SanJoseGreenHome.com

If you had to imagine the greenest home in California, what images would spring to mind?  Would it be some clay, dome shaped structure perfectly exposed to solar angles, or maybe an ultra chic, boxy looking modern beauty with massive windows facing a valley?  What if I told you that this home sits on a pretty standard residential street in Santa Clara and an untrained eye wouldn’t even notice any “greenness” about it if they drove by?

Meet the “Bluebird” residence.  This Earth Bound Home’s show house  is also the personal residence of founder David Edwards.  Rated as the Greenest Home in California by Build it Green organization, the original 1400 sq. ft. ranch style home was added to and remodeled, creating a 3100 sq. ft. 4 bedroom, 3 bath home with an office and workout room.   Awards range from Acterra’s Business Environmental Awards Built Environment Award to Build It Green’s South Bay Best New Home award for the 1996 Green Home Tour. Come with us on a video tour to explore all the ingenuity, design and careful choice of materials that went into this project.  (Also see a list of “green” features below the video.)

This home’s many green features include:

• Small 2.7 kw Photovoltaic solar electric panels provide all of houses electrical needs
• Solar thermal renewable energy systems
• An inexpensive and no maintenance Grey water system waters the only plants in the entire landscaping that require water, the clumping Bamboo.
• A 1400 gallon underground rainwater cistern collects rainwater every winter
• All FSC wood framing and FSC certified Brazilian Cherry Flooring
• Home built with Structural Insulated Panels(SIPs)
• 65% more efficient than Californias’ Title-24 Energy Efficiency requirements
• $155/year gas bill, $4/year electric bill, $132/year water bill
• 93%  recycling and reuse of building demolition debris
• Half of all windows were purchased from salvage yards, saving over $10,000 over new windows
• All doors on the first floor were salvaged, saving $3,000.
• All trim throughout the house was salvaged from old redwood decks, fences and the siding on old houses. It was milled on site and the shavings used as mulch on the landscaping.
• New One Lawn Synthetic Lawn contains no heavy metals and requires no maintenance or water. None of the landscape requires supplemental water and saves approx. 50,000 gallons of water a year.
• House uses 31,285 gallons of water a year, for 5 people. This is approx 84% less. than the average household uses(~110 gallons per person/day- including irrigation)

Photo and home description courtesy of Earth Bound Homes

A small bungalow front yard is reborn as a shady woodland oasis of natives centered by a naturalistic fountain accented with metal sculpture.  As you’ll read on, you’ll notice from the photo tour that this new garden shows that sustainable landscaping can be accomplished through DIY talent and on a shoe-string budget when working closely with a professional landscape designer.

The home owners of this Craftsman style home in College Park area of San Jose already prided themselves living a green and sustainable life style.  But there was still some unfinished business – their water thirsty lawn.  So they decided to say goodbye to their front lawn and concrete hardscape and figure out a way to design a new, water wise yard on a budget.  They were receptive to many sustainable suggestions including: turf rebate programs, lawn removal, water-wise irrigation, flagstone installation, planting natives and storm water management.

Fact is, if you have the time, patience and willing to learn, you can do a lot on your own.  Here is what I mean… Size of the lawn was 900 square feet.  For about $5 a square foot, I designed the plans and coached my clients through their installation.  They did the install themselves but I helped them locate materials and assisted them in receiving an $800 water rebate by removing their lawn.  Total cost?  (more…)

Bay Area water suppliers expect there will not be enough water for their customers by 2018.

Water. It’s difficult to say we lack it during this el-nino year.  You look outside, nothing but rain.  You open your faucet, it doesn’t run out.  It seems like it’s always there in unlimited quantities.  Hence lies a dangerous illusion that water has always been there and always will.  However, there’s been a lot of buzz lately about the shortage of this precious commodity.  Some even call water the next gold.

After all, gold values have risen in the last several years. Will water too? Bay Area water suppliers expect there will not be enough water for their customers by 2018. So what does this mean for us and our homes? It means we can expect the water bill to get bigger.  Much bigger.

Have you seen all the hub-bub being made about the EPA filing on rainwater runoff? You can read the actual filing if you like.  Basically, the tax would be levied on new and newly redeveloped sites that do not meet certain requirements for control of storm water discharge. Closer to home, Deputy GM of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Michael Carlin indicated that San Francisco Bay Area households that pay $63/mo for water can expect to pay $128 in 2018. To top it off, the cap on the water that can be drawn from the Hetch Hetchy in 2018 won’t be enough for residents – it will be short by (more…)

Credit: Texture from ~diAnNa~, Inspired by this pre-made background by ~vallendesterstock

So Mary, how does it grow?  With wisely planted trees and shrubs, and many sunny days without rain in a row.  It’s called water-wise gardening my friends. 

Did you know an average Bay Area home uses almost 80% of its total potable water for simply watering the lawn and plants?  What would you say if you found out you can have a glorious looking landscape by spilling a drop instead of a bucket to water it?  Just imagine the water savings and your water bill at the end of the month.  In fact, read on and I’ll tell you where you can get a $1000 rebate for going water-wise! 

Don’t be afraid, “sustainable” landscaping doesn’t mean rocks and once a year blooming cactus. By understanding our climate zone, soil type, sun and shade conditions, and the water requirements of your site, you can have lush and beautiful garden if you practice some fundamental principles of water conservation. 

Why Landscape to Conserve Water? 

Drought is a part of the natural weather cycle of the West. Even though we have been able to import water from other areas, our population is rapidly outgrowing existing water supplies. In the years ahead, water conservation and water-wise landscaping will need to become a part of every westerner’s lifestyle. 

Use water conserving plants: The key is to choose plants that are (more…)

Synthetic turf can look just as real grass from a few feet away but does it hold water with its new eco claims?

Installing synthetic turf has become all the rage recently. It was even featured on some Bay Area local channels. Commonly known in the past as astro turf, it has been reinvented, repacked and now called ‘eco turf.’ It is being touted as the latest in green landscaping. There is even a striking list of ecological “solutions” that this product addresses. Those include no mowing, no watering or expensive irrigation systems, no weed control, and no other maintenance headaches like fertilizing and hauling away grass clippings.

The latest synthetic turf is even manufactured from recycled plastic and is recycable at the end of its life. Your kids can play on it in the rain and won’t get muddy. It is wheel chair accessible. So it seems like we have solved a horde of environmental issues with one product, so what’s not to love?

Stepford Lawns

Do you recall the part in the movie, The Stepford Wives where one of the Stepford wives gets stabbed and it messes with her wiring and she starts repeating “ I thought we were friends, I thought we were friends? That’s what I imagine synthetic turf is saying when I stab it with my accusations of it being a pseudo green product. Like my friend Owen Dell would say, it’s kind of like organic heroin, organic or not it is still fundamentally a bad idea.

Aromatherapy it’s not

I’ll begin with the deceptively simple argument that my primary distrust of synthetic turf is based on the fact that it is not alive. It does not breathe and therefore it offers no oxygen as a byproduct. On a warm day the entire area around a synthetic playing field reeks of melting off-gassing plastic, not an enjoyable smell. It certainly is not aromatherapy. Again because the stuff is not living and breathing the cooling effect is absent and thus the heat island affect is increased. The ‘heat island’ refers to the phenomena in which urban air and surfaces sustain higher temperatures than nearby rural areas.

The images below comparing air, water, bermudagrass, sand, asphalt, and synthetic turf surface temperatures illustrate how (more…)

Composting can be either an enjoyable or a dreadful experience, can it not?  Personally, being a landscaper I love to play with dirt so to me it’s sort of like playing in sand box – fun!  

Composting is good for the environment and it’s a smart way to put the nutrients back in the ground.  It helps to reduce greenhouse gases by sequestering carbon back into the soil; storing the carbon for plants to use. Sequestering is actually considered by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a carbon ‘sink’, because it takes the carbon (C) out of (CO2), and leaves just the oxygen (O2) to float into the atmosphere. EPA has more info on this if you’d like to read more. 

In our first month of composting at home, my wife and I reduced our trash waste from three 30 gallon bags all the way to one bag. Wow! We now get excited to see how much we can do to reduce our waste. Our worm bin in the garage and the outdoor stackable bin are also put to use and are doing great. 

If you have not tried composting yet then I would like to invite you to consider it. Relax, you really do not need to run out a buy a pound of worms to get started.  There are a few simple ways to ease into it.  

For example, you can begin by (more…)

It’s been official for months now – California again is facing water crisis. Unusually dry and hot weather had eroded our priceless Sierra snowpack, the supply of much of our water.  Our local reservoirs have been low for years now. In addition, water demand in beautiful state is growing each year and our sources of water are drying up.

Climate change models demonstrate that California will become a much drier place in our lifetimes.  Not only precipitation will likely decrease, but our precious Sierra snowpack is expected to shrink and leave of only with 10% of its current capacity.

Even more interesting, according to the California Energy Commission, 20% of our state’s electricity is used for the treatment and pumping of water.  Groundwater pumping has greatly shrunk our underground aquifers.  Parts of the San Joaquin Valley has now seen soil level drop 50’ from the removal of groundwater. Every single river in California has been dammed, wiping out fish populations, including endangered Chinook salmon. Two out of five most endangered rivers in the U.S. are in California. 

Let’s face it; this is not our grandkid’s head ache. Very soon water will become a treasured commodity.  Sadly, you’d never know it by the way we are dumping it down the drain. A traditional home has potable water piped in from a local water supplier. Amazingly, one half of this water is used for irrigation, where potable water is absolutely unnecessary. Almost all the remainder is used for non-potable water needs in the house, where it is then flushed down the drain to our local sewage treatment plant.

Now that sewage plant spends an enormous amount of time, money and energy treating this so called “greywater” like raw sewage.  This makes no sense, does it?

Here are two ways to re-use water already available to us (more…)

The drawbacks of traditional landscaping are evident everywhere these days.  They include air (lawnmowers, transportation) and water (fertilizers and pesticides) pollution, harm to biodiversity, consumption of natural resources like water, impacts to public health and safety and just down right cost and labor intensive.  So more and more folks are discovering the joys of sustainable landscaping. 

Many seek that wonderfully sharp and fully natural look for the yard but what really is sustainable landscaping and what can it do for us?  Sustainable or “green” landscaping is essentially landscaping that considers things like water conservation, the use of all natural resources and the selection of proper plants to beautify a piece of land while still making it work with the surrounding ecosystem. 

In the beginning this may sound a tad complex but rest assured – it’s not.  There are countless things that we can try at home on your own.  Keep in mind these two words – Conserve, Design and Protect.  Conserve means conserving resources like water and using a composting bin to recycle natural yard waste into organic fertilizer.  Protect means preventing or reducing processes that degrade or pollute the environment and harm regenerative capacity of our ecosystems.  Design means designing your landscaping in harmony with the natural environment, and in a way that it enhances the sustainability features of your home.

For instance, if you are planning on redoing the landscaping in your yard, consider the placement of deciduous and evergreen trees.  We’re in California; there are plenty of them out here in the nature already.  If you plant deciduous on the south and east sides of your home, you’ll be able to get shade during the summer while still keeping (more…)