Alviston Blog

My good friend Mike Terpening and I have been talking about starting business that installs spray foam polyurethane. It’s the expanding foam you can buy in a can. As always, I’m intersted in energy efficiency. Spray foam polyurthane turns out to be a great insulator. Mike’s main interst, however, is making the air in his house cleaner, he says there is always a lot of dust and he thinks it’s coming from the insulation in the attic. All of this has prompted me to do a lot of reading about indoor air quality, or more appropriately, lack of quality.

As always seems to happen, when you change one thing, something else is affected. Back in the seventies in response to the energy crunch, we started making our buildings much tighter. Fewer leaks means less wasted energy. Pretty simple. Except, that when we seal our buildings we also seal in the all the “bad air,” the dust, mold, germs etc. 

We have since learned that while making a building nearly air-tight is good from an energy viewpoint, we need to assure a fresh flow of clean air.  There are now systems available that do just this. They clean the incoming air, exhaust the “bad air” and even exchange the energy from outgoing air to the incoming air. These devices are called energy recovery ventilators and they are becoming more and more common as the houses and business we build are constructed to be tighter and tighter.

But back to the spray foam polyurethane. In some parts of the country, this type of insulation is common. Here in Califormia, it is often used in large buildings but rarely in homes.  What we want to do is use it on the underside of the roof(spray foam polyurethane is really sticky and seals extremely well,) and then have a non-vented attic space. This may seem odd for those of us used to an attic that gets up to 160 degrees in the summer, as it may seem that it would take a lot more energy to cool that space. But we think, that in addition to much better indoor air quality, the house itself never heats up. Because the insulation is on the outside, the attic no longer acts like a solar oven.  Which unless you are baking cookies up there, you probably don’t want.

Mark Alvis

I don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out if something is “green” or not, but I do try and use materials and systems that are durable and energy efficient. 

I had a meeting with some Tulare County building folks a couple weeks ago to talk about builiding some energy efficient, affordable homes.  My proposal was too use ICF(insulated concrete forms) for the walls, and SIPs(structural insulated panels) for the roof. These two products have been used for many years in other parts of the country, but are still somewhat rare in California. Because of this, I usually have to answer qusetions about the insulating foam that they are made from.

One of the questions that always comes up is, “What happens if this stuff burns?” 

This has prompted me to have several extensive conversations with fire officials. There is one thing that keeps coming up that relates directly back to durability and energy efficiency.  It makes total sense, and even has a name that we already associate with green things: sprinklers.

If you were to ask a builder how to make a building more durable, he might say, “Build it out of concrete.”  But if you were to ask a fireman how to make a building last longer, he would most likely say, “Keep it from burning.”

While talking to Myles Chute, the City of Dinuba’s Fire Chief, I finally had the V-8 moment I had been waiting for: ICF buildings with fire sprinklers. Homes built with concrete walls, protected with fire sprinklers. It seems so obvious. The concrete won’t burn and if there is a fire, the sprinklers will quickly put it out. Damage is limited and the issue of smoke inhalation is nearly elliminated.

On the surface, fire sprinklers may not appear to be a ”green” system. But when you think about a building as an intergrated system all working together, sprinklers turn out to be a no-brainer.  

Mark Alvis

Green is good.  Green the new black.  Go green or go away.  Green the latest feel good word in our world and being abused somewhere on the planet every second of the day.  It’s obvious that many think tanks believe if you stick the word “green” on your product the world will beat a grassy path to your door step.  The founders of Alviston.com have been immersed in green for the past two decades.  Only now have they been able to share their green-wisdom with the many instead of the few.  Now the Alviston founders run the risk of being lumped in with other greenies-come-lately.  Those who are  less than green but pushing themselves as defenders of the planet.  The opportunists who see a good green thing and jump on it, even though they haven’t changed their way of thinking one bit.   Beware of the green-abuse taking place out there.  Come to Alviston.com for clarity and the pursuit of green-truth.  There’s a lot of green good and Alviston.com exists to find it. Chances are all of this green thinking would have stayed in the tool shed out back if fuel and utility bills had not shot through the energy inefficient roof.  Once people started feeling the strangle hold of soaring energy costs all of this green stuff made good sense.  So here we are now with everyone jumping on the green bandwagon, trying to convince you that they care about the planet and your pocketbook.  Costs may have you vulnerable now, don’t be sucked in by green imposters.  There are a lot of great green concepts that work.  Alviston.com has found many of those green applications and put them into practice.  But there are still many more to find who are good and green and yes even outstanding in their “green” field.   Alviston.com continues to search for them and bring them to light.  Compact florescent light (CFL) of course.  Alviston City Manager  

It may sound like an award ceremony of some sort, but when it comes to sustainable buildings “the envelope” refers to the shell: the floor, walls, roof, windows and doors. And just like at the Oscars, the envelope is all important.

Some of the things we look for in the shell of a building are durability, energy efficiency and “buildability.” Buildability takes into consideration not only the ease and speed of construction, but also the cost of construction.  You might be able to build a home that consumes no power at all, and can be built very quickly. But if it costs a million dollars to build, not many people could afford it.

In our search for the “perfect envelope” we have found that there really isn’t one. It changes with climate, material availability, design and needs. Some people will be  satisfied with a very basic structure, while others may require a more elaborate dwelling. In milder climates, the need for insulation may be almost zero, while in harsher climates, it may make financial sense to spend a good portion of the budget on insulation.

This method of prioritization may seem a little bit confining, but if we don’t recognize the requirements of the climate we live in, we are likely to build structures that are not in sync with our surroundings. The result is a building that is not only more expensive to operate, but needlessly wasteful. This is one of the reasons that building green puts such a strong emphasis on “the big picture.”

We have tried several types of envelopes, including buildings with: insulated concrete form walls and structural insulated panel roofs, insulated concrete form walls with standard truss roofs, and all structural insulated panel homes: floor, walls and roof.  While all have been successful, we are still looking for the one that “really cooks.”

Our next try will be using something called C-SIPs, structural insulated panels made with concrete skins. This will provide more thermal mass on the inside of the home, and will also speed the process of putting on the exterior coating.

Wish us luck.

There is not one solution to building the best envelope. We just need to keep in mind the goals of sustainability when we make our choices.

Mark Alvis

I don’t know if it’s just me, but once I have learned something, I somehow think that everyone else knows it too.

Obviously, this isn’t the case. Even when it comes to things that seem obvious.

But I can’t shake it. Take for instance building a new home or buying a new car. You would think that at this point, with all we know about what’s happening to our planet because of all the fossil fuels we burn, that people would realize we need to change. You would think that when given the tools to make our homes, businesses and automobiles more energy efficient, that we would all jump at the chance.  Why isn’t this happening?

It’s because we have made the assumption that everyone knows what global warming is and understands what the consequences are.  But they don’t.  We’ve assumed that everyone reads the newspaper and watches the specials on PBS and listens to William McCullough.  Even if they want to change, they don’t really know how.

Here’s the deal:  We need to make this information available to everyone. By using a combination of TV, the Internet, radio, seminars and personal communication, we are setting up a pathway to get the information you need to make decisions about what you can do.

Alviston is embarking on an open-ended journey. We are hopeful that we can attract all kinds of people to our town, to talk and learn about how we can live more sustainable lives and to see how we are all connected.

 Mark Alvis

 Fresno, CA-The Mayor of Alviston spotted on Earth Day 2008.  The mayor paid a visit to the Earth Day eco-fest at Clovis West High School.  Alviston.com was unveiled at the environmental event.  The mayor felt it was important to support those in the community willing to reach out and teach green concepts and thought it a perfect place to release the exciting details of Alviston.com.  Green concepts, money and earth savings are major components of the new spot on the worldwide web map, known as Alviston.com.

Welcome to Alviston.  This is the beginning of clarity about the sophisticated subject of green construction.  Our town was built to save you time and money and reduce stress on the planet’s resources.  Stay with us for the very latest in real world-green building.  Alviston City Manager

We built our first energy efficient home in 2001. Quite a year. We learned a great deal about how to make a home more efficient, healthier and more comfortable. Since then, we’ve built several turn-key homes, all with the goals of sustainability in mind. But as my awareness of how the built environment is effecting our planet has grown, building one energy efficient house at a time just doesn’t seem to be enough.

Over the past few years I have attended numerous conferences, seminars and trade shows all touting the benefits of “green building.” Every time I go I get all excited because it feels like there are so many other people interested in all the same things I am: energy efficiency, clean water, clean air.   But each time I come back from one of these shows, I’m disappointed. The world hasn’t miraculously changed overnight.

While I was at one of these conferences in Chico, I realized what was wrong. There is a huge disconnect between those who have the information and those who need it.  It’s not that people don’t want to build green, they just don’t have they information they need to make quality decisions. This isn’t surprising since the number of “green products” that have been introduced in just the past few years is staggering.  Not to mention that some of the systems are quite complicated.

Lot’s of people want to do it, they just don’t know how.

Alviston is all about introducing you to the myriad of  building materials, systems and orginizations that fit into the category of “sustainable,” and finding out how they all work together.

Please come back and visit Alviston as often as you wish.

Mark Alvis, A.K.A., the Mayor