Alviston Blog

There is an article in National Geographic’s March issue, titled “It Starts At Home,” that every American should read. With colorful thermal images and easy-to-understand graphics, it plainly spells out the effect we are having on our planet as we continue “business as usual” in the way we use electricity and drive our vehicles.

The article also clearly shows how making small changes in our “carbon diets” will greatly reduce the amount of CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere. Little changes like changing light bulbs, combining trips and turning off unused appliances.

According to David Gershon, author of Low Carbon Diet, “If you can get enough people to do things in enough communities, you can have a huge impact. When people are successful, they say, Wow, I want to go further. I am going to push for better public transportation, bike lanes, whatever. If you come at it from enough different directions, eventually, the ice cracks.” 

They call it the “mice on the ice effect.” Making one little change, like putting in a compact fluorescent light bulb, would not seem enough to make much of a difference. However, if you get enough people doing it, enough people changing incandescent bulbs to CFLs, enough people driving high-mileage cars, enough people building energy efficiently, when there are finally enough mice, the ice will break and there will be a dramatic change.

Most people think that cars and trucks make most of our air pollution. However, buildings, not cars, produce the most CO2 in the U.S. So making our buildings more energy efficient will have a tremendous effect. Couple that with the fact that for every kilowatt-hour used in our homes, 2.2-kilowatt hours are lost just in transmission. This means reducing our use has a multiplying effect. For every kilowatt-hour you do not use, you save 3.2 kilowatts altogether.

This is certainly not to say cars do not produce a huge amount of CO2: they do. Our cars consume nine million barrels of petroleum a day releasing 19.6 pounds of CO2 per gallon of gas into the air.

If we improved the mileage of our vehicles by just five miles per gallon, we would cut the carbon emissions by 239 million tons a year, a 20% decrease.

Moreover, that is just five miles per gallon. What will happen if we increased the mileage by 80%? Do you think it cannot be done? Well, think again and say hello to a new breed of car that can get 100 miles per gallon plus. The Chevy Volt and the Toyota Plug-in Hybrid will both be in the club. After paying $4.50 a gallon last summer, I am thinking that just about everyone in America is going to want to join.

I used to think we needed willpower to make this type of change. Now, I do not think it has anything to do with will. I think it has everything to do with pulling our heads out of the sand and realize what is going on. We have the answers. We have had them for a long time. We just have to get a lot more mice on the ice.

–Mark Alvis

Every year, for the past five years, I have had the pleasure of being in the Logix ICF booth at the World Ag Expo in Tulare. For some reason, this trade show delivers the best leads for us. People are genuinely interested in building more energy-efficient homes, and take the time to educate themselves about it.

Even though the economy is taking a hit, the interest in green building is still high. Moreover, people are actively looking for ways to be more energy efficient with their homes and cars. I think this is another sign that as we come out of this current slump, the trend to healthier, more energy-efficient buildings will continue to gain momentum until all new building are built this way. I also think the concept of sustainability is going to spread to everything we do.

Of course, millions of older homes need to become more efficient and less polluting. We will need to come up with a cost-effective way to do “green” remodeling.

We have a good start since we have been doing just that at Alvis Projects for nearly ten years. We now have a long list of items that can make anyone’s house more efficient. Tankless water heaters, low voc paints, high efficiency windows, better insulation, reflective roof coatings, compact fluorescent lighting, LED lighting, dual flush toilets, photovoltaic (solar) panels, etc. The list gets longer every day.

I thought there might be a somber feeling at this year’s Expo because of all the bad economic news; however, I did not feel that at all. Instead, I left with the feeling that when times get tough in this country, we really show what we are made of. Judging from all the people I talked to, we are going to be just fine.

–Mark Alvis

Most people think of remodeling as simply making your house look better or maybe adding a room or two. If possible, why not make your home “greener” and get your house to start saving you money at the same time?

Making your house “greener” means to focus on several things, including aesthetics. It means you need to look at energy efficiency, indoor air quality, water use and more. It means to look at your house from a holistic point of view. This type of remodel could even end up giving you a “net-zero” home, a home that makes as much power as it uses.

Impossible you say. It is being done already. By using new construction materials and systems, homes throughout the world are finding ways to use drastically less energy and because of this, they are able to produce enough power to run the house using renewable power generation techniques like solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal.

The acronyms for some of the materials that make this possible may sound unfamiliar, but many of these systems have been around for a very long time. Photovoltaic panels, solar panels that make power from sunlight, have been around for over fifty years. Insulated concrete forms have been around for nearly as long.

Because different climates require different heating and cooling needs, there is no “one size fits all” building method that will work everywhere. Therefore, location and material availability need to be taken into consideration. Again, we need to look at the whole picture to make the best choices. To look at the whole picture, we need to know just what products are available, and which systems will work the best in each of our particular climates.

Buildings cost a lot and last for a long time. We will need to greatly reduce the amount of energy it takes to run these older buildings if we are to get a handle on global warming.

–Mark Alvis