Building a green home is serious business. It’s complicated, it’s expensive, and the implications for getting it wrong are tremendous. It may be a good idea to get some help figuring all this stuff out; then again, it may not be necessary if: You are an experienced green builder. 2....
Category: Steve Farrell
Wordy Words and the Wordy Nerds Who Use Them
Steve Farrell
BY WNC GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL SEPTEMBER 4, 2014 A tourist out west once asked the some times Park Ranger and full-time author Edward Abbey what a particular plant was. Abbey became an accidental poet when he replied, “What it is, no one knows, but what it’s called is a Desert...
Lessons Learned (part 2)
Postings
Last post was about what I'd do differently after building my soon to be net zero house in Asheville; faithful readers will recall a fairly long list. Fortunately, the things that went well is pretty long too. Here goes: Site: Finding a property close to town was certainly a good...
The Sage of Septic Systems
Steve Farrell
Some years ago I had a house with a septic system. While I would have preferred either a city sewer and/or a composting toilet a septic system was the only viable option. Maybe we can discuss the barbarity of soiling clean water in a future post. The care and feeding...
Green Building and Beer
Steve Farrell
As I write this it is bitter cold out with the by now customary 1/4" of stingy snow on the roads. Not bad enough to stay home but bad enough to enable one to wrap a car around a tree. Times like this make one long for the warm breezes...
The Red List
Steve Farrell
We had a great turnout last month for our introduction to the Living Building Challenge (LBC). For those of you in attendance (and WNCGBC members) watch your inbox for more LBC Collaborative meetings coming up. One LBC subject that garnered a lot of interest was the LBC's imperative that no...
Good News, Bad News, and the Living Building Challenge
Steve Farrell
Since Emily and I are presenting at this weeks GreenDrinks (5:30 Wednesday at the Green Sage y'all) I thought I'd flesh out the format of our presentation here. There's a great abundance of bad news and a smattering of countering good news. First the bad news. Twenty plus years of...
The importance of the Living Building Challenge
Steve Farrell
I’m writing to introduce The Living Building Challenge (LBC). This collaborative’s mission is to encourage the creation of Living Buildings, Landscapes and Neighborhoods around the world while inspiring, educating and motivating a global audience about the need for fundamental and transformative change. The Cascadia Region Green Building Council (CRGBC)—the Pacific...
Life on the Farm
Steve Farrell
Life on the Farm My great grandmother lived to be 103 years old. She was born, lived and worked, and died on the family farm in Hildebran, North Carolina.The farm was so far from town that the postman had to pack a lunch when he rode his mule from Hickory...
The Role of Precast Foundations in Green Residential Building
Steve Farrell
Premise; as essential elements of sound building practice, foundations are expensive in time, money, and are carbon intensive. Further, foundations require a considerable sum of human capital or brain-space, to execute. For such an important element of construction practice, foundations get scant attention. For me the foundation is the hard...