned this month. Our new home was built in 1992 and the roof shingles failed, leaving trails of asphalt in their path (or in our gutters, as case may be). In replacing it, we were informed that we needed to provide the original contractor's invoice to submit a claim to the manufacturer. Of course, we don't have one.
But the shingles are a 30 year shingle. Simple math says 2008 - 1992 = 16 years. Why do we need an invoice to show that we purchased these shingles (clearly labeled Certainteed, with, I believe, the offending batch number imprinted on every shingle) less than 30 years ago if, in worst case scenario, these shingles were installed when the home was built? Which is probably not the case, considering that the previous owners did a significant addition to the house and seem to have reroofed (likely to upgrade the fire rating of the shingle, since we live in wild fire country).
I rant about this here, because the veritable green-ness of a company, in my opinion, also extends to the protection and simplified process they offer to their customers to support the durability and life of their product. If I can't remediate a quality problem easily as a homeowner - why bother with the company a second time around?
Perhaps someone from Certainteed will read this and provide me with some wisdom.
Posted by Stacy Hunt at 1:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 12, 2008
The elephant in the unfinished basement
Lately a new philosophy on green building has started to emerge, and it is one that many people recognize as practical, but not popular. It boils down to this: no new construction.
With housing starts in a slump, developable land getting scarce, and the whole country holding their breath to see just how high energy prices will rise, the deck is already stacked against new construction. Adding a philosophical buzz kill won't break the camels back, but it won't help either.
Here's the argument.
If we believe that climate instability is a result of our greenhouse gas emissions, and we also recognize that consumerism is mostly to blame for our expanding carbon footprint, then conservation must be a priority. Conservation is an easy concept to sell (and swallow) if it means swapping out light bulbs or turning down the thermostat. Let's face it, the most effective selling point of going green is that it can save you money.
But conservation also means making due with what you have, or sometimes, doing without.
To get the full benefits of a conservation-minded society we have to examine and understand the difference between wants and needs. We may want to build a new home, but do we need to build a new home. Can we retrofit our current home to suit our needs? Can we step into an existing home that would satisfy our requirements? Are we seeking emotional gains (like the desire for "new") by building a new house over more practical gains like needing more space for a growing family (which could be met with buying an existing home)?
If we are honest with ourselves, these are easy questions to answer, but tough to live with.
It comes down to the tried and true mantra, "reduce, reuse, and recycle".
The end of new construction isn't a very popular notion for home builders, home buyers, and developers, but history shows us that time and again when resources get tight consumer's choices have to change. For instance, I'd love to homestead in Colorado, but that opportunity in our nation's history came and went. Living without a speed limit (as we did until recently here in Montana) was a thrill, but in the end it proved to be impractical, wasteful and flat out dangerous.
Personally I believe we can strike a balance between new home construction and conservation, but considering how much farm land is eaten up each year by new home developments, the inflated size of most new homes, and the general lack of energy saving technologies put into them, I tend to think that the pendulum is still swinging on the non-sustainable side.
Posted by Andrew Hunt at 10:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 7, 2008
Mobile Home Youth: Part II
Remodeling with a green eye is the greatest impact we can have to reduce our carbon footprint and lower our energy use. But without a healthy dose of building science, even the most basic projects can go horribly awry.
In my last blog I shared with you a few of the challenges of my mobile home youth. But that is only part of the story. What started as a single-wide mobile home in 1973, morphed into a multi-level, fully-insulated, ranch-style home complete with cement foundation and wrap-around porch. The lessons learned during the remodeling projects taught me a great deal about the importance of incorporating building science into even the smallest jobs.
Over the 18 years we lived in the mobile home, my dad designed and built no less than eight additions to our home. The first few were modest, moving the tip-out from the side of the structure to the end to create a larger master bed room. The next was knocking out a wall here and there to create more open space. But after a few years he became more adventurous and before long the projects had doubled the original square footage of the home.
During each project my dad had one goal - increase the comfort of the home without increasing the energy bill. This meant we had to be innovative and conservative on a very limited budget. His designs favored centralized living spaces to reduce demand on the heating system (bedroom doors faced the wood stove), extensive use of recycling materials (I spent hours pulling nails and scraping dried cement off former forms that would become studs), and low-impact construction (don't trample the flower beds!)
Today it would be considered "green", back then we called it common sense.
Unfortunately, common sense and building science don't always see eye to eye.
A few months after putting a new roof on the house we discovered pink streams of water soaking and staining the new ceiling and pooling on the new carpet below. The culprit was condensation because of a poor venting strategy in the rafters.
Common sense suggested that trapping the warm air in the attic space was akin to wearing a wool hat. Building science suggests that warm moist air coming in contact with a cold roof will stain your carpets insulation pink.
These sorts of frustrations hounded us during our many remodeling projects.
Today with the access to the Web, I would like to think that the errors we made could be avoided, but I'm not so sure. When folks can't afford to hire a contractor to do most of the work on a remodeling project, or decide not too, the quality of the job will ultimately depend on their knowledge of better building practices.
That's a tall order.
Getting the information into the hands of the home improvement crowd before they start swinging hammers is critical. Folks like Ed Del Grande are certainly a good start, but is it enough?
Though we often focus on new construction here at the Green Team, I think helping the do-it-yourself home enthusiast make their projects more durable, sustainable, and energy efficient is a must if we are serious about getting better building practices mainstream.
What do you think?
Posted by Andrew Hunt at 12:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
