Q+A with John Rooks, founder and president of SOAP

From the March 2012 Bright-Minded Home column in Maine Home + Design:

SOAP, Sustainable Organization Advocacy Partners, helps companies, governments, and non-profits understand, improve, communicate, and own their impact to the world via environmental sustainability, social/cultural sciences, and business strategies. John is also the author More Than Promote: A Monkeywrencher’s Guide to Authentic Marketing. He spoke at TEDx Dirigo about something he called “the wink” of green marketing.

Photo by Jason Esposito, courtesy TEDx Dirigo

What is "the wink"?

It’s when a teenager invites a date upstairs "to listen to music." They both know the sub-text, but it’s a safer question than asking to go upstairs and make-out. The Green Marketing Wink is the same. Most brands promote how green they are through advertising. Kermit the Frog’s "It’s not easy being …" has been used on everything from Fords to pension funds, but it’s often only lip service. The product manufacturer gets to say, "We are green." Wink. The consumer gets a guilt-free purchase and winks back, but underneath, both know it’s simply giving permission to do commerce.

What can businesses do to practice more authentic sustainability?

There are bright spots in the "collaboration is the new competition" movement where companies are collaborating with competitors to reduce environmental impact. Nike, particularly, has done this well by working with other footwear companies on "pre-competition" problem solving, and open-sourcing much of its material impact data and product design tools.

SOAP advocates that companies complete an Authenticity Audit. It’s a scary concept, but one that helps align corporate culture, business goals, and sustainability to create the most effective path toward achieving business goals and sustainability at the same time.

Learn more at tedxdirigo.com and thesoapgroup.com and share your thoughts here.

Q+A with Clare Hannan and Stephen Podgajny of the Portland Public Library

From the Jan-Feb 2012 Bright-Minded Home column in Maine Home + Design:

With the goal of cutting energy costs, phase one of Portland Public Library’s renovation by Scott Simons Architects incorporated many energy-efficient design features, including a solar chimney, low water-consumption plumbing features, high-efficiency gas boilers, radiant floor heating, improved HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) zoning, high-efficiency lamps and ballasts, and lighting fixtures with optical efficiency. The solar chimney takes advantage of the southern exposure and existing stone panels at the front of the building to direct naturally preheated air to the mechanical system.

Photo by Trent Bell for Maine Home + Design

Q: What benefits have these energy-efficient features provided? 
A: Of note was the impact on the natural gas usage—a decrease of just over 23 percent—due to installation of high-efficiency boilers. However, given that we added 2,400 square footage of volume, and that the first phase included only a partial renovation to our HVAC system, we weren’t surprised to see an overall expense increase of just under 10 percent, when comparing usage in 2011 to that of 2009 (the last full year on record), and using 2009 rates for comparison. Our kWh usage went up overall by 14.65 percent, in large part due to additional volume in the atrium area requiring cooling, and the age of our chiller, which was not replaced during the renovation.

Photo by Trent Bell for Maine Home + Design

Q: Are you happy with the results?
A: We believe the measures implemented during Phase One of the renovation resulted in improvements, and overall, the facility is more comfortable for our patrons and staff.

Photo by Trent Bell for Maine Home + Design

Q: What’s next?
A: In Phase Two we plan to work toward final HVAC system upgrades to include high-efficiency air handlers, a new chiller unit, and consideration of solar panels.

Learn more at simonsarchitects.com and portlandlibrary.com.

Q+A with Matthew O'Malia, architect at GO Logic

The GO Home is a 1,500 square-foot, single-family, zero-energy house built at costs comparable to standard residential construction ($225,000). The super-insulated building is heated and powered by a 2.8 KW solar photovoltaic array for electricity, a 60-tube solar thermal system for domestic hot water, an electric resistance baseboard heater, and passive solar gain. The GO Home is the twelfth Passive House in the U.S. and has received a LEED Platinum rating; for the past year it has been used as an office by O’Malia and GO Logic. (See Maine Home + Design article about the GO Home by Rebecca Falzano.)

Photo by Trent Bell for Maine Home + Design

Q: What has surprised you about the performance of the building?

A: The amazing comfort of an interior environment that is quiet, balanced, and consistent year round. Due to the tight envelope, the triple-glazed windows allowing very little heat out or cold in, and the existing heat being circulated by the heat recovery ventilation system, heating costs from the baseboard heater came in less than estimated at only $275 a year, and much of this cost was offset by the solar PV.

Photo by Trent Bell

Q: Which features have been less useful in retrospect?

A: We installed a buried water pipe to use for geothermal cooling in the summer, which was not successful due to condensation buildup.

Q: What’s next?

A: We’ve tried an air-source heat pump in another project and will monitor its efficiency, and if it does well, we will use that technology again. We are also interested in phase-change materials that act like a thermal mass to absorb air and regulate temperatures during heating and cooling seasons.

See gologichomes.com for more info.

Q+A with Jeremy Burden, owner of the Harmony House, Opus II in Freeport

From the October 2011 Bright-Minded Home column in Maine Home + Design:

Designed by architect Christopher Briley of Green Design Studio, Opus II was the first home in New England to receive a LEED Gold Certification based on features including a geothermal heat pump, passive solar design, balloon framing, and super insulation, as well as the use of natural and local materials such as zero VOC paint and local cedar shingles.

What have been the benefits of your home’s efficient features?

The southern orientation, geothermal heat with the concrete radiant flooring, extremely tight envelope, and great insulation provide stellar efficiency. Our energy costs of just over $1,000 a year are approximately a third of the cost of my office in a 1900s building with a modern oil/baseboard. There are no extra rooms or wasted space in this house and the room proportions and window/natural light placement make it a very relaxing and natural space. It feels like the perfect size for our family of four though it is almost 1,500 square feet less than what many of our friends have for similar size families. In our case, less energy, less materials, and less waste means more efficient, more comfortable, and more economical.

Photo by Christopher Briley

Are there any systems or products that you’ve found less useful than others?

The positive pressure fireplace/stove is more than is needed. A simple sealed fireplace would be adequate for a house this tight.

What's Next
This house is ready to install PV panels. I'm waiting for a great cost/benefit scenario to come to fruition before investing in that technology.

See more Chris Briley designs at architectureforlife.com.

Q+A with Mike and Rebecca Lambert, owners of the Redfern House

From the September 2011 Bright-Minded Home column in Maine Home + Design:

Known as one of the more affordable Platinum LEED homes in Maine, the house features a 90-tube solar thermal system for domestic hot water and radiant heat and a 2.1 KW photovoltaic array for electricity, as well as passive-solar features and high-efficiency framing, insulation, and windows.

Q: What do you like most about your home’s efficient features?

A: It feels like a living, breathing system and acknowledges that we are part of nature. Energy production and consumption changes with the seasons, the cycles of day and night, and cloud cover or rain. Our TED energy monitor graphs these fluctuations, and the resulting picture is similar to a graph of photosynthesis or tree growth. In the winter, the passive-solar design and the solar hot water provide a large portion of our heat. However, the best return is our wood stove. As the owner of Canopy Tree Care, I have access to free wood, so it just makes sense.

Q: What challenges have you faced?


A: LEED certification wants you to landscape with drought-tolerant plants, but the property is wet, so many plants died. Then we installed plantings that like wet feet, but it was before that dry spring in 2010, and everything died again. It’s a work in progress, but we’re planning to try edibles next.

Q: What’s next?


A: We’d like to adapt the heating system. We’re currently using an on-demand electric boiler to supplement the solar thermal to heat a 160-gallon tank. It seems that, ideally, the tank should be reserved for collecting heat from the solar hot water, and domestic hot water should be heated separately only if and when needed.

Learn more at redfernhomes.com.