There will be some old, some new, and something for everyone at this year’s Green Buildings Open House! This annual event kicks off the first weekend in October for two days of touring some of the most incredible green buildings in the greater Ithaca area. And it all starts with an exciting presentation on Friday night at Cornell’s LEED Gold-rated Weill Hall.

Join professor John “Jack” Elliott as he discusses where green buildings fit into the larger picture, including climate change, the production and disposal of toxic materials, and indoor air quality. What has been the impact of creating and populating buildings? How does green building address some of these environmental and social problems? How much can we expect green building methods and materials to help solve the problems created by our built environment? What other solutions will have to be—and are being—developed?

Come find out at least some of the answers to these and other questions at the special presentation Green Building: Attaining the Promise. Then rest up for a big weekend of touring the County (and just over the border into neighboring counties!) when more than 30 homes, businesses, and one amazing bus open their doors for a behind-the-scenes look at real-world green buildings. There are many new sites on this year’s tour, along with some old favorites, where homeowners have at least one more year of experience to share living in and with their homes. You’ll see some of the latest green technologies, including solar thermal panels and tubes, geothermal heating and cooling, photovoltaics, and wind energy, as well as traditional green building methods and materials such as timber framing, strawbale, natural and non-toxic finishes, masonry heaters, passive solar design, living roofs, cob and much more. And the Green Guerrillas will have their solar mobile production studio—a biodiesel-powered 1990 Ford EconoLine bus—parked at the First Peoples’ Festival in DeWitt Park all day Saturday. For complete information on all sites, including which day they are open, visit ccetompkins.org/gb-open-house.

Van, bicycling, and walking tours led by expert guides will be available again this year. Preregistration is required for these, but there is a charge only for the van tours ($10/person or $15 for two from the same household). Call Guillermo Metz at Cooperative Extension to preregister.

As always, the Open House is free and open to the public, but this year we are accepting donations at each site on the tour, to help defray costs. Please consider donating, but there’s no need to donate more than once as you tour several sites (unless, of course, you really want to).

Look for volunteers at most sites, wearing bright green t-shirts emblazoned with “Green Buildings Open House” on the front and “Volunteer” on the back. They can help answer your questions and get you signed in. Please sign in at each site you visit, as that helps us track numbers and learn more about how the tour is working, which is critical to our program’s success.

And, look for the official brochure around town. This year, we’ve produced a fold-out poster with complete information about the event, a matrix of each site’s features, full-color maps, and individual listings for every site. It’s available at Greenstar, Ithaca Bakery on Meadow St., Tompkins County Public Library, as well as other locations around town, and here at Cooperative Extension. Inside you’ll also find a short mail-in survey, which is also available on-line at ccetompkins.org/2010-open-house-survey. Please fill it out on-line or tear it off the brochure and mail it in. Future programs depend on your input! If you have any questions or comments, e-mail or call Guillermo Metz, Green Building and Renewable Energy Program Coordinator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, at gm52@cornell.edu or 272-2292, x185.

Special Presentation: Green Building: Attaining the Promise
At Cornell’s Weill Hall
Friday, October 1
7p-9p
$5 suggested donation

The Green Buildings Open House runs Saturday, October 2 and Sunday, October 3, from 10-4. For a full listing of sites, their features, and which of the two days they are open, go to ccetompkins.org or call Guillermo Metz at 272-2292, x185.

Sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County and the Ithaca Green Building Alliance, as part of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s Green Buildings Open House and the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour.

ITHACA, NY – February 22, 2010 – What makes the built environment sustainable and also comfortable and beautiful? How can we make our homes as functional as possible while using the most “green” materials available and still stay within budget? These are issues that plague anyone interested in green building. But, while they may make the process challenging, they should never force anyone to drop the initial dream.

By balancing the feasible with the ideal, green building confronts the status quo of traditional construction without forsaking practicality, comfort, and beauty. As the need for an environmentally conscious future is becoming increasingly significant, so is the role of green building as both a means of development and a framework for sustainable living. In its sixth year, the Green Building Seminar Series will explore some of the latest concepts in green building and give you the tools to wade through some of the most significant challenges to making your next project a fully sustainable and green one.

The Seminar Series will kick-off on March 2^nd with an investigation into “Evaluating Green Products and Materials”. As “green” becomes mainstream, it’s becoming harder to assess how products and materials stack up. This presentation will include an overview of resources used by the pros to evaluate materials, life cycle assessment techniques, commercial programming tools for making design decisions, and other decision-making strategies. Whether you’re a homeowner, builder, or contractor this presentation will help you in choosing the materials that best fit your needs while meeting the “green” criteria most important to you.

On March 9^th, “Designing for Change” will cover aging in place and functional design that can adapt to changing lifestyles and stages, as well as planning for additions—and how to make the most of your space without adding on.

Staff from Finger Lakes ReUse will cover strategies and local resources for reducing, reusing and recycling construction materials and confront the issues of on-site waste management in “Reducing Construction Waste” on March 16^th. They will also discuss the basics of deconstruction and options in the community for salvaging usable building materials.

The line of attack for reducing energy consumption includes lifestyle, materials and design choices. While weatherization and conserving energy are critical, there are some approaches that take a radical look at reducing consumption. On March 23^rd, a panel of local experts will present “Designing for Maximum Energy Efficiency”, a discussion of alternative designs including Passiv Haus, Net Zero Energy Building Design, and Climate Responsive Energy.

The Seminar Series continues on March 30^th with a presentation by Ian Shapiro, President of Taitem Engineering, who will discuss a new approach he developed for looking at how we think about our built environment. “Designing from the Outside In” will delve into the importance of looking at the surrounding natural environment and its relationship to the inside environment.

The final seminar will be held on April 6^th and cover “Green Building Theory and Reality”. Based on a collection of data-driven and anecdotal experiences, this presentation will look at how we’ve been doing with green building in the Tompkins County area—are our materials and methods achieving everything we expected of them?

It is through the continued regional support from citizens throughout Tompkins County and the surrounding area that the Seminar Series has been able to be so successful over the years. The goal of the series has always been to highlight topics that are pertinent to the public agenda while emphasizing new exciting concepts and processes. So, come with an open mind and eager participation!

The seminars run Tuesday evenings from 7 to 9, and will be held in the First Unitarian Church of Ithaca Annex (208 East Buffalo St., near the corner of Aurora St.). The series is presented by Tompkins County Cooperative Extension in partnership with the Ithaca Green Building Alliance, with support from the First Unitarian Church of Ithaca. Fee: $5/seminar or $25/series, scholarships available. Dates and topics are subject to change. For the latest information, contact Guillermo Metz at gm52@cornell.edu or 272-2292, x.185, or visit www.ccetompkins.org.

Apollonya Porcelli is a Cornell University senior who has worked with Cooperative Extension and IGBA on a variety of green building initiatives over the past couple of years, including helping to coordinate the Green Building Seminar Series and the Green Building Open House.

In a recent press release, the National Association of Home Builders suggested “The key to the mainstreaming of green is to make sure that consumers understand the value of green upgrades – and exactly how cost-effective sustainable construction can be in the long run”. Indeed, helping people who own a home, or are considering purchasing one, understand both the long term and short term benefits of building and remodeling to a higher performance standard is critical in enhancing the rate at which we improve our housing stock and, not inconsequentially, improve the comfort and inherent value in our homes.

Yes, green building is largely about reducing our demand for fossil fuels that generate our heat and our power. But, in a more holistic approach, green building is also about improving our comfort by controlling heat loss, water vapor, indoor air quality and interior lighting. Taken a step further, green building also considers the impact of site development on transportation and utility infrastructure, ecosystems, surface and subsurface water, and native vegetation. It concerns itself with access to solar energy and daylight to generate power or heat or to provide abundant natural lighting. And it addresses the broader impact of material sourcing, manufacturing, waste and transport.

Energy Star®, a program of the US Department of Energy, was the first universal rating system that provided builders and homeowners with a prescriptive path for designing and building homes that were more energy efficient than required by the building code. It set as a benchmark a 15% reduction in energy use versus a building built to code.

Since then, the United States Green Building Council introduced its LEED® for Homes program which took the basic objective of energy savings and added important additional considerations including land use, social transformation, global ecological impact, material and resource efficiency and water resource management, among others. And, as of 2009, the National Association of Home Builders has released another rating system called the National Green Building Standard. Patterned in many ways after the LEED® for Homes Program, it too covers a much more comprehensive look at the impacts and opportunities in building homes that are more efficient, more healthful and more responsible. And now, Energy Star® is introducing an enhanced, more aggressive rating system to be rolled out over the next two years called Energy Star® 2011.

Taken together, these are all significant steps in the right direction. However, by their very nature, they address opportunities for building better new homes, but are not yet broadly applicable to existing housing. And, since they need to enable builders and manufacturers of all sizes to participate, they still fall short of what’s possible with current knowledge, materials and technologies.

There is a simpler, more immediate approach that could have an even greater impact on “greening” our way of life.

SMALLER HOMES ARE A SMART STRATEGY TO GET TO GREEN FASTER AND FOR LESS.

Since 1995, the size of new homes has continued to climb every year, without exception, until 2008 when size declines occurred in most areas across the country. Whether this is the start of a trend only time will tell, but it’s a hopeful sign. A larger home requires more materials, more environmental impact, more land area, and takes more energy to operate. And building these to current code leaves far too much opportunity on the table.

Fortunately, the movement toward smaller homes is growing. And, given the recent economic softening, looking into smaller homes, whether new or existing, can be a smart strategy for achieving your green living goals. Quoting from a December 2009 article in REALTOR® magazine, “For buyers trying to play it safe in the softening housing market, a smaller home may be the way to go. Smaller homes tend to not only be more affordable but more energy efficient.” Here in Tompkins County, our housing stock tends to be largely made up of older, smaller homes. Many have been upgraded with more efficient systems and newer windows, while others remain largely unchanged since their construction, a future “green” home in the waiting.

If you’ve been considering taking steps towards creating a healthful, quality and highly efficient home for yourself, then I encourage you to learn about what’s possible by identifying and then selecting resources available here in Tompkins County, including architects, designers, builders and Realtors®, who understand the market, the industry, and the opportunity to make real progress in living green.

Brent Katzmann is owner of Balance Studio, LLC, a local firm that specializes in green design and interiors, a licensed Realtor® with Warren Real Estate, specializing in green homes, and a founder of the Ithaca Green Building Alliance. He can be reached through his website: www.balance-studio.net or by phone at 607-280-8353.