Just got back last night from PCBC in San Francisco - the Pacific Coast Builders Conference. Lots of new technology and products on the main floor and plenty of speakers and seminars upstairs.
The State of California had a booth (amazing, eh?) where the Department of Housing & Community Development was tasked with getting out the word about next year's new and considerably more stringent building codes. The new code system is two tiered in 2011, where - if I got this right - a mandated list of items in many areas such as site development, energy and water efficiency, materials conservation and waste stream, pollution control, indoor air quality and moisture control, and installer qualifications are all part of the prescriptive path. And a 15% improvement in these areas above today's standards for the performance based path. That's for the lower tier. And in 2012 will kick in the higher tier of all the above except a more stringent prescriptive path and a 30% improvement for the performance based. All good and necessary but/and there will be more inspections and more contractor training required. So start now and be prepared for January 1, 2011.
http://www.bsc.ca.gov/CALGreen/default.htm for the website and http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/bsc/documents/2010/Draft-2010-CALGreenCode.pdf for the whole thing. Note that it's still a draft.
Halo now has a line of LED 4" recessed cans that look *great* and they have a retrofit version. Plenty of light and color temps from 4000K down to 2700K, or daylight to warm. They'll be a big seller. And I found out something new that I wish I'd known before: the module for their 6" LED recessed cans can be screwed in to an older existing non ICAT housing (which I'd known) and they make that non ICAT housing airtight, or AT (which I *hadn't* known and which I had after retrofitting so many cans in the last several months to get the AT rating). FYI, their 4" line is different and can't be retrofitted to a standard can. They've come down in price to below dimmable fluorescents, though still above standard CFLs. Definitely competitive and I personally believe are the future that will make CFLs old school.
Eco - specializing in LED lighting - was there. A newish brand from China, they do a lot of outdoor street and decorative lighting but also have a line of interior screw-in replacements for interior bulbs that are rated fairly good as far as lumen output but some were pretty weird looking. They also had an extensive line of LED T8 and T12 fluorescent tube replacements that fit in the standard 2 pin on each end fixtures. Might be good and can they also had some T5s that could be used under cabinet. Unknown quality and the reps there couldn't answer my questions about longevity & lumen testing. Innovative and could be good but I want to see 3rd party testing.
There were several spray foam companies there that tout soy oils, recycled content, and no ozone depletion. Their words are carefully scripted to make them sound all green when they're not, but at least the percentage of non-nasty stuff is growing. I am NOT against spray foam; I love the stuff, recommend it, and think it's the cat's meow for many problems, but it has a large and nasty upfront environmental cost.
I saw some new synthetic decking products that looked great. Very realistic, in fact, I could hardly tell they weren't real wood. Still as expensive as Ipe or high end wood, but though they're not made from post consumer recycled content, the long life span makes them at least worthy of consideration. I'd love to see a real life cycle analysis and footprint of a synthetic deck product and high end wood like redwood or ipe. Anyone have numbers on this?
Missing this year, and that WERE there last year, were a couple of water products. Last year, there were two different companies coming out with plug and play type solar water heater products; basically a water heater/storage tank with an integral pump and control system so all one needed was to plumb to a solar panel on the roof and plug it in. All electronics, freeze protection, etc. were included in a nice, compact package that would fit in a standard hot water heater closet. I wonder why they weren't at PCBC this year. And last year there were 2 different companies offering wonderful graywater storage systems. Where were they?
Lots more, of course. Hundreds of vendors and many great products but I focus on efficiency products that can be used in retrofits and that have either a small amount of embedded energy - meaning they're cheap to make and use simple, renewable materials - and/or are cheap to run and use. All that other stuff used to get me excited but I'm a lot pickier nowadays.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Putting a Face on the Gulf Oil Leak - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com
I try not to get political and I'm guilty of burning as much petroleum as the next person but dammit, this hurts:
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