Common Sense, Energy Efficient, Green Building
August 20, 2009
Builder Bob Sounds Off
I haven’t blogged in a year. I had no desire or purpose. I used to sporadically blog, but I couldn’t determine what it was I was trying to accomplish. I am considered by virtue of age and experience, some type of expert regarding “Green Building.” I was, have been and continue to be inundated by people and organizations wanting information on home testing, weatherization, Energy Star, LEEDs, LEEDs for Homes, EarthCraft Homes, BPI, NAHB, Solar, SIPS, and the list goes on and on. There is so much information, much of it redundant and of no value in real applications. Literally one could make a full time job just keeping up, which isn’t the purpose, the purpose is to get the practical, cost effective technology into buildings. For me something had to change. I had to get my mind wrapped around what is really happening and where I fit.
I get extremely irritated by all this recent jump on the Green building, it your duty to save-the-planet bandwagon. I am real tired of all the “Do this and Do that,” promising all kinds of savings and immediate rewards—with no substance to back it up and no one tracking what really has occurred. I am exasperated by the guilt laid on people for not incorporating all the latest technology into their buildings without regard to budgets and payback times of the application of a system. Or designers and architects who want to create impractical monuments to “Star Wars Concepts,” before perfecting a non-leaky thermal envelope. Sure everyone likes the glamour of solar or geo-thermal, but they may be step 12 in a 14 step process. A Payback in 80 years may be good for the planet, but it isn’t reality. When something is to costly to make sense, it doesn’t get applied!
Green is being hawked from every street corner, the web is inundated with it and before long people are going to reject major portions of it because the results don’t match the promises. Or the current stigma surrounding Green, that it is too expensive, will win the day. Many advocates have lost sight of the goal or object. I am reminded of my high school basketball coach asking us what the object of the game was? He got answers ranging from playing defense, to learn how to dribble, to learn how to shoot. Finally he asked a noted gunner(a derogatory comment from one who some people think shoots too much)me, and I said: “To score points by putting the ball in the basket.” He was ecstatic. That was the object of the game, to put the ball in the basket. On offense things are designed to make it possible to get the ball in the basket and the defense is designed to stop the ball from being put in the basket.
So what is the objective of Green Building? or is it “High Performance Building?” or is it “Sustainable Building?” or is it “Energy Efficient Building?” If I have confusion over all these names, imagine a builder, developer, municipality, government organization, non-profit or home-owner’s confusion in just getting by the name. How do potential implementers of Green Building swim their way through this over-whelming amount of information and decide what it is they are trying to do and how to do it?
The object is to get Green Buildings built. Only by getting Green Buildings built do we learn, progress and move towards winning the battle. The better people get at building Green Buildings, the more cost effective and practical they become. Pretty soon they become common place and no one thinks of building anything else.
We are not going to save the planet in a day or discover a cost affordable alternative energy source this week. It has taken us decades to get in the precarious position we are in and it will take decades to get out of it. That means we have to crawl, then walk, then run. You do this by getting people to buy into the concept by showing them the practicality and cost effectiveness of applying Green–not the pie-in-the-sky, Utopian concepts, but the real deals.
I believe today, with what we know, that we have run out of excuses for not applying cost effective, green, energy efficiency systems to all new construction. I also believe these systems should be incorporated, after cost evaluations, into the renovation of existing buildings, when it is time to do so. I don’t believe you should arbitrarily do an energy or green retrofit just to do it, without substantiated financial reasoning.
I have discovered my purpose and it is to be the trumpeter of what I call: ”Cost Effective, Common Sense, Energy Efficient, Green Building.” CECSEE-Green.
My objective is to get Green Buildings built and they don’t have to be state of the art BMW’s, but can be reliable, efficient Volkswagen Beetles at this juncture.
As a consequence of this exercise I have answered my own question of “What do I bring to the table?” And why would anyone want to read my opinions or utilize my expertise? Because I deliver the message of common sense and practical applications. That is the objective of Zia Energy’s Web Site and Builder Bob’s Blog. To bring common sense and cost effectiveness to Green Building. To paraphrase my old coach, my objective is to get it built.
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