Scott Adams On the Difficulty of Building a 'Green' Home 482
An anonymous reader writes "Scott Adams built himself a new house with the goal of making it as 'green' as possible, and detailed his experience for those interested in following in his missteps. Quoting: '... So the architect — and later your building engineer, too — each asks you to sign a document saying you won't sue them when beavers eat a load-bearing wall and your entire family is crushed by forest debris. You make the mistake of mentioning this arrangement to your family, and they leave you. But you are not deterred because you're saving the planet, damn it. You'll get a new family. A greener one. Your next hurdle is the local planning commission. They like to approve things that are similar to things they've approved before. To do otherwise is to risk unemployment. And the neighbors don't want to live next to a house that looks like a compost pile. But let's say, for the sake of this fascinating story, that everyone in the planning commission is heavily medicated with medical marijuana and they approve your project over the objections of all of your neighbors, except for the beavers, who are suspiciously flexible. Now you need a contractor who is willing to risk his career to build this cutting-edge structure. Good luck with that.'"
It's an old quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't there better articles that aren't written by a litigious, unfunny cocksmack who fags up the comics world...
Apparently not. I found it quite humorous. It's nice to see some insight into a process like this from someone with a sense of humor and the ability to laugh at things that make him angry.
Now, go get a nice cup of cocoa, take off those grumpy pants and have a nap. Looks like someone needs a little downtime.
The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need a perfect high tech green house.
We could get a lot of bang......for very FEW bucks just using power strips, replacing incandescent light bulbs, drinking tap water and shopping with resuable backs.
Those things aren't enough, but if you could get large numbers of people doing them......and these things are cheap enough to get people to do them, it would be a huge impact
Re:George W Bush did (Score:5, Insightful)
The natural conclusion being that we need to stop listening to the showman and start listening to the guy with the green home and the environmentally unsound public policy?
Re:George W Bush did (Score:5, Insightful)
Must everything be partisan?
What does "green" mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a TED talk that outlined recently why building from scratch is rarely "green". Especially when you're talking about building a big, opulent "green" mansion out in the middle of a posh suburb with a huge acreage.
People (especially the wealthy) may not want to hear it, but the greenest option is to renovate an existing structure in an urban center. Just like buying a used 1992 Honda is more "green" than buying a brand new Prius.
Building new may make you feel better about yourself, but it's definitely not the best option for the environment, by far.
Re:The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Buy a Brita water pitcher. $20. You don't need to be Dilbert to afford that :)
Re:George W Bush did (Score:2, Insightful)
I love the "mitigating factors" such as "the gore home is four times the size of an average home." As if... To be greener, we should all get bigger homes? Brilliant!
Re:George W Bush did (Score:4, Insightful)
The real travesty here is not recapturing all the hot air in Wash DC and heating much of the Eastern Seaboard with it.
Re:Going white? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people waste inordinate amounts of water, which takes resources to purify both before and after it's used, since any that isn't absorbed goes to run-off to the sewers, which needs to be treated in most areas. Then you get pesticide use, herbicide use, chemical fertilizers, gas-powered lawnmowers, etc. How the hell can you possibly think a conventional lawn is good for the environment? A properly cared-for garden? Kick-ass. Your average suburban lawn? Fucks up the environment.
Re:What does "green" mean? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:George W Bush did (Score:1, Insightful)
Which are you?
Re:who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
Both are easily avoided with a little forethought as to location and distance from main roads
Of course, if you build your green house out in the boonies, and then have to commute 50 miles to get to work every day, you probably haven't done the environment any favors.
Clearly the trick is to be a cartoonist, so you can work at home and send in your work product by email each day.
Re:George W Bush did (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep!
Re:George W Bush did (Score:3, Insightful)
Essentially functions as both a residence and a business office since both Al and Tipper work out of their home." And by business office, that means an office with staff.
So what? You can easily fit a "staff" (which I note you leave undefined, and could easily be one person, part time) in an average sized family home while still living there.
Gore is rich, so he bought and lives in a giant house. I don't see anything wrong with that but it obviously means the environment is not as important to him as Bush, who also has staff but a much smaller home that is far more efficient.
Re:Going white? (Score:4, Insightful)
The absolute worst part here in Southern California is all of this lawn we've got. They use some Norman Rockwell grade grass that looks exactly like what you expect grass to look like, but is a bitchass to maintain. It has to be watered literally every day, and if the Santa Ana winds (dry and hot and fast) blow in unexpectedly, whole swathes of that stuff just go brown overnight and die. They replace it within a week most times, but the waste! Oh my God, the waste! And nobody ever walks on it, so all of that is useless.
What they really should do is plant those gorgeous native grasses everywhere - hillocks of green, literally shining (for some reason parts of it are silver from certain angles), doesn't need much watering (because it's native grass, it's used to how often it rains down here), doesn't die off if the weather changes unexpectedly, and grows in uneven little hills so people won't walk on it as much.
Basically, if companies didn't insist on having Norman Rockwell style lawns, we could use a shitload less water and things would look a lot nicer too.
Re:Modular (Score:2, Insightful)
Scott Adams: Has Been (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought a house in the NYC suburbs last year, gutted it, and renovated it to conserve energy. I basically sprayfoamed the walls, floors and roof really thick, use all CFLs, install some really cool smart ventilation devices, and did some other stuff that was a lot more minor like buy the most efficient appliances. I cut my energy use down to something like 1/6th the average in the area per square foot, even though I left the ceilings open into the attic (which lets heat rise away from the lower level where we can feel it). I didn't need any permits or any "experimental beaver" tech. It took some imagination, analysis and choosing between different ways of doing things, but like any engineering project I just had to be careful thinking of how the individual consequences added up to system performance. Ultimately it was a big investment, but it'll pay back in under 5 years. Even at current energy prices, which since they're going to go up will probably be closer to 3 years; after that we'll be netting income equal to what we'd have paid the utility monopolies instead.
I don't know what Scott Adams' problem is, especially in California where there's little weather and the climate is so mild, and green construction industries are everywhere, along with referrals and reviews of them, and plenty of state funding. Maybe he's only as good at actual engineering as he is at being funny, which he hasn't been since a decade ago, when he was a better cartoonist than an engineer.
Rammed Earth (Score:3, Insightful)
Many old construction techniques hold up surprisingly well in modern terms for both comfort, durability and cost. Rammed earth [wikipedia.org] is a technique going back millennia, and rammed earth structures still exist today. The Great Wall of China is one example (rammed earth core, faced with brick), but there are others [wikipedia.org].
Briefly, you dump properly pulverized soil into the same sort of mold into which you'd pour concrete. Soak it with water and use a pneumatic tamper to compress it 50%, then repeat in layers 5-10 inches thick. Like concrete, it cures over time, and has about 25% the structural strength--more than sufficient for small and medium sized structures. If you're in a wet climate, you apply a sealing coat, and you're done.
Like concrete, you can reinforce it with rebar to make it earthquake-resistant. The material itself can come directly from the site where you're building. It's fireproof, soundproof, insect-resistant, and has similar thermal properties to brick or concrete. There's basically no waste. As a building material, it's an environmentalist's wet dream.
Re:Frankly taking ANY risk is hard! (Score:3, Insightful)
I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure your tin roof is a radiant barrier.
Have you considered insulating the crawlspace walls instead of the floor (i.e., making the crawlspace conditioned space, like you did with your attic)?
Re:Which unsound policies? Worse than now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where do you guys get this stuff? We aren't even to the mid-term elections yet, and you're claiming that Obama set up the regulatory structure that lead to (I presume) the disaster in the Gulf? How exactly did he accomplish this? What regulations did he dismantle that were in place when Bush was in office? Do you have one iota of documentation for this claim? Why am I hearing about this for the first time on /.?
In any case, we weren't even talking about this--we were talking about green building!
Re:For all his complaints (Score:5, Insightful)
The frustrating thing about reading Scott Adams' article, though, is just how many mistakes he made. Siting his house without planning for solar gain. Not hiring an experienced energy consultant. Not hiring people who knew what they were doing, basically. Building a green house is difficult--you have to do a lot of research. Unfortunately, very few builders know how to build one. But there are builders who do it for a living. So if you want a green house, and you don't want to build it yourself, hire one of *them*, not some builder who doesn't know anything about it and thinks it's a bad idea.
The whole sad saga of the attic fan was the worst of it. Has he never heard of a vented roof? A cupola to draw wind up, or a peak vent that does the same? Most green building techniques are just what everybody did before air conditioning was invented. Back when you couldn't cool a house with refrigeration, you *had* to make it energy-efficient, because the only thing cooling the house was going to be whatever passive environmental system you were able to come up with.
no, buying a really fuel-efficient car is greener. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just like buying a used 1992 Honda is more "green" than buying a brand new Prius.
You're so confident you're right, but you aren't. fueleconomy.gov says the 1992 Honda Accord Wagon manual gets 19 city, 25 hwy. Let's take the best and say it gets 25 mpg. Meanwhile the Prius gets 50 mpg. Half as much gasoline. But the allegedly smug Prius buyer has bought 3,042 pounds of evil raw-materials-turned-manufactured-goods into our disposable consumption-based modern world, and obviously that's terrible and he should wise up and hang his head in shame. Let's kick him in the nads for his stupidity, right?
No. Over 120,000 miles that 1992 Accord will use 4800 gallons of gasoline, which at 6.125 lbs each weigh 14.8 tons. Burning that gasoline will emit 46 tons of CO2. Driving a Prius instead halves those numbers.
And that doesn't take into account the pollution from producing, spilling, refining and distributing those TONS of unrecyclable gasoline. The onus is on you and others spouting this nonsense to prove that 1.5 tons of mostly recyclable car is more pollution than 7 additional tons of gasoline going up in smoke. It simply isn't. My basic math lesson here is a gross simplification of why all reputable studies conclude 75-90% of the lifecycle pollution of a car occurs in its operation, not in its manufacture.
The next nail in the coffin of this bullshit meme is your car use doesn't occur in a vacuum. If you're already driving and you get a different car, what happens to your old one? If it's a gas guzzler, it's a win to junk it for the math above. If it isn't, someone else will probably take it and junk their gas guzzler. Another way to consider the problem is even simpler: the primary way to improve the overall efficiency of the car fleet is for people to buy more fuel-efficient cars.
None of this is to say that owning a car is "green". Scott Adams is right to point out it's a loaded term, but not because of this stupid American obsession to find hypocrisy in unrelated actions ("You think you're green with your bicycle, but you wear leather shoes, ya hypocrite!"). Green is just a relative term. A Prius is greener than a 1992 Accord if you drive the distances most Americans do. Driving less is always greener. Not buying a car at all and bicycling is greener still. etc.
Re:who cares (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which unsound policies? Worse than now? (Score:2, Insightful)
BP has a history of safety violations going back years.
Yes they do. But Obama took a great deal of money from them, and the rig that exploded got a passing grade just a few weeks prior.
I'm not saying the other presidents were great at this either. But Obama being much more in favor of regulation as a solution to problems should have been more on top of better regulation. As it was, it destroyed the concept that regulation was of much use, and actions after the explosion further eroded the notion that the federal government does much more than get in the way during a real crisis - just just turning back oil skimmers initially, but stupid things like holding other oil skimming boats in port for days at a time that had been out working, simply because the head of the coast guard couldn't get someone to sign a paper that the boats had the proper number of life vests aboard!
Much of the later damage that was caused and is still being caused is due to inaction along those lines, and none of that whatsoever is due to any other president than Obama.
Re:no, buying a really fuel-efficient car is green (Score:5, Insightful)
According to this Wired article, it takes 113 million BTUs to make a Prius: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_09usedcars [wired.com]
They claim that is about 1000 gallons of gasoline (not really willing to do the math myself, I'll accept it). They also argue that the smelting of the 30 lbs of nickel used for the batteries is very bad for the environment. Also, don't know one way or another, but it wouldn't surprise me.
For some reason you chose to compare a 1992 Honda wagon to a Prius. Well, when I say "for some reason" I meant, because it makes your argument look good. Since the parent just said 1992 Honda, I'll go with the Civic hatchback with manual transmission that gets 33/42 mpg for similar reasons.
So now the Honda is using 2790 gallons of fuel and the Prius (taking into consideration production costs) is using 3800.
Buying a used car (and not being stupid about it) *is* more energy efficient than buying a new car.
Re:Which unsound policies? Worse than now? (Score:4, Insightful)
you're claiming that Obama set up the regulatory structure that lead to (I presume) the disaster in the Gulf?
I'm saying that he let the regulatory structure that was there wither
How? What did he do to reduce the quality of the regulation covering offshore drilling? Perhaps you believe that by not improving the regulation that this constitutes a whithering effect.
It's as much about what you don't do as what you do.
Are yes, you do. In that case, why make this a partisan argument against Barack Obama? Surely then you should attribute eight times more blame to the previous administration, given that they had eight years compared to Obama's one.
Actually George W Bush was more responsible for the incident because his administration had the opportunity to avert this problem and actively decided against implementing additional safety features. In 2003 the Minerals Management Service considered requiring remote controlled shut-off switches for drilling rigs. They decided against forcing them to install the devices because they cost too much.
Perhaps if they had gone the other way (against the wishes of big business) then this would have been just a workplace accident rather than a major environmental catastrophe.
As for Obama, he didn't have much time to think much about offshore drilling operations because he came into the presidency in the middle of the GFC. Or do you think he somehow caused that too?
Those things are good to do (Score:3, Insightful)
but they're nibbling around the edges. The key is energy consumption. Light bulbs are a part of it, but here are some others.
One time ideas:
* Refrigerators. When you get a new one, get a really efficient one. Then, get rid of the old one -- or old few in your basement or garage. The old ones use an incredible amount of electricity, both because they were less efficient to begin with and because as they age they often fail in such a way that they don't cycle properly, resulting in even higher energy use.
* AC. Don't replace your AC unit... yet. First, get your attic air sealed and insulated... and as much of the rest of your house as possible. Then, ask to have the size of your AC re-evaluated. It's likely that your AC is oversized, and not only will you save with a new one because it's more efficient, you'll also save because it's smaller. Plus, there are plenty of gov't programs to subsidize all of this.
* Heating. Same story as AC.
* Switch to gas. If you're a New Englander with oil heat, switch to natural gas if you can. That's a 1/3 reduction in CO_2 per therm right off the bat. Again, gov't programs subsidize.
* Move closer to work/shopping/transit. Maybe not today, but the next time it's time to move.
* Move to a smaller home. Maybe not today, but the next time it's time to move.
All-the-time opportunities:
* Adjust the thermostat to require a sweater in the winter, or a cold drink in the summer. Programmable thermostats are a nice feature for many users too.
* Wash your clothes on cold. Hang your clothes to dry -- they'll last longer, and it'll save energy. Switch to a gas dryer if possible.
Those are some big opportunities, and that doesn't include driving (for which there are many ways to save). The things you mention help, but these are the ones which have a major impact. Not everybody can do all of them, but picking off one or two of these will save major... for example, washing on cold or hanging to dry saves about 2.5 kWh per use. You'd need to keep your CFL on for 100 hours to make up for the electricity of one time using your electric dryer.
Close, but no cigar (Score:4, Insightful)
People who tend to tell others how to live rarely live as such. Those who live right tend to not brag about it. You have the cynical conclusion. The natural conclusion is to live like the guy with the green home and ignore the guy in the mansion.
I would love to see a President with a sound environmental policy, however what one person declares as sound another dismisses as not enough. Bush did fine considering the history of our past Presidents. Some areas are flash points for one group or another and both will use such to disclaim any leader.
No, given what we know about the two men in question, I would invite the guy from Crawford over to dinner, more than likely the other guy wouldn't even deem to acknowledge the request.
Re:To the people modding me down - why hide? (Score:1, Insightful)
The third, and most likely, possibility is the mods assuming that you really are trolling or flamebaiting. Because lots of people find it hard to accept the fact that you actually believe the crazy things you say.
Re:Those things are good to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's some things you can do without compromising your lifestyle:
1) If you must drive, as your next car, buy a turbo-diesel. They get better mileage and diesel takes 60% as much energy to produce as gasoline.
2) In the summer, add mylar to windows to reflect sunlight and trap cool air. In the winter, add clear plastic to windows to permit sunlight and trap warm air.
3) Get a canister water filter instead of drinking bottled water. Suggesting that people drink tap water is suggesting that they poison themselves, in most areas. Chlorine, chloramines... But you can buy an undersink mount filter with a carbon-impregnated cartridge for about $30, maybe $40 with all the fittings you'll need to install it, teed off the cold water line. Another $10 gets you a cute little faucet. You can make your own with aquarium charcoal, pipe, pipe fittings, and nylon mesh, but you won't save all that much.
4) Always-on electrical loads? You can buy a plug-in grid-tie solar panel very cheaply these days. Just plug it in where you have your PC plugged in, or whatever.
5) Close off rooms you're not using. You don't have to buy a smaller home to gain greater energy efficiency.
An advanced form: you can deliver heat/cold only to rooms that need them by installing a thermostat which has been hacked to control a servo (PIC will do, Arduino for the lazy and rich) into each room, and having the room registers open themselves only when demanding air. In most homes, delivering both heat and cold at the same time is not practical.
Re:The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Another cheap green thing to do that makes a big difference is observing the "Meatless Monday" trend.
I don't remember where, but I read an article stating that going vegetarian just one day a week did more to reduce pollution (and was far cheaper) than being a "locovore" ( eating only locally produced food) all of the time.
Enjoy your burgers, it is just one day a week.
Re:Which unsound policies? Worse than now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's an old quote... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:George W Bush did (Score:1, Insightful)
The way I read that is that the last guy in the White house was so cynical that though he would go to the effort to make his own home fuel efficient and fairly sustainable in the uncertain energy future, in his public role he sold the nation out to the energy interests. He was willing to protect his interests and give up the nation's interests to his energy industry hangers on.
Re:It's an old quote... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Close, but no cigar (Score:3, Insightful)
And after all, that's what our national leaders should be -- people we'd like to have dinner or a beer with, people we'd like to go to a ball game with.
WTF? Who cares if Gore is more of a self-righteous prick than Bush -- it's the issues that matter.
Fucking "conservative" charismatics -- they're why this nation is going to hell in a handbasket. They get the masses to vote for them on bogus wedge issues, then proceed to destroy our economy, our land, and our people via overspending on their buddies' contracting companies, allowing regulatory capture in every industry, cutting their buddies' taxes, and passing the buck to future administrations and generations.
Fuck them.
Sorry for the rant. I'll go get my coffee now.
Re:Rammed Earth (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which unsound policies? Worse than now? (Score:4, Insightful)
This has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read. It's comparable in stupidity to the equally stupid far left commentators who blamed Bush for 9/11. I'm no fan of GWB, but blaming a man for a disaster than happened within a year or two of his taking office is just insane. It takes time to realign Federal bureaucracy. In the case of 9/11 the blame lies as much or more with Clinton, Bush Sr. and even Reagan as with GWB. More really, GWB *might* have improved the non-traditional intelligence community had he been given a chance (he probably wouldn't have, but it's moot since he wasn't given the opportunity). Same thing here. Obama inherited a broken regulatory system and hasn't had a chance to fix it (again, he may or may not have actually done so if the disaster hadn't happened, we'll never know now).
Presidents are responsible for the things that happen on their watch, certainly. In both cases the President took responsibility, and vowed to fix what was broken (success or failure not withstanding), but that doesn't mean it was the current President's fault. Being stuck with the bag doesn't make you a bank robber, though it makes you responsible for some of the consequences of the bank robbery.