How tiny is too tiny?

To begin to answer that question, check out these links:

• Micro Compact Home


• Micro Mini Home


• Would you live in a micro home?

A house with no furnace

An environmental lawyer and a partner at a design firm are building a house that will require no active energy inputs — no oil, gas, or electric heating. In chilly Massachusetts, it will rely exclusively on insulation and architectural design. Check out the details, with video and slide show, at the New York Times’ report.

Farmers markets for friend and faux

Local farm markets are eco-friendly on several fronts. They generally use less pesticide, so they are less polluting. They bring food to consumers over tens or hundred of miles, not thousands — that decreases the carbon impact of shipping produce from other states and continents. Indie farmers are more likely to grow heirloom varieties, not monocultures bred for transport and consistency of appearance over taste — that increases biodiversity and resistance to plant disease.

More to the point, customer awareness of these issues is rising, and consumer demand for organic produce is on the rise. So, attracted to the higher prices that organics can now demand, farmers' markets are on the upswing. And so are con artists hoping to cash in on the trend.

NBC News' LA team took a look at farmers markets recently, and found that some farm market vendors are buying wholesale non-organic produce and reselling it as "organic." In some cases, the "farm" in question were just fields of weeds. NBC offered three tips for identifying true farmers at your local market:

• Try to get to know a few vendors really well. Ask where their farm is located, how long they've been farming, how they handle pest and disease issues. See if they're listed on sites like LocalHarvest -- not all farmers are, but it doesn't hurt to check. Ask them the specific variety of whatever produce they're selling. If they really grew it, they should be able to tell you that those are 'Emerite' filet beans, not just "green beans."
• Look over the display. Really look. This is a great tip from Homegrown Evolution. Are all of the tomatoes the exact same shape and size? Do the apples have that waxy supermarket look? Are the cucumbers all perfectly uniform? Are they selling "local" watermelon in Detroit during the first week of May? If so, they probably went to the warehouse club and bought produce to sell at a premium at the farmer's market. Steer clear.
• Know what's in season! If you see watermelon in April or peppers in December in Minnesota or Michigan, chances are good that they have not been grown locally. While some farmers have large heated greenhouses to grow produce year-round, not all do, and it pays to ask questions if the vendor is displaying a lot of out-of-season produce.

And here's another sign that there's a buck to be made selling faux organic produce: Supermarkets are setting up "Farmers Markets" in their parking lots!

You know that LED products have arrived ...

... when spammers put adverts for LED lanterns in your in-box!

LED lantern e-mail spam. (click to enlarge)

More media attention for new LED bulbs

Now that LED bulbs are coming on the market at something like reasonable prices, as I posted last month, everyone is jumping on the trend. A New York Times article, To Go Where Compact Fluorescents Cannot, reports that both general purpose and specialty bulbs are coming to Home Depot.

But by the end of this month, the 2,200 Home Depot stores around the United States will stock seven types, including two substitutes for the classic incandescent bulb.

And on cnet’s Green Tech blog, Martin LaMonica is ready to try something new. “I more or less ditched incandescent bulbs for more-efficient compact fluorescents in my house years ago,” he writes. “But at this point, I'm awfully close to ditching CFLs for the latest in lighting technology: LEDs.” LaMonica goes on to say that the biggest problem in LEDs — they heretofore only offered illumination in one direction — has been just about solved:

In the past year, though, lighting manufacturers have introduced LED bulbs in a shape Edison would recognize that put out a decent amount of good-quality light. They still don't give off light from all sides as incumbent technologies do, but this latest generation of LEDs does a better job dispersing light, which means that you could use one (or a few) for overhead lighting.

With Home Depot stocking these bulbs now, soon they’ll be in stores everywhere.

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Sept. 30 Update: On ZD Net, a columnist notes that these new LED bulbs are now available in Home Depot at an under $20 retail price.

The locavore trend, reductio ad absurdum edition

It may be the ultimate in vertical green retailing: a grocery store that grows its own produce on site. That's the idea behind a Danish proposal, reported in Discovery News:

The do-it-yourself grocery store concept called Agropolis combines hydroponic, aeroponic and aquaponic farming to grow vegetables without soil ... Shoppers will come in and see all the produce growing on-site and point to what they want. Nutrients from fish in aquaculture tanks goes to feed the plants, and the whole place becomes an ecosystem.

And you can eat the food where it is grown, at a restaurant at the store — talk about a start-to-finish concept!

Denim: the last straw in insulation

I've blogged before about using straw as insulation, and straw construction is still in the news. But Habitat for Humanity is putting an even more unusual organic fiber to use in new houses: denim. The charitable organization has been recruiting college kids in drives to collect used jeans -- for example, in West Virginia, South Dakota, and Kentucky (see photo) -- which are then recycled into insulation. Check out this article on the program in Agweek, and the campaign's official site. And, surprise surprise, the denim drive is co-sponsored by the Cotton Inc. people: good press for cotton companies, and warm houses for the poor. The denim is made into insulation by Bonded Logic.

Dollars from dachniks?

With housing starts still in the tank, maybe builders should set their sights a little lower ... at the market in dachas, small country homes, and cabins. If anyone has some disposable income in this economy, it may be the dachniks. You can take your inspiration from this survey of five modern cabins from Dwell.

Sustainability in the home

Mainstream attitudes toward sustainability -- especially in everyday living -- are getting greener and greener. Take this essay on Sustainability in the home. And as consumers look for eco-friendly solutions, retailers should not dismiss the opportunity of offering shoppers the products and services that let them do so economically and easily.

Energy on a hot solar roof

From Inhabitat, there's news of a new solar panel product built into roofing shingles.

Flexible rooftop solar panels - called building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPVs - could replace today's boxy solar panels ... The flexible solar shingles would be less expensive to install than current panels and made to last 25 years.

Pros and cons of greener waste systems

As an alternative to traditional septic tanks, new alternative septic systems offer green advantages:

Alternative systems add a step to the filtration process with materials like sand, peat moss, sponges, or textiles; aerobic treatment units, which use compressed air to break down organic matter; and other technologies that result in cleaner discharge, or effluent, being dispersed on the drain field. The result is less pollution leaching into the groundwater.

But they can be mixed blessings.

The problem is that these new systems are often quirky, demanding frequent inspections and maintenance to avoid leaching effluence into groundwater, which is typically the source of drinking water in these rural areas.

Here's a good article that offers many more details.

A tree grows in Brooklyn ... and in Harlem, and in Times Square

Even though the news is mostly bleak in the retail environment -- heck, through the entire monetary ecosystem -- it is heartening to see some sparks of encouraging life at home here in New York City

Here's a little neighborhood shop just opened to cater to a green customer base in Brooklyn.

Here's a big multi-family housing and retail project going up in Harlem -- to be LEED Silver certified.

There's a push to power the giant billboards in Times Square with wind and solar energy.

And Inhabitat says the city has a plan to roll out super-efficient LED street lamps.

You go, Big Apple!

How will the recession hit the home channel?

Well, seems that we are officially in a recession -- and have been for about a year -- something that's not news to us in the home channel, from retail mom-and-pop hardware stores to large tract builders. But where do we go from here?

Leanne Tobias of GreenBiz.com thinks that the government can spend us out of the recession, and if the Feds are going shopping, might as well get them to buy green. I think that may be a help, sure, but compared to the billions and trillions of greenbacks being juggled and dropped all over Wall Street, I have to wonder if requiring the government to put Energy Star fridges and air conditioners in office buildings is really going to solve our problems.

Besides, what about housing?

If money is short and you always wanted to live in a hobbit-hole, there's a $5,000 option for you (photo, above right). This earth-sheltered house, designed by an artist in Wales, England, "was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature." All for about "1000-1500 man hours and £3000."

If you do not want to build-it-yourself, the optimism of the folks behind the $100K house is refreshing. This is an effort to create affordable green housing in urban Philadephia, and the brains behind the work, Nic Darling, sees reason to keep hope alive:

I may be crazy, overly optimistic or both, but I don’t think we are screwed. In fact, I think we are in one of the best positions possible at this time and place. The real estate market in Philly, while down, has remained fairly strong compared to the smoking craters that have replaced housing markets in many other parts of the country. It has been particularly good for houses selling under $300,000 and that is right in our wheelhouse. ... In addition, we have seen an increase in consumer knowledge regarding the real costs of home ownership. Maintenance, taxes and utilities have finally (we hope) become a part of a home buyer’s consideration. Rather than simply looking at the monthly payment, people are starting to consider the total expense of home ownership, and this bodes well for homes like ours. Our houses will require less maintenance, use half of the utilities (compared to a code built home) and offer a ten year tax abatement (can you say $75 a year in taxes?). They are simply less expensive homes to own. ... People also seem more and more willing to pay for green.

The 100K house may not be as elfin and fey as the 5K earth-sheltered house, but the former is LEED Platinum rated, and it features indoor plumbing and a bathroom, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.

But what about that recession? The conventional wisdom holds that luxury properties will still do well -- and my cousin, who sells and installs very high-end millwork in upstate New York, says he's doing okay. That seems to give anecdotal weight to what the conventionally wise think. To the extent that the wealthy also are looking for green products, there may well be a sweet spot there.

And if Nic Darling is on to something, there's another opportunity for affordable green housing, in addition to the high-end projects. I hope he's right.

Windmills you won't mind

Seems like one of the big problems in wind turbines for energy generation is that they are loud and tend to shake anything on which they are mounted. Well, Cascade Engineering has announced its new quiet and vibration-free Swift Wind Turbine, for use on houses and commercial buildings. It's not for everybody -- the company suggests renting equipment to measure the wind force in your area -- but it runs at only 35 decibels. A quick search on Wikipedia tells us that normal talking is 40 to 60 decibels, and a car operates at 60 to 80.

According to the company's release, the product is UL-certified for safety and can pay for itself within three years.

Congress and energy credits

I just got an e-mail message from my rep in congress, John Hall, boasting about how the recently passed Wall Street bail-out legislation included "a significant expansion of solar tax credits available for both investors in and consumers of solar energy technology." Previously, a cap on deductions for solar energy installations had been set at $2,000; now that's been lifted. If the Democrats take control of government, it seems likely that tax credits like this will become more common.

If the man who would be president has his way, there are five million "green collar" jobs coming down the pike. Some of those jobs will be in making, selling, installing, and servicing solar energy systems for homes.

The photo above is from Rep. Hall's e-mail message.

Another eco-pod for you!

I've already blogged about pod-treehouses, but here's another option for those who love Elves and Ewoks, or just want to live like them.

Here's the latest in treehouse living from a German firm, Baumraum. Thanks to Dwell for the tip.

Container homes in the news

I've read three recent green blog posts on prefab housing made from recycled shipping containers, and who am I to buck a trend? Inhabitat and Greener Buildings both posted about the SG Blocks version, one of which is the showcase home at the currently running West Coast Green show.

The other post, in Ecolect, is a multifamily urban development in Salt Lake City, pictured to the left. The development, City Center Lofts, features ...

• Constructed from 50% recycled materials by weight
• High-efficiency air-to-air heat exchanger and HEPA filtration
• No- or low-VOC paints, sealants and adhesives
• Green planted roof
• Natural ventilation
• Low-E, high performance insulated windows
• Demand (instantaneous) hot water heaters
• Secure bicycle storage at street level

Depot's Duke dorm declared dutifully dandy

The Home Depot Smart Home at Duke University -- a small dorm and "living laboratory" -- has earned LEED Platinum certification.

The environmentally conscious experiment in student living has solar panels, a roof covered with plants, uses rain water for irrigation, and more. The structure earned 59 points on the LEED scorecard, seven above the required minimum for Platinum certification.

High-end builder offers free solar roof

Shea Homes, which offers a line of "Shea Green Certified" homes, is offering free solar panel roofs with new homes. Sold through its high-end Trilogy brand, the builder claims that the panels can reduce energy bills by 60 percent. The deal is part of a partnership with BP Solar.

Compare to my previous items: Ikea selling solar panels, back-up system for solar power users, builder opens solar division, and solar homes in California. Seems clear to me that solar energy is an up and coming trend throughout the home channel.

Have a ball with this prefab house

Here's a European prefab house that's formed in the shape of a truncated icosahedron -- that's the same shape as a soccer ball. Made by Easy Domes, the units are built of sustainable and recycled materials. And yes, that's grass growing on top. From the Web site, it looks like the company will ship overseas, so it's an option for American homeowners who want an energy-efficient prefab green house, or who want a funny looking round house, or who really really like soccer. Thanks to Inhabitat for the tip, and there's more info here.