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Thursday, November 15, 2007
Paints, Low-VOC: An Excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s “Green Building A to Z”
In 2006 I moved into a home that needed repainting. Since my wife is a “miner’s canary,” in terms of her sensitivity to all chemical emissions, we went in search of paint that wouldn’t leave a strong odor. After some looking, we found an “ecological” paint from a major manufacturer with only 3 grams per liter of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), versus 127 grams per liter for their conventional paint. Thinking that would be just fine, we added the color we wanted and took it home. Guess what? The color added so many volatile solvents that the paint still bothered my wife significantly.
Fortunately there are options for buying low-VOC natural paints. In a city with an ecologically focused home-improvement store, you can get expert consultation on low-VOC paints. One unique approach to paint selection is at the Ecohome Improvement store in Berkeley, California. There, you can sit around a “paint bar” and a knowledgeable “paint tender” will show you the choices.
Another approach is to choose an entirely new way to make paint. Green Planet Paints is headed by Meredith Aronson, an entrepreneur in southern Arizona with a Ph.D. in chemistry. She is beginning to hit the market with paints made from clay, marble, mineral pigments and a soy based resin that makes the surfaces washable, all based on ancient Mayan techniques and ingredients. These paints have no VOCs at all. Of her more natural paints, Aronson says, “The environmental footprint of even ‘zero-VOC’ paint can include all kinds of synthetic materials to control flow, skinning, settling, etc. that ultimately don’t support a vision of sustainability and goodness for the environment.”
In larger commercial settings, there are of course many options, and the LEED system has very defined rules for limiting VOCs in paints and coatings below threshold levels. These limits, 50 grams per liter for fiat and 150 grams per liter for non-fiat interior paints, are set by the Green Seal standard, GS-11.111 They are still a far cry, however, from “zero-VOC” paints that must contain no more than 5 grams per liter.
Click here to download the PDF version.
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Thursday, November 01, 2007
Incentives: An Excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s “Green Building A to Z”
Given a choice, most people prefer the carrot to the stick; at this point in the development of green building methods, techniques and technologies, incentive systems seem a better approach than mandates. Incentives allow the private sector to experiment with a vast array of methods for achieving various levels of energy-efficiency and LEED certification. By combining all of a building’s environmental attributes into a point system, LEED makes it easy to trade off among various components of a building while still achieving a specified result such as Silver, Gold or Platinum. However, green building advocates and local and state government leaders are not going to wait around for the private sector to construct high-performance buildings. By 2010, if not sooner, we are going to see incentives coupled with mandates, as green buildings and green homes move into the mainstream. The issues of combating climate change are too urgent and too political to wait a generation for the private sector to start constructing and operating buildings in a sustainable manner. But for now, incentives are the preferred method for accelerating the growth of green buildings.
Click here to download the PDF version.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Green Building Consultant pens book on sustainability for developers
From Jan Buchholz’ Phoenix Business Journal review of Green Building A to Z: For people who don’t know the meaning of zero-net-energy buildings, ecologic footprints or cradle-to-cradle design, a new book helps set the record straight about sustainability.
“Green build” consultant Jerry Yudelson is the author of “Green Building A to Z.” The owner of consulting firm Yudelson Associates in Tucson has become an international authority on green building, and he’s taking his message to the masses. “What’s been missing is an introductory piece for people who aren’t professional engineers and architects, but they want to know about green building,” he said.
The 222-page easy read is published by New Society Publishers. It’s available for $16.95 through most online booksellers, and will be in bookstores by November.
Although the material is presented in a simple format, Yudelson said, “It’s technical, it’s accurate, but it’s brief. It’s for people who don’t want a detailed treatise, but they don’t want a dumbed-down version, either.”
Ryc Loope, director of Arizona State University’s master’s degree program in real estate development, got an early peek at the softcover. He said the book will be an “invaluable” tool for developers and individuals who want to get into the green-build arena, but aren’t well versed yet. “Jerry is one of the more forward thinkers in this area,” Loope said. “He was a part of our sustainability discussion last year, and he’s back again this year.”
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Saturday, October 20, 2007
Portland Architecture blog reviews Green Building A to Z
Green Building A to Z With Jerry, from Brian Libby’s incredibly rich and diverse architecture blog, Portland Architecture:
Although he left Portland about a year ago for the more scorched pastures of Arizona, Jerry Yudelson was for many years a fixture in our city’s burgeoning green building movement, mostly for Interface Engineering. You don’t meet many people with training as an engineer and in marketing, but that is Jerry’s niche. He’s trained more than 3,000 people in the US Green Building Council’s LEED rating system and chaired the Greenbuild conference’s steering committee for four years.
Jerry seems to crank out books like other people finish the Monday crossword. His fifth and latest makes an ideal reference material for any architect, builder or green building enthusiast’s bookshelf. Published by New Society Publishers, It’s called Green Building A to Z: Understanding the Language of Green Building.
One thing that struck me as funny in the book, but in a good way, is the mixture of technical terms, philosophical ones, and the more casual. For example, there are entries for brownfields, biophilia, biodiesel, certified wood, displacement ventilation, hybrid technology, and so on. But there are also these entries: ‘cool roofs’, ‘question authority’, ‘paradigm shift’, and my personal favorite, ‘Unbridled Enthusiasm!’ I say this not to tease Jerry, but just to point out the readable nature of his book. Which is helpful, because it would be very easy for a book like this to get overly technical…and gather dust.
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