Driving The Point Home

I slept with my bedroom window open last night, and woke this morning to the sound of the Grand Prix emanating from downtown San Jose.

My whole focus on being Green stems from an opinion I have on cars, so you might think I have negative things to say about the Grand Prix today. I don’t really. If we are going to use petroleum for vehicles, using it for a high performance sport that brings crowds of people together makes more sense to me than… Well, I should back up here.

I have been avoiding the subject of Green cars on this blog because it has little to do with the housing market I am trying to focus on here. Hybrids, biofuels, EV’s… I have opinions on all of them, but they stray from the main point of this blog: Your home. However, how much time do we spend living in our cars as opposed to our homes?

This aspect of cars has everything to do with the housing market. You have heard me talk before about zoning laws disallowing places we live to be nearby places we work, and neither is zoned to be a place we go shopping. For every activity in our daily lives, we must hop in a car and travel.

It is for this reason that I started down my path of weird hippie ideas of living. I hate driving. I just am not good at it. I get distracted too easily, and am a danger to myself, my family, and everyone else on the road. I tried using public transportation for a while, but buses are all that is available, and the confounded routes going in circles take longer than it would to walk to a destination. Walking is not safe! Too many streets are designed for the convenience of cars, not people.

I never have had a problem with people who enjoy their cars, and enjoy driving them. In all honesty, I have no problem with you driving an inefficient car if you love it. If public transportation from walking, riding bikes, buses to trains were designed well, those of us who do not love driving would be able to get off the road and enable you to have less traffic to enjoy your driving more. Let’s face it. Those of you who enjoy driving have wished drivers like me off the road all along.

If the money spent on repairing and building new roads were spent on making alternative forms of transportation easier, there would be less of us on the road to make repairs and new road necessary to begin with. I do drive a hybrid, but I do not think alternative energy efficient cars are the answer. We do not need to change our cars. We need to change our means of transportation. This means changing the zoning laws so that we can ride a bike to work, and walk to get some milk at the store. This means spending our tax dollars on making such forms of transportation safe and convenient instead of spending it all on perpetuating our car dependent form of transportation.

Oops! Where did that soapbox come from? After last week, I promised myself I would not be so preachy. Oh well. Next week I will give out advice instead of trying to sway opinion. In the meantime, lets tie all these ideas into the housing market, shall we?

When purchasing your next home, consider how you will leave your home before you buy. Can you easily walk to the store if you want to? Is a light rail station nearby? (I’ve given up on buses.) Is it safe to send the kids out to walk the dog, or is the traffic to close to the sidewalk? Placing such priorities on your purchase of a home has much more influence on our society than voting at the polls. If there is a high demand to spend money on well thought out communities, well thought out communities are more likely to be built. If you demand a more convenient house more than you demand a bigger house, communities will be rezoned to supply your demands.

A movement has sprung up that has many of the same ideals as Green building that addresses creating more sustainable communities. It is called New Urbanism. National Geographic has a terrific interactive flash demonstration of New Urbanism. Please go play there and daydream of your new community -- either the new community you move to or the one you help create right where you are now. I am watching the New Urbanist community for local events and will be reporting them here.

In the meantime, go and enjoy the Grand Prix without guilt. Changing our everyday communities will have much more of an effect on making our world more Green than changing our communal celebrations. Better yet, try using light rail to get there instead of waiting in traffic to find a parking spot.

Green Isn't Everything

There has been a lot of chatter among the Green blogs about the latest Harry Potter book. Some say it's the "greenest" book ever. Some say such a claim is "greenwashing". I say arguing either way misses the "green" point. If you want to make effective change in the world, you need to look at the bigger picture.

Is it not the bigger picture that drew us to green thinking to begin with? When we come up with rigid rules for what is socially acceptable to call something green, we are making that picture narrow again.

Having rules and guidelines is a great boon to our cause. People love the recognition of achieving a certain certification. Criticizing someone for not meeting those same guidelines does not inspire them to do better. It discourages everyone else from trying. Rules and guidelines are a great start, but they mean as much as the latest computer technology. They will soon be out of date, as we think of newer, better and more effective ways to be Green.

I am trying to speak generally here, so that my message can be applied to Green living in our homes. I want to use Harry Potter as an example of my point, and then I promise to tie it back in to the purpose of my blog at the end. This is all about the marketing, not the plot. You will get no spoilers from me. Unlike SOME people! (Katie, you're a brat for leaving that message on my cell phone when you finished the book before me! ;-p)

Early Friday evening, we all walked together as a family to our local bookstore to get in line at 6 pm. My eight-year-old dressed up as a witch and was excitedly looking at the other costumes in line. We jabbered away with others around us. There were people from the very young to the very old, the bookworms to the jock and cheerleader types, generations of locals to recent immigrants and all manner of religions. We all knew that it would be hours after midnight before we would get the book. We all knew that we could easily get a good night's rest and get the book without a long wait the next morning. We were there to celebrate.

Not everyone likes Harry Potter books, but the fact that so many of us do is quite an accomplishment. A great bard of our time had accomplished something worth celebrating, and we sought community to celebrate the accomplishment.

Our whole family gets together while I read aloud because the eight-year-old wants to be included, and the reading is a bit hard for her. One of the greatest compliments I have ever received was that my children were disappointed in the movie renditions because the voices weren't right. It made all the glasses of water trying to sooth a sore throat worth the effort for making my Dobby voice.

Now, something here really blows my mind. We have had other great bards reach the majority of us in our lifetime. But this was usually in the form of a movie or television show. (Yes, we were dressed up and in line for Star Wars for similar reasons.) All this hype that we were willingly buying into was over a book this time. A book! Who ever heard of crowd control measures being used at book stores before? I found myself trying to tell my son to go play a video game and stop nagging me for his turn with a book! (Don't worry. I did come to my senses and let him read.)

Here we are, arguing over the percentage of post-consumer recycled content of the pages, when my whole family is clamoring for a turn with the precious object that will never be thrown away. If we are measuring the amount of energy put into producing the book, do we count the energy saved by those of us who walked to a bookstore instead of driving to a movie theater? Must we really turn our noses up at the blatant consumerism at a time when it is so difficult to get us all out of our suburban separation to come together as a community? Why are we criticizing the media churning the hype in the same breath we are bemoaning the loss of our children's literacy to the media?

It's a book! We have hysteria over a series of books! How long has it been since this happened? If we criticize the good because it could have been better, we are missing the point. If we applaud the good for reasons that did not make it good, we are missing the point. Not everything is about being Green.

Now, I say this within a blog about being Green. I am basing my profession on being Green within a very wasteful and thoughtless profession. This is because I hope that someday soon, this blog and my declaration of being a Green real estate agent will be obsolete. All real estate agents will care about the effect each home has on the world as a whole. No one will need simplistic advice on how to get solar panels just like no one needs simplistic advice on how to get a new roof now.

In the meantime we have terrific entities that give us guidelines on how to make our homes Greener. They give us certifications to aim for and look for as consumers. Those who get an EnergyStar symbol slapped on their circuit breaker are no better than their neighbors who just changed out their bedroom lights with CFLs.

Yes, both these measures will not save the world, but they are both steps in the right direction. If we argue over their relative effectiveness, we are missing the bigger picture. We need to keep moving even if we misstep. Help the stumbling around you get back up and save face, so they can take another step with pride. Just as everything we do effects the world we live in, everything we say to each other effects what we do.

Solar Panels

Now that I have my little business cards with my EcoBroker® designation proudly displayed, the most common question I have heard is “We have been thinking about putting up solar panels. Where would we start with that?”

That depends on what you want to accomplish with your solar panels. Do you want to

1. Generate Electricity,
2. Generate Heat, or
3. Generate Light?

Of course, you do not have to stick with just one of these goals. Read through the following options, explore the websites and the combinations of techniques and technologies that are best for you will become apparent.

If you want your electricity meter to run backwards (you cannot actually bring your bills to zero or lower), your most economical first step is to adjust your energy consumption first. That is a whole other blog entry. Until then, check out this children’s game from the UK that covers the basics in a much more fun way than reading a blog. My Abodo

1. Generate Electricity

If you are generating electricity, your solar panels are called photovoltaic (PV). Most of us in the South Bay are not concerned with living off of the city electrical grid and have no need for storing electricity in batteries. Generally what happens for an existing residential home is a retrofit of a BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaics) system. You may fit it onto your roof or locate it separately and connect it to your home electrical system by cable.

2. Generate Heat

If you are generating heat for your home (usually heating water in residential instances), your solar panels are plates usually painted with selective coatings that absorb and retain heat. Here in the SF Bay Area, this is an effective way to cut down on fuel bills from heating water. The solar collector is usually mounted on the roof and is connected to a circuit containing water. The headed liquid flows around a circuit to warm the main hot water tank or swimming pool.

3. Generate Light

If you are using sunlight to generate light in your home, consider implementing passive solar techniques. Passive solar is the absorption of solar energy in a building to save on heating and cooling costs. Windows are placed on a south-facing wall with an architectural feature that absorbs heat behind it. An overhang over the south-facing windows enables low angled winter sunlight to enter, while shading the home from the sun in the summer. Windows on the east and west sides of the building help to generate ventilation for summer cooling. I never have to use an air conditioner to keep my home cool using these methods during our summer heat waves.

If your home is not appropriately oriented for passive solar heating, light can be brought in to your home to lower electricity bills from lighting. For this, look into light shelves, skylights, and light tubes.

Have the Government Help You Pay For It

Now that you have a rough idea of what systems you want to look into using, make sure you pick systems and products that are approved by the government so that you can get your rebates. For up to date information in financial incentives for solar panel installation, make sure you check out the following websites:

PDF file from the Department of Energy about financing solar panels
Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency
SEIA PDF file with information on federal tax credits for solar systems
Go Solar California: the state government website on solar system incentives

Don’t Forget Your Sunglasses

This should be enough information to enable you to research your own needs for solar panels. If you are still confused, need help finding financing, or want help finding qualified solar panel installers, feel free to email me.

Dream Small

"The American dream" causes people to purchase larger and larger homes. We do not need as much space as you think. If the space you live in is designed well, you need never feel cramped. In a smaller space, other green ideas like consuming less stuff, turning off lights in rooms you aren't using, and energy efficiency just happen naturally.

So, when you dream of a better place to live, dream of improving the space you have first. Then, when you really do need to move, your home will be worth more anyway.

Green Building IS Worth It.

I came across a fellow blogger at Lime.com that asked if his green building was worth the effort over conventional building if he is only going to be moving away soon anyway. Of course I had to respond:

I would say it is worth it! And most Realtors would agree with the value of building green. Here is some green market data I gleaned while getting my certification from EcoBroker.

1. When you build the studio, have a certified Energy Star inspector come out and rate it. Have them rate your home too, while they are there. More than 2000 builders have constructed over 200,000 Energy Star qualified new homes, locking in financial savings for homeowners that exceed $60 million annually. The nations 10 largest homebuilders are now Energy Star partners, and 23 of the top 25 builders offer Energy Star qualified homes. It is something that gets marketed when you sell your home. Even if your home does not qualify, the rating it is given can enable the buyer of your home to qualify for a larger loan to make it more energy efficient before they move in. Government programs have incentives for such things.
2. Do a quick search for an organization that specializes in green residential buildings in your area. I know Built Green operates near you in Colorado, and Build it Green is my local one in the SF bay area. They might be able to help you with your project, and any certification they offer can be marketed like the Energy Star marketing mentioned above.
3. Analysis indicates home value increases by about $20 for every $1 reduction in annual utility bills ("More Evidence of Rational Market Values for Home Energy Efficiency" from the Appraisal Journal).
4. 94% of 300 American consumers surveyed by the Cahners Residential Group in 2001, cited their most sought-after green upgrade as energy savings, followed by water-saving appliances and recycled building materials. In addition, roughly nine in ten (91%) said energy efficient features in a new home are extremely or very important.
5. In a 2002 nationwide study of more than 400 home buyers conducted by American LIVES, more than half the respondents said they are willing to pay more for formaldehyde-free insulation, environmentally friendly paints, solvent-free andhesives, and other materials that do not release chemicals into the air.
6. In 2003, with the help of energy efficient technologies, Americans saved over $8 billion on their energy bills while preventing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the emissions from 18 million vehicles. These benefits have helped develop a national market for energy efficient products, with more than one billion Energy Star products sold and billions of square feet of building space improved.
7. The most important environmental issues for consumers are: saving energy, using recycled content building products, improving air quality, and saving old-growth threes.

When you sell your home, my advice would be to market your home's green qualities. Certainly your studio built with green in mind from the ground up is very marketable! There are people willing to pay a premium, and even move from farther away in an effort to find a green home. Make sure your agent markets your home in:

Dwell Green
EcoBroker
Green Real Estate
Green Homes For Sale
Listed Green
and Sustainable Sources

Never price your home higher for any upgrade. Price your home competitively with your neighbors. The lower you price your home, the more people will see it, and bid the price up. This is especially true if they are competing for a green building. You can always reject an offer if no one competes like you expected, and raise the price. However, starting too high and lowering the price as you follow the market down is much more difficult to fix, and makes your home a dud weather you built with straw bale or baby seal fur!

Have fun with your renovation, and rest assured: It is definitely worth it to build it green.