We Can All Lift a Finger

April 23, 2006 

By Dan Phillips

“Clean Living” is a column about sustainability in residential building and maintenance, and will offer clean alternatives for saving money in the home environment.  As a society, we will not be able to sustain the way we live now without serious consequences.   

Who could possibly care about such a thing? 

Well, for starters, prices are going up.  Not just sort of.  They’re skyrocketing.  Clean Living will help you save some money. Gotten a tax bill recently?  Do you have the blues about utilities?  Are you building a new house?  Would you like to remodel your old house?  When you are remodeling, do you grieve just a bit about the things you send to the landfill?  They’re still useful, but not to you.  But what else can you do?

Clean Living will take on lots of issues.  It is sponsored by Brigid’s Place, a non-profit organization sponsored by Christ Church Cathedral.  Brigid’s Place, in turn, is sponsoring Brigid’s Paradigm—an affordable housing initiative that will encourage eco-villages built with recycled materials and urban agriculture.  We will have lots of information that will save you money, and lots of suggestions for how the average person could tidy up wasteful ways and land more dollars in his pockets. Really.

The statistics are numbing.  America produces 25% of the world’s energy, but yet consumes 75% of the world’s energy production.  Building an 1800 square foot house produces 7.5 tons of waste.  A front-loading clothes washer uses 14 gallons per load; a top-load uses 42 gallons.  Since the price of water will increase ten-fold in the next decade, that could be of interest.  An inefficient air conditioner will gobble up enough extra electricity in a year to pay the difference in price of a higher-priced, more efficient model.  If you have a metal roof, misting your roof during the hot weather can save 30% on electricity. 

We are all perhaps a bit guilty of fouling the environment in some aspect of our lives.  While we are the benefactors of a magnificent culture, unfortunately we can also be the victims of its runaway growth.  How can one person possibly start a more responsible lifestyle?  Trade in our gas-guzzler?  Well, when the time comes, perhaps if we are informed, we might make a more intelligent, sustainable decision.  Immediately replace our air-conditioner?  Well, no.  But one day your old clunker will give up, and if prepared, you can make a good decision on its replacement.  Eat only bean sprouts and tofu?  Well, no.  But perhaps we can cut back on our consumption of red meat, and start composting vegetable waste.

We’ll explore hidden costs that eventually find their way to your checkbook.  Landscaping is a good example.  If you choose local species for landscaping, you automatically duck out of having to water as often.  Since water usage is typically an index for sewer charges, you save some money there, too. It simply takes a bit of imagination. Local landscapers are very aware of “xeriscaping”—which is the term for a no-maintenance landscaping strategy.

And we’ll explore life styles.  If you entertain a lot, it is appropriate to have a formal dining room.  If you have a formal dinner twice a year—Thanksgiving and Christmas—then perhaps you might want to rethink alternatives to a formal dining room in your new house.  While we tend to believe that living in the Augustan style is the birthright of every American, every square foot you have in your house has the overhead of heating and cooling, maintenance and cleaning.  So heating and cooling a room used only twice a year means that you are paying for something you don’t use 363 days a year.  You may as well be heating and cooling your carport. 

Brigid’s Place will have a link on its website that also has a library.  In the library you will be able to access how-to articles, useful links, and professionals who have the right answers for sustainable living in the 21^st Century.  The website will serve builders and consumers alike with up-to-date information on everything from framing in new construction to discouraging mosquitoes with the plants you choose around your yard.

If you are thinking of buying a home for the first time, we’ll put you in touch with programs that will slice up to $16,000 off the price of your home.  After all, affordability is a function of sustainability.  If you can’t afford to live in the house that you want, then you can’t afford to maintain it, and eventually it will require more resources and money than you have.  There are good decisions and bad decisions to be made in buying a home. 

We’ll give you insight and information about building inspectors, who occasionally get a bad rap.  First of all, they are people—much like you and I—who are simply trying to do their job.  Secondly, they are enforcing minimum standards for safety and energy efficiency—standards that are the product of thousands of building professionals’ input across the country and great quantities of research. We have all voted to have them enforce these standards.  Life without them in a community would be bleak indeed.  They’re savvy, bright, energetic and friendly, and if they don’t have an answer for you, they can point you in the right direction.  Try them.  

We’ll also have some “how-to” articles, such as installing a tile floor from broken, salvage tile—that’s been going on in Europe for centuries.  Perhaps you would like to add a rain-barrel to your home to water the plants or flush the toilet.  We’ll lead you through it.  Are you interested in a solar hot-water heater?  There doesn’t seem to be any reason to pay for hot water during a typical Texas summer.  If there is enough interest, we’ll lead you through a simple, do-it-yourself system.  Would you like to make your own paint?  You can do it with buttermilk, lime and a pigment of your choice.  In short, there are hundreds of sustainable ways to tune up your life—things that you personally can do—to save you money, and take a bit of pressure off the environment. 

Everyone must live somewhere.  The question is whether that person can make the most of basic living expenses.  And so, Clean Living will be a regular discussion of how an average person, an average builder, and an average community such as yours—can maximize the value of the resources available.  In the end, we all win.  We will be one of a mere handful of communities in Texas that has such an effort. It will provide political bullets for our leaders, and, ultimately, make our own lives more pleasant.  Every month we’ll be here.  Watch for us.

Dan Phillips is a builder in Huntsville, Texas.