Posts Tagged ‘San Francisco’
Friday, October 1st, 2010
Lot's of good natural light in the solar house
On the first day of West Coast Green 10, only a handful of bloggers (like Zem Joaquin of Ecofabulous) showed up for an informal solar talk presented by SunPower and Luminalt but as they say, we respect the quality more than the quantity. We quality people brought about a spirited talk mentioning the progress of solar and how solar fits just a small green option in the big picture. We raised the question of considering that if someone who has only $50,000 in their pocket would they be better off installing a PV system or maybe a water catchment system, hydronics, some new eco-star appliances.
To be fair, Luminalt made a good case for just making a sales pitch. They work with GoSolarSF, which combines environmental justice and social justice for lower income neighborhoods like the Bayview here in SF. They made a point, which we have seen before, that be having a solar system that reduces their PG & E bill to sometimes nothing can transform the life of someone.
Now part of the discussion ended up being a show and tell of one of the local installation. Of course we would have preferred to see one of the homes in the Bayview but we settled for a posh house in Presidio Terrace. Honestly, the people who opened their house to us do live a mansion and the PG & E bill to them will hardly make a difference but they continue to make a conscious green effort. Besides the 3 7.5 KW solar system they repurposed much of their old furnishings to Building Resources (instead of the dump), they installed eco star appliances, used low VOC paint and drive hybrids. The couple mentioned that they will be purchasing fully electric cars soon.
Although not militantly green they do make an effort. We hope soon that we can say the same for everyone else.
Tags: Bayview, Building Resources, Green Building, low_voc_paints, photovoltaic_panels, Presidio Terrace, San Francisco, Solar, West Coast Green
Posted in Energy Efficiency, Events, Green Building, Materials, Resources, San Francisco | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010
Tour de Fat San Francisco 2010
Wanted to post for Eco Monday but had too much beer and biking over the recent weekend for us to stick to our schedule. Fortunately, the Tour de Fat stuck to its (or is it their) schedule.
In all honesty, a few of us made but we completely missed the festive ride but we did make it in time to celebrate the beer and bike happenings in Golden Gate Park. Let it be known that happiness reined not just because Mother Nature cooperated with a balmy 85 degrees and the cold New Belgium beer poured freely but because the stages where Mucca Pazza (like the Stanford marching band on acid or steroids) and other performed came via solar energy. The festival pretty much marks on off the grid show which makes the merriment even more merry.
On this day, bikes ruled. It might have seemed odd for some to see a young lady go up on stage an sign way the pink slip to her Toyota Corolla for for a spanking new bike courtesy of New Belgium. Some may think that isn’t a fair trade when the lady mentioned how she only drove her car in order to avoid parking tickets, we think that she may have gotten the better end of the deal.
If more festivals had this smarts to play off the grid and promoting sustainable transportation then we would all be happy to purchase just one more beer.
Photo courtesy SFbike
Tags: beer, bikes, new belgium, off the grid, San Francisco, Solar, Tour de Fat
Posted in Events, Lifestyle, San Francisco, Transportation | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
When people talked about locally grown or produced they usually mean within 200 miles or so. That’s normally about how far we expand our blog radius. The radius of where things come from marks not only the name of this French California inspired café and restaurant but also the philosophy behind Radius.
This SoMa based café and restaurant doesn’t just plaster the name up as a marketing gimmick but the owners stand behind their idea. Their food, wine and even the building elements that make up the interior generally comes from within 200 miles.
Most people will point to their Tamales Bay oysters, Ritual coffee, Pt. Reyes Blue – Cow Girl cheese and Anchor Steam beer but we find the repurposed church pews (from a San Jose church) used for table seating and the reused display cabinets deliciously appealing. The owners sourced practically all of the furniture, fixtures and equipment from other places. All of the reclaimed wood from the floors to the tables gives the café and restaurant an invitingly warm feel.
Radius maintains an advantage of its location. The restaurant can and does source wine from Napa and Sonoma, seafood from just up the coast and organic veggies from the plethora of farmers markets. But the trick would be to open a Radius in say Des Moines. Sure, keeping within the radius to manage the Green building element would be doable but sourcing a food and drinks menu such as the one here in SoMa would present a sizable challenge. Hopefully, others will be inspired by the Radius philosophy and rise to the challenge of making things work from a local scale rather than from a globalized, generic world view.
Tags: cafe, Cowgirl Cheese, Green Building, Radius, restaurant, Ritual Coffee, San Francisco, SoMa
Posted in Eco-Entreprenuers, Food, Green Building, San Francisco | No Comments »
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
Even though West Coast Green remains just a shade over a month away, we’re still keyed up about the event. With the continuing housing storm and distressed housing situation, many people have not been considering sustainable aspects to real estate.
We’re sure that will change. It may take a few years to re-convince people that Green building and innovation are not just for the good real estate times. Green building should be a staple and not just a temporary fad.
As for the show, we can’t wait to see sustainable rock stars like Bill McDonough of Cradle-to-Cradle fame who will deliver a 3-hour presentation about the tradition of Buckminster Fuller. Also, on our must see list will be the Innovation Pipeline which creates an “Exploratorium-like” exhibit with smart products that always to seem to wow us.
Don’t think that we won’t be looking out for any “greenwashers” as some companies seem to only promote the hype but provide nothing sustainable in the tank.
Tags: cradle_to_cradle, Exploritorium, Green Building, San Francisco, West Coast Green, William McDonough
Posted in Eco-Entreprenuers, Events, Green Building, Interesting ideas, San Francisco | No Comments »
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
San Francisco Mint
For some builders and architects the challenge to even consider building Green from scratch remains daunting and monetarily off the radar but taking a structure like San Francisco’s Old U.S. Mint built in the 19th century and transforming it into a 21st century Green mixed-use cultural center would be even more challenging. San Francisco new goal is to create the most sustainability innovative National Historic Landmark in the United States. Like they say is Swingers, “That is so money.”
Back in the day, the US Mint used to print the green stuff now it will encompass Green thinking.
Some of the ideas that the building will incorporate include:
Natural Daylight – The redesign will include an alteration to the ground floor, which will allow daylight to reach the ground floor.
Natural Ventilation – Currently sealed windows will be redesigned to create natural ventilation.
Water Use – A new canopy drainage system will allow rainwater to be harvested, treated and stored for uses throughout the building. The water, among other benefits, will be used to feed vegetation on the roof.
Now if we can do something about the Bank Of Italy building.
Photo by Mike Hofmann
Tags: Bank of Italy building, Green Building, Old U.S. Mint, San Francisco, sustainability, Swingers, Water
Posted in Green Building, San Francisco, Water, money | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Plastiki arrival in Sydney
It seemed like just a short while ago that David De Rothschild set sail from San Francisco aboard his boat made of 12,500 plastic PET bottles, the Plastiki touched base in the planned destination of Sydney the other day.
De Rothschild and his crew completed the historic expedition in four legs: San Francisco – Kiribati – Western Samoa – New Caledonia before reaching the Australian Coast (Mooloolaba) on Monday 19 July and continuing on to Sydney. The innovative catamaran carrying a crew of six made its trip without major incident.
De Rothschild’s inspiration for this journey came after reading the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) report ‘Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas’. His journey included sailing through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
While most cruise ships maintain poor to awful records of creating pollution the Plastiki set out to educate people about the use and misuse of plastic bottles. The Plastiki which uses core principles of “cradle-to-cradle” design and biomimicry receives 68% of her buoyancy from 12,500 reclaimed plastic soft drink bottles and the super structure is made of a unique recyclable plastic material made from a self-reinforcing PET called Seretex.
Hopefully more people will put down their two liter plastic soda bottles to realize how much plastic we overuse in our throwaway society and how we can move toward inspired ideas as a sustainable alternative.
Tags: David, David de Rothschild, Environment, Plastic, Plastiki, San Francisco, sustainability
Posted in Environment, Interesting ideas, Plastic, San Francisco, Transportation | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Exhibit Hall Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2010
While wondering the exhibit hall of Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2010 style at the Pre-Conference Day, amongst all of the technology we figured that no one would go out of there way to promote Green but then we spied some of the “go paperless” inspired companies. In the race to go paperless, a few innovative companies have stepped up to create a paperless universe (at least in terms of contracts).
In the real estate world, agents often use ridiculous amounts of paper in which to disclose, offer and negotiate which in old school terms means that many trees get the saw for that counter offer. We passed the DocuSign booth and discussed with the folks the Green benefits of using their technology, which allows people to sign contracts with an electronic signature. No more printing contracts. Just sign on-line. We can see the sustainable value in an item that eliminates paper use and general waste. But we discussed how much energy it takes to run the servers that run the DocuSign program. It would take a third party study to determine the paper, ink, transport carbon footprint savings versus the energy used to run something like DocuSign.
We brought this conundrum to another paperless company that not surprisingly goes by the name Go Paperless. Similar to DocuSign this technology allows people to sign and mark up documents using a stylus and tablet PC. Again, saving paper versus using more energy.
We all know that the cost of people runs high in terms of its impact with deforestation, transportation, recycling, shredding, printing, etc. so even at the cost of added energy use, companies that reduce (one of the three Rs) paper consumption can only improve things. We just hope that these companies use this Green philosophy inside their corporate offices as well.
Tags: Docu Sign, Go Paperless, Green philosophy, Inman Connect, paper, Real Estate, San Francisco, three Rs
Posted in Business, Events, Materials, San Francisco, Technology | No Comments »
Monday, June 28th, 2010
BP Oil Spill Poster Art
During this past weekend, while practically everyone in San Francisco roamed the streets, we spotted some timely art. No it didn’t have anything to do with Pride Week or the upcoming 4th of July festivities. Instead, these posters cleverly highlighted the disastrous BP oil spill while taking a shots and the often-ridiculous alcohol advertising.
These posters plastered in the Castro district not only make people think about the continuing devastation in the Gulf of Mexico but to what vodka you might be drinking.
Choose your oil and vodka responsibly.
Tags: BP, Castro, Gulf of Mexico, oil, oil spill, San Francisco, vodka
Posted in Business, Energy & Fuel, Environment, San Francisco | 2 Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
We thought that the whole college system was broke, so where the heck will the get the green to build this sustainability built joint use building on the rapidly improving CCSF campus? Maybe they will have giant vegan cookie sale over the next few years.
It’s not that we aren’t ecstatic to see the campus using sustainable deign practices be having architect Peter Pfau shoot for a LEED Platinum rating. Some of the sustainable elements will include natural ventilation, a green roof, radiant flooring, a geothermal central plant, abundant daylight, durable and easy to maintain materials, well designed shading for west-facing façade, and post consumer/green materials. Notice the lack of big-ticket items? Just because a building shoots for a LEED Platinum rating doesn’t mean that the budget needs to unsustainable.
When the new three story facility opens we’re sure that the students and facility will be give the building high marks for indoor air quality and the overall healthy study conditions. It makes us want to go back to school.
Tags: Green Building, green roof, LEED, LEED-NC, natual ventilation, radiant flooring, San Francisco, San Francisco City College, sustainability
Posted in Green Building, Programs and Standards, San Francisco, Technology, health | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
With the downturn in overall new building, more sustainable efforts have seemingly fallen by the wayside. We’re glad to see that some projects have not totally disappeared. On June 26, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will cut the ribbon on San Francisco’s new Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, which will mark the first green-certified hospital in California.
Especially with energy still on everyone’s radar, the new technology in the hospital’s three new buildings will focus on energy and water savings. The buildings will use 30% less energy than statutory requirements, have Energy Star rated roofs which keep the buildings cooler on hot days and reduce energy use, and they have “closed-loop” air conditioning systems, meaning the system uses water for cooling is reused rather than wasted. Although do they really need AC in San Francisco?
Because this is a hospital, designers and builders people actually gave a nod to indoor air quality with use of low or zero VOC paints, wood, glues, and flooring materials in the new buildings. Reducing the highly toxic VOC’s, and other indoor air contaminants will only improve indoor health for Laguna Honda residents and staff.
With this green thinking, finally hospitals will start to realize that hospital recovery not only comes with injecting various medicines into patients but giving them a place that offers a healthier environment as well.
Image courtesy JKL
Tags: Energy S, energy star, Green Building, health, Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, low_voc_paints, Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco, Water
Posted in Energy Efficiency, Green Building, San Francisco, Technology, Water, health | No Comments »