Alviston Blog

Definition: Sustainable Sources

The materials used in a given product come from sources that are easily planted and replenished, and grow naturally.

While the economy has been at the forefront of the news lately, we need to try to keep our focus on sustainability, especially when it comes to construction and transportation. The strong temptation is going to be to go back to old wasteful, more polluting methods because many still think they are cheaper. They are not.

Affordable gas is a double-edged sword. It can present us with an incredible opportunity to leap forward and make some real gains against global warming; at the same time, it can lull us back into complacency and allow us to continue our gas guzzling ways.

Right now the U.S. has a chance to take lead, and by doing so, regain a great deal of its lost stature in the world. It can do this by making a concerted effort to do everything possible to create a sustainable economy, not just one that is continually growing.

It can do this in several sectors, but primarily energy. If the U.S. were to unleash its full potential on renewable, it would quickly out produce every other country that currently leads in wind, solar, geothermal, and fuel cell technologies.

The U.S. can also lead the way in clean transportation, both by building mass transit systems, which the gas spike proved that people would use in numbers, and by building a new generation of hybrid vehicles. The U.S. can also lead the way in wind power, of which it has plenty. It can also lead the way in biofuels like bio diesel from algae.

However, all this will only happen once there are no more impediments to change. Everything changes, and that means just like the Internet is taking over newspapers and TV, the old way of building cars and houses is over. In five years we will think that any car getting less than 100 MPGs is a joke, and any new home not making at least as much power as it uses, is a waste of money. Both of these are already available. All we have to do is figure out how to build them cheaper.

That is what competition is all about.

–Mark Alvis

Excuse the absence, but there’s been a lot going on around these parts.

Alvis Projects helped complete a 2100 solar panel installation last week at the Del Monte plant in Kingsburg. (Video is coming.) It’s the biggest one we’ve done by far, but cousin Cameron at Bella Sol is going to outdo us with an installation at another Del Monte plant in Hanford. Cameron and crew are putting up a 6,000 panel job. Wow!

And it’s not going to stop there for Del Monte. They plan on doing more PV over the next few months. We are working on getting the whole story of “The Greening of Del Monte” for you soon.

In addition to the big solar projects, we found out that the Buchanan Energy Center in Clovis has received Division of State Architecture approval. DSA is the agency that reviews all school and hospital plans in California. Plus, we heard that Clovis Unified has decided to go for the LEED certification, which is a very big deal. LEED stands for Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design and is run by the US Green Building council (see usgbc.org). Alvis Projects has been consulting on this project from its beginning and we’re very excited to see the project come out of the ground. The Buchanan Energy Center will be a showcase of energy-efficient building, healthy indoor environments and hands on learning about sustainable everything.

And just today, Mind Light Works Video Productions has been asked to apply for an EPA grant for their show “Green Planet.” We wish them the best of luck. They already have three episodes in the can and are shooting to do a 13-part series to air on PBS. Episode four is already written, shot and in the editing phase. We have all been waiting anxiously for this one because it’s called: “The Beer that Saved the World,” and is all about Ken Grossman and the Sierra Nevada Brewery where they are doing incredible things in the world of sustainability. Should be fun.

—Mark Alvis

When it comes to designing and building a house and picking out the things that go in it, the two main ingredients are energy efficiency and durability. You can buy a super efficient AC unit but it may be expensive and will be more costly to repair. So while something may be more energy efficient, they may not be cost effective.

We need to find the balance between all these: cost, durability and energy efficiency. This balance is what we call sustainability.

Achieving this, unfortunately, requires complexity. And when things are complicated, people usually respond with hesitancy. New technologies, even though they may be cheaper and better, often take time to take hold.

Lucky for us that a lot of the materials, systems and designs used in “green” construction are actually not new. They are proven, time tested systems that have simply not been cost effective. Until now.  Faced with the issue of a warming planet and the costs to remediate CO2, technologies like solar power, insulated concrete forms, structural insulated panels and much more, are starting to gain momentum. PV and wind power are leading the charge, but soon people will learn that it is much cheaper to find ways to reduce the use of electricity and petro-fuels.

Alviston exists to raise the comfort level of people in transition who want to learn to be more sustainable.

I don’t know why there aren’t way more news stories about this issue. Stories about the commitments companies are making in leading the way to a more sustainable future. Macys, WalMart, Del Monte have all put up huge photovoltaic systems over the past few months, but I’ve barely seen one story on it.

Right now, solar power is booming. But this is just the beginning. PV will soon become obligatory, and building much more efficiently will become the norm as well.

It’s not that we don’t know how to do it. It’s that we know right now it costs more to do. We have to go against our instincts that want instant results. Some of the things we are doing in green building will take several years to bear fruit. But once they do they will make some very tasty treats, like no electric bills, and greatly reduced pollution.

It will take some foresight and determination, but we can do it. We already are.

Mark Alvis

One of the issues we face today is the compression of so many tasks into our hectic days.

In the movie, “The 11^th Hour,” one of the speakers states that, “Things are thieves of time.” Our belief that we need to have these “things” means we have to spend a great deal of our lives and time earning the money with which to buy them.

As we buy more and more stuff, we have less and less time.

One of the big losses here is our ability to educate ourselves, since education also takes time. We rely instead on experts to form our opinions for us. This puts us in the precarious position of not really knowing something we claim to believe in. We’ve been spun.

To really get a handle on what global warming is, you need to understand quite a bit about science. If you don’t take the time to understand, the result is vulnerability. And since we would rather believe something that benefits us, rather than forces us to change, our own lack of knowledge leads us to erroneous conclusions.

The only answer is to learn, either with first hand knowledge, which is difficult to obtain, or to read. Saying, “But I just don’t have time,” is a pretty flimsy argument, when we are looking at the results of our unwillingness to learn.

Here are three books that I have found very helpful:

“The Weather Makers” by Tom Flannery

“How to Stop the Planet from Burning,” by George Monbiot

“The Clean Tech Revolution,” by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder

Mark Alvis

If you didn’t see this week’s Frontline on PBS, you need to. It was impressive. It was about how the world goes about making electricity. The program effectively showed the magnitude of the fossil fuels we are currently burning to make our power. In addition, it showed what was going on in China.

It was like looking in a 40-year-old mirror at ourselves, unbelievable growth, with little concern for what it is doing to the environment. Consumption of coal and gas at incredible rates and plans to expand even faster, which will increase rather than slow down the production of CO2. But I’m not pointing fingers.

In the U.S., it’s already that way, we just aren’t aware of the volumes of coal, oil and gas we burn everyday.

How can we humans still be doing this? Frontline interviewed the CEOs of some of the coal and oil companies in China, India and the U.S. It was as if these people were blind to what is actually taking place in our atmosphere. They said things like, “It’s just not feasible for renewables to produce the amounts of electricity we need.” In comparison, one coal-fired generating plant can produce over 1,300 megawatts. That’s a lot.

Solar panel installations are huge at five megawatts. So right now, the oil and coal companies are right. If we continue to consume and waste at current levels, we can’t do it with renewables alone.

But big oil and coal are missing the point. We are killing the planet. Is their real answer, “We have no choice?”

Well, actually, we do have a choice.

The amount of solar panels installed this year alone in California is mind boggling. The small companies that I’ve worked with have installed more than three megawatts of panels in the last three months. Multiply that by hundreds of other installers and you see real market penetration. And PV isn’t nearly the most cost effective of the renewable energy sources. Wind is coming on strong. It’s free, and there’s a lot of it in this country, and no it isn’t all in Washington D.C.

But probably the biggest untapped source of energy is simply finding ways to use less. Government has to play a big role: cars and trucks that don’t just meet minimum mpg standards, but are rewarded for getting the highest. For those of us old enough to remember the space race, it could be like that.  What if it was “cool” to have the highest mileage car instead of the one that gets the worst.

There are countries where this type of thing is already happening. Countries that are committing to being carbon neutral, not 50 years from now, but by 2010. Currently in the U.S., the electricity we use to light, heat and cool our buildings produces more CO2 than all the cars and trucks combined. We can build way better buildings. We can build buildings that make more power than they consume.

There is so much we can do to drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn. We just need to make the choice to do it.

–Mark Alvis

One of the things we tell our customers who are considering putting up solar is that it makes way more sense to do things that reduce the amount of electricity your home uses first, rather than just putting up more PV (photo voltaic a.k.a. solar) panels.

Now I know you probably come to Alviston to get the latest on cool stuff like solar panels and insulated concrete forms, but today, we’re going a little more basic.

The refrigerator.

In a typical California home, the fridge consumes 20% of all the electricity the house uses. A new Energy Star unit can use up to 50% less.

How about the dishwasher? Most of the energy used goes to heating the water, so energy-efficient models are designed to use less water. Energy Star dishwashers use 25% less electricity than the federal minimum standard.

And we can’t forget the clothes washer. New energy-efficient top loaders use up to 60% less than 10-year-old models. Energy Star units use 50% less water and 40% less electricity. They also remove more water from the clothes so the dryer doesn’t run nearly as long.

And the list goes on. Making sure you have adequate insulation in your attic can be far more cost effective than buying additional photovoltaic panels. The idea is to do all you can to make your house more energy efficient first. Then you can buy a smaller PV system, which means the payback time will be far shorter.

Just remember, you can save more by using less.

–Mark Alvis

Now that winter is approaching, and fuel bills are on people’s minds, we’re all thinking about efficient ways to heat our homes.

I got a call from a Fresno State student named Erin the other day who wanted to know about radiant floor heating. She’s in an interior design class and had a lot of good questions.

I told her that there are a number of types of radiant floor heating systems, and they are very efficient, comfortable and clean and that the concept had been around for a very long time The Romans had a version of it. But there are a few differences in the way it is done now.

One of them is something called PEX tubing. PEX stands for polyethylene cross-linked tubing and that it’s much easier to install. If you are building a house with a concrete slab, the tubing is placed and the concrete is poured on top of it. The tubing is connected through a manifold to a water heater. Then, hot water is circulated through the tubing which heats up the concrete. So you get a warm and cozy floor that heats the whole house.

There are also systems that can be installed on existing floors and wood floors. When used in conjunction with other energy-efficient building methods, such as insulated concrete forms or structural insulated panels, you get an extremely energy-efficient structure.

I told Erin that it was great to hear that a design student was interested in radiant floor heating and energy efficiency, because even though we don’t usually think about what’s inside the walls or what’s under the floor, we need to design with these new systems in mind.  We have to look at a home as a totally integrated system.  Good design is the first step.

–Mark Alvis

Instead of thinking that recycling is doing something better with our trash, we shouldn’t think of it as trash at all. We should think of it as raw materials for other products.  That’s because there’s a difference between ‘trash’ and ‘waste.’ What we are really after is “zero-waste.”

Admittedly, this would take some doing. Going waste-free would affect nearly everything we do. But many businesses are already making great strides towards this goal, and as resources run ever and ever lower, even the economics will drive this behavior. Just look at the value of recycled metals like copper, aluminum and steel.

This “zero-waste” world would have no land fills, we wouldn’t need them. All of our products would be made in ways that they can be reused or made into something else. All organic materials could be used to produce bio-gas, or bio-fuels, or compost for fertilizing soil.

Many companies already reclaim products such as carpet, glass, tires, metals, etc. Even CO2 gas is now being captured and used. We just have to get it into our heads that everything can be designed for a “zero-waste” system. It’s not that it has to be inconvenient, we just have to rethink the way that we do it.

Mark Alvis

One of the primary reasons that low-income families lose their homes is because they can’t pay their utility bills.

Marlin and I met last week with Arlen Hill from Smee Builders and Dave Carpenter and Frank Ruiz from CSET, Community Services and Employment Training in Visalia to talk about a way to remedy this.

We’ve been working with CSET for over a year on the concept of building truly affordable, energy-efficient homes. From the start, Dave has been enthusiastic about the idea as he sees the future of home construction having no choice but to become much more energy-efficient and much less wasteful.

The first four homes would be built using CSET’s labor, which is the key to making the homes affordable. The walls will be made of insulated concrete forms, ICFs, and the roofs would be made from structural insulated panels, or SIPs. This process makes for an almost air-tight house that is extremely well-insulated, quiet and very fast to build.

Since some of these materials do cost more than building conventionally, the key is efficiency and keeping the labor costs down. The benefits are many: homes that are much more energy-efficient and durable, plus invaluable training for the CSET workers to build energy efficiently.

It’s going to take some very forward thinking to get this to happen, especially during these trying times. But I believe, that the current economy, combined with soaring energy costs, is going to drive green building even faster. In fact, it could lead the way out of our current crisis and help make Tulare County the leader in affordable green building.

Mark Alvis

On Thursday, Alviston and Alvis Projects took their show on the road for a meeting with the great folks at the Mariposa Rotary.

We talked about how Alviston has come to be “the center of the sustainable universe” and showed them a brief tour of the site.

It always amazes me how truly interested people are in building green. There were lots of great questions, which tells me that the information on Alviston.com is very much in demand.  So we’ve decided to do more of these types of presentations in the future. Please let us know if you have a group that would like to hear more about Alviston.com and everything sustainable. The folks at the Rotary say we put on a pretty good show.

I did a “show and tell” about ICFs, SIPs, PV and radiant heat. But it seemed that the greatest interest was in pervious concrete. My prediction that just like photovoltaics have really taken off in the last year, all of the energy-efficient building products and systems will follow. It is my belief that the green building industry can greatly help with this countries struggling economy. 

Thanks to all the Rotary folks for having us up, and feeding us a great breakfast. Especially to Jeanie Bartholomew who hosted us.

Mark Alvis