It was a treat to see Michelle Kaufmann’s new green prefabricated cottage, the mkLotus, at West Coast Green last week. Kauffman, a Bay Area architect, is a leader in designing beautiful, functional, healthy homes that can be built in a factory and brought to your site on a flat-bed truck or two. Set up and…
I love the idea of using recycled water jugs to make nearly indestructible outdoor rugs. I have a polypropylene rug on my deck that looks like it’s made of natural fibers and adds a cozy feeling. And if it gets wet or the sun shines on it, so what? The very thing that makes plastic…
An article by Elizabeth Douglass in today’s L.A. Times says buyers are seeking out solar-powered homes and solar industry officials say growth is going through the roof. And it makes sense that when the housing economy is shaky homeowners are looking for stability. What could be more stable than the certainty that the sun is…
I attend a lot of building conferences, among them the Pacific Coast Builders Conference (next June in San Francisco), the Remodeling Show (Oct. 9-12 in Las Vegas) and the granddaddy of them all, the International Builders’ Show (next February in Orlando). None of them is like West Coast Green, which took place last week in…
Looking for a green-building expert to help you with your home or remodel? The Build It Green program offers a certification program for building professionals who want to show their proficiency in creating buildings that are more healthy, energy-efficient, resource-efficient, comfortable and durable that conventional homes and buildings. To become a Certified Green Building Professional,…
Having grown up in a construction family, I’m always pretty quick to defend the livelihoods of carpenters, masons, plasterers, plumbers and electricians who are out there building homes and remodels, working hard to make a living. So I kind of cringe at the idea of building prefabricated homes and additions in factories. Now, these are…
With the slogan "Build Smart, Live Well," the West Coast Green building conference is being held right now in San Francisco. The city is crawling with green-minded architects, engineers, contractors and others. This show introduces the mkLotus modular home (pictured here), designed by Michelle Kaufmann (architect of the Sunset Breezehouse) and built by XtremeHomes. The…
A one-hour webinar titled "The Advance of the Solar PPA: When an Organization Is Ready for a Power Purchase Agreement" will be held by Greentech Media on Wednesday, Sept. 19, at 9 a.m. (12 noon Eastern time). The webinar is geared mostly to businesses that want to add solar to their buildings, but Brady Murray…
Got wind? I love the idea of harnessing that clean power. But when I found out that many wind farms are set in the paths of migratory birds and that the turbines kill scores of birds annually, well, my support of the technology dried up. Plus, those giant windmills are pretty much a nonstarter for…
Until recently, I could barely tolerate the arrogance of young people like my vegan stepdaughter Sarah (pictured here), whose haughty self-righteousness set me on a slow burn. You punk, I would think as she peered into my salad bowl to challenge my choices of dairy and non-organic produce. I was vegetarian long before her and…