Going Green, One Neighborhood at a Time, Worldwide
You all know that I have a hard time with talking incrementally as to green building.
We have to get with the program all of us and now and make some big changes in what we talk about and what we start doing.
Net zero on a localized group basis of all our existing housing stock. That should be the focus of green IMO.
And how to do this? We start with one house on every street in every community across the planet.
Just one house people. Join forces, together with group effort, funds and time and get one existing home up and net zero on each of our’s streets.
How hard can this be? A ponzi scheme for the good of all.
You all work out the details. I just think this is the way to Eden.
There’s an old African proverb that says “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We have to go far — quickly.
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
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I need to emphasize one point. The homes that need to go green and net zero are...
ALL the EXISTING homes now across the planet.
New homes shouldn't even be built without taking down two that exist. New homes built over the next 50 years built to energy star levels will not even show up on a energy savings graph if that is our focus.
But if we take on the challenge of changing over all existing housing to net zero on a local scale, then we will have a graph worth looking at. A graph that can be sustainably charted into the future of our grand children and their grand children.
Local Net Zero means that we share locally what it takes for a group of homes to be declared net zero. For example not all homes in an area may have solar exposure, so what is done with changes in laws and more is that solar siting and ownership is shared amongst the group so that proper sites for the best solar exposure are used for the entire group.
I agree. I've been buying some rental homes in a particular neighborhood with just that goal in mind (and hoping for a profit as well).
Since the existing homes are near the end of their useful life, once you start weighing the options and crunching the numbers you find that scraping and rebuilding makes the most sense financially.
In some cities there are thousands of vacant lots in old neighborhoods where new zero energy homes can go up, using the existing infrastructure. Here's a company in Philadelphia doing it already, and they are selling everything they touch before it's half done: http://postgreenhomes.com/
For fun, I tried a "shallow green" retrofit last year on an existing house to test the market. I found that energy efficiency didn't matter at all to 95% of the buyers. The buyers' home inspectors didn't even notice that I had retrofit wall insulation.