[Greenbuilding] That Natural Feeling

[Gennaro Brooks-Church]

Hello,
The Zero Brownstone concept where you buy no new materials does not
mean you don't use materials. It just means you don't engage the
market to go out and produce new materials specifically for your job.
Usually the materials I use are salvaged. But sometimes they are brand
new and simply overstock from another person's job. I often salvage
brand new materials from dumpsters because the contractor thinks it is
cheaper to pay for the dumpster than pay to store the stuff.

I use massive amounts of wood, insulation, brick, concrete, sheet
rock, stone, marble, cinder block, flooring, doors, joists, studs,
molding, treads, and tile.  But we have yet to buy any of those
materials new from the store.

Polyiso has huge embodied energy. But it has negative embodied energy
if you save it from going to the landfill and all the energy that
entails. The number one thing potential workers tell me when
interviewing with Eco Brooklyn is that they are sick of seeing so much
waste on the job site. Ironically the most wasteful job sites are my
best dumpster finds. This is NYC. People gut entire kitchens because
they had a bad hair day.

Gennaro Brooks-Church

Cell: 1 347 244 3016 USA
www.EcoBrooklyn.com
22 2nd St; Brooklyn, NY 11231




On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Frank Cetera
<alchemicalfranklen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Love your website and your work philosophy Gennaro.  The earthen floor photo
> essay was interesting, as I am planning on putting in an earthen floor in
> the kitchen of a home I am renovating this coming summer.
>
> I wanted to ask for further examples of how you plan on counteracting the
> need for new building materials when you do your work as you say one of your
> goals is zero new materials.
>
> How for instance would you insulate an attic?  Or fulfill modern codes
> relating to foundation work or electrical work?  Or is the zero new
> materials idea more of an ideal than a reality?
>
> ~ Frank Cetera
> www.alchemicalnursery.org
>
>
>> Message: 8
>> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 18:30:14 -0500
>> From: Gennaro Brooks-Church <info at ecobrooklyn.com>
>> To: Green Building <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] That Natural Feeling
>> Message-ID:
>>        <AANLkTik5z+Lmcp2GSVgTFU7vx-u3-GNcO5P3Jbfq_+=m at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> This list, like most of the world, is roughly separated along two
>> lines, those forward looking techies who value science and those
>> backward looking naturalists who value tradition.
>> In one camp you have the number crunching BTU types and in the other
>> camp you have the adobe plaster types.
>> I lean on the naturalist side. I figure if it worked for 2000 years
>> for a civilization then it is worth looking into. I am suspect of the
>> techies who use wunder science to try to support an unsupportable
>> lifestyle. For example, if every person on the planet built along PH
>> standards we would die off immediately. PH standards are for rich
>> Western construction and relies heavily on cheap materials from poor
>> underdeveloped countries, who by the way consume a LOT less energy per
>> household per year than PH requirements.
>>
>> However, if every rich Western country built along PH standards we
>> would be WAY ahead of the game and it would be a HUGE improvement over
>> our current wasteful building. But it doesn't solve the issue for the
>> rest of the "developing world" (in parenthesis since that term implies
>> they are less evolved than us superior and more developed countries -
>> irony).
>>
>> So for me the solution is to use PH for the time being as an
>> improvement to current western building. Just like LEED is an
>> improvement in some areas. But neither are valid long term solutions.
>>
>> In answer to Corwyn, my personal metric is the self invented Zero
>> Brownstone Technique, which could be tweaked to any area but in my
>> case is very specific to North Western townhouse construction. There
>> is more on my site but is basically is zero waster during
>> deconstruction, zero new materials during construction, and zero
>> energy use in the final home. It is our goal. Right now the "right
>> amount" of insulation based on this metric for a brownstone is about 6
>> inches of polyiso, which by the way is a little more than what our PH
>> building calls for that we are doing. That was a nice confirmation
>> that my "hunch" was on the right track of the one of the best metrics
>> out there right now.
>>
>>
>> Gennaro Brooks-Church
>>
>> Cell: 1 347 244 3016 USA
>> www.EcoBrooklyn.com
>> 22 2nd St; Brooklyn, NY 11231
>>
>>
>
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