The Kauai House was surrounded by jungle. Or that’s what it felt like. Dark and dank, there was a rotting trellis and an old, termite infected Gazebo. It was landscaping grown old and out of control. The idea was to open everything up and create outdoor living space that would really be used by family and guests.

East Side Before

We planned a water feature just off the west side of the Lanai.

West Side Before

The Gazebo had seen better days and would go. We would remove and store many plants, cut down overgrowth, and lighten up this space considerably.

East Side Before

The East Lawn after the transformation. May Balinese pieces. Lots of light. A fun place to be.

This is where the gazebo once sat. We actually removed and replanted some large palm trees to bring in the light.

This is where the trellis once stood. It’s hard to believe that these plants and features and lawn hide a really challenging put-put golf course.

The West Side water feature including “The Goddess”

The Goddess of the river brings good fortune to this house on the Wailua.

Landscape design by Land Design Collaborative and Trilogy Partners. More photos in the Kauai House Photo Gallery.

As more homeowners consider ways to reduce their impact on the environment, more and more are choosing sustainable and green building methods. It’s really great that so many people are becoming more environmentally conscious, but according to Buildipedia.com, if you want to make sure the final product is a quality green build, you’ll want to make sure your project is certified through a third-party rating system.

The most popular green rating system here in the U.S., and one that you here us at Trilogy Partners talk about a lot is the LEED for Homes system from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Another program, the National Green Building Standard (NGBS), was created by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the International Code Council (ICC). Today we’re going to share a few of the differences between the two programs with you.

• LEED for Homes requires a LEED for Homes provider and a Green Rater for each project. The NGBS’ third-party verification depends on which performance path the homeowner chooses to follow.
• LEED for Homes requires preliminary and final certification of each project, including a preliminary certification and review by the Provider, a preliminary inspection by the Green Rater (typically done before drywall installation), final inspection and testing  by the Green Rater, and a final certification by the Provider.
• The NGBS’ performance path consists of various inspections and testing similar to that of the EPA Energy Star program. This includes testing and inspecting individual components, such as grading the insulation installation. All testing is performed by NAHB-approved verifiers.

You can learn more about LEED for Homes and the NGBS, as well as the similarities and other differences between the two programs, at Buildipedia.com.

Photo credits: Ecohomemagazine.com and Builderonline.com.

BY KATHLEEN LYNN | Renovating? You could just rip up the old room and sweep everything into the trash bin. But a growing number of homeowners, architects and builders are trying to reuse or recycle construction materials whenever possible — for reasons both environmental and aesthetic.

Architect Anthony Garrett of the Bilow Garrett Group in Ridgefield Park went this route with the gut renovation of a Hoboken building. Its wooden floor joists, more than a century old, were reclaimed and trucked to Montville Township, to be reused as flooring and exposed beams in a planned mixed-use development.

“It’s dismantling, as opposed to demolition,” Garrett said. “I can’t think of anything more sustainable than that; there’s an embedded energy in that material that we salvage, and we don’t have to cut any more trees down.”

With construction waste making up as much as 25 percent to 50 percent of the junk in landfills, the push to salvage building materials is “gaining a huge amount of momentum,” said Anne Nicklin, executive director of the Building Materials Reuse Association, an Oregon-based trade group.

Reused materials are not just better for the environment; they also can be higher quality, she said.

“You can’t buy old-growth timber at Home Depot, but you can find it in a building that’s coming down,” Nicklin said.

Municipalities, worried about scarce landfill space, are offering cheaper or faster permits for deconstruction, rather than demolition, Nicklin said. And federal agencies offer training to workers on how to salvage building materials. She estimates that 75 percent or more of most buildings can be reused or recycled.

A number of non-profit retail outlets offer a marketplace for old building materials. They include Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore in Mine Hill, Build It Green NYC’s store in Queens, and Connecticut-based Green Demolitions, which has a store in Riverdale occupying space donated by Bograd’s Fine Furniture.

Green Demolitions targets affluent homeowners who decide that their kitchens aren’t quite right, but who feel guilty about dumping cabinets and appliances that are sometimes only a few years old.

It might be hard to believe that homeowners would replace kitchens that are in good shape, but “they want the kitchen they want,” said Green Demolitions founder Steve Feldman. His pitch: By donating the old kitchen to his company, homeowners can save the disposal costs, plus get a tax deduction because Green Demolitions’ profits go to support addiction treatment programs.

“Why throw out something that’s perfectly good and totally usable?” said Alan Asarnow, sales manager at Ulrich Inc. in Ridgewood, a home renovation company that encourages clients to recycle their old kitchens. Many of the kitchens his clients donate are only about 10 years old, he said.

Green Demolitions sold 600 kitchens last year in its three stores; most were donated by homeowners, but about 100 were store displays donated by kitchen remodeling contractors.

“When you think about something being thrown out, sometimes that’s where the opportunity is,” Feldman said. He estimates his company keeps 2 million pounds of debris out of landfills each year.

Those who buy the old kitchens and other materials at Green Demolitions or the ReStores find discounts of 50 to 80 percent.

Stephanie and Vincent Gurnari of Oakland visited the Green Demolitions store recently, looking to add a few cabinets to their existing kitchen, but spotted a full kitchen — including appliances — for just under $6,000.

“We just kind of jumped on the opportunity,” Stephanie Gurnari said. “It was too good of a deal to pass up. … We’ve got champagne tastes, and we wouldn’t have been able to get some of the features we got with the budget we had.”

Of course, this kitchen was built for someone else’s home, so the Gurnaris are going to have to be a bit creative about fitting it into their space. But Vincent Gurnari, a teacher, used to work in a cabinet shop, and they have some handy relatives, so they’re pretty confident about making it work.

“Kitchens are modular. They’re boxes,” Feldman said. Green Demolitions usually recommends buying a kitchen that’s a little bigger than your space to provide flexibility.

Reusing or recycling materials can help builders get the environmental stamp of approval known as LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental design. The LEED certification is awarded by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council, which gives builders credit for keeping materials out of landfills.

A decade ago, “the marketplace was unsophisticated in its ability to effectively divert a large amount of materials from the landfill,” said Daniel Topping, an architect with NK Architects in Morristown. But it’s a lot easier these days to find a new home for old materials.

“It’s just a little more legwork,” Topping said.

Because reusing materials requires careful deconstruction of a room or building, it is usually more time-consuming and can be more expensive than simple demolition. But it also doesn’t create the clouds of dust — potentially laden with asbestos or lead paint — created by demolition, Nicklin pointed out.

“There’s a steep learning curve for a lot of contractors,” said Petia Morozov of the architecture firm MADLAB in Montclair, who takes a “surgical” approach to deconstructing a house.

Morozov and her partner, Juan Alcala, worked recently on Alcala’s brother’s home, a ranch house in Township of Boonton that was taken down to the foundation and rebuilt. They reused a lot of the wood and brick, for esthetic as well as environmental reasons. Cypress wood paneling and some flooring from the home’s interior weren’t needed in the new design, but were salvaged and resold, helping to offset the costs of the project.

Homeowner Carlos Alcala said he and his wife, Vicki, were motivated partly by a desire to be green, but also by their feeling that the re-used brick is more attractive, and preserves some of the house’s history. Saving money was also part of the equation.

“When it makes sense, especially from an economic perspective, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t reuse materials,” he said.

From NorthJersey.com E-mail: lynn@northjersey.com

The lower level bathroom in the Kauai house served two bedrooms as well as the rest of the main floor. It was small and cramped.

Lower Level Bath Before

The bathroom featured an tile mural of an undersea world.

Lower Bath Before

A slab of Monkeywood as a freestanding counter and black onyx sinks help transform the look.

The room was expanded by creating a covered outdoor bathing grotto.

Featuring a carved stone tub from Bali.

And double showers.

More Kauai Before and After posts to follow. Visit the Kauai Remodel Gallery for more great photos of this fantastic project. Design by Trilogy Partners and Azaya Design.

Buildings up to 30 storeys possible, award-winning architect tells conference

BY RANDY BOSWELL, POSTMEDIA NEWS A study funded by the B.C. government to help promote the province’s forestry sector will conclude that buildings as tall as 30 storeys could be made almost entirely out of wood, says an award-winning Vancouver architect leading the research.

Michael Green, who detailed his vision for the world’s first “timber skyscraper” during a keynote address last week at a Green Cities conference in Australia, told Postmedia News on Monday that a provincially supported study due to be released later this month will show that such buildings can be cost-saving as well as both fire-and earthquakesafe, and that Canada is ideally positioned to lead an emerging global “race” to reinvent the highrise construction industry -with wood challenging steel and concrete as the ideal building material.

“The exciting thing is, from an engineering point of view, we think we have something that is on track to be able to design -comfortably -20storey buildings,” said Green, a partner in the Vancouver firm McFarlane Green Biggar Architecture + Design Inc.

“And certainly, we believe, quite reasonably, we’ll be able to stretch that to 30 storeys.”

A nine-storey building in Britain now the world’s tallest wooden structure. Green said a 10-storey project in Australia, a 17-storey building in Norway and a 30-storey structure in Austria have been proposed recently.

The Green-led Canadian study is a “pre-feasibility” analysis of what could become the world’s tallest wooden highrise -a 12-storey structure envisioned for an undisclosed Vancouver location. The study is being funded as part of an initiative launched last year by B.C. Forests Minister Pat Bell.

“It is our understanding that based on preliminary research results, Michael Green thinks that it may be possible to build a 30-storey building using wood-hybrid construction,” ministry spokeswoman Vivian Thomas told Postmedia News.

“We’re looking forward to receiving and reviewing the results of MGB’s research before deciding on next steps,” she added. “In April 2009, B.C. amended its building code to allow six-storey wood frame construction -the previous building height limit for wood frame construction was four storeys.”

In announcing the $1.75-million creation of the Wood Enterprise Coalition in April, Bell highlighted the province’s particularly rich endowment of forest resources and pledged the seed funding “to promote the use of wood in commercial and institutional construction.

The head of one of the coalition partners, the provincial marketing organization WoodWORKS! BC, hailed the initiative as another sign of the “renewed interest and renaissance in building with wood.”

WoodWORKS! B.C. executive director Mary Tracey said at the time the fund would help “build momentum in the ‘Wood First’ movement in B.C., across Canada and around the world.”

Among the first grants disbursed by the coalition was to Green and his MGB Architect colleagues, who won a top North American design award last year for their eye-popping creation of a retail restroom in Vancouver’s Gastown district with walls made from 5,000 paperback novels.

Green said Canada should be a leader in developing wood-highrise projects and expertise, and points to recent innovations in construction techniques that allow bigger, stronger modules of wood to be used in erecting much taller structures than previously imagined.

Vancouver’s potential prototype wooden highrise would demonstrate the ecological benefits, economic value and structural strength of wood-based construction, he said.

“My dream is to build a skyscraper ith a wood structure,” Green also rote in a recent essay. “That coment usually brings a bit of rumble rom the back of the room as it may eem absurd in today’s wood context, ut today’s context will not be with us or long. New engineered products are hanging the scale of our dreams.”

In an interview from Melbourne, Green said the environmental benefits of using wood for highrise construction -especially in a country such as Canada, where sustainable forestry management is widely practised -would, in the near future, be the key competitive advantage over carbonintensive steel and concrete.

One of the most exciting features of the Kauai house is the lower level Lanai with its great river views. But it was sorely in need of an update.

Lanai Before

We opened up the entire wall between the lanai and the rest of the house, installing folding glass doors. We also installed motorized screens so the Lanai could be used at night, when the mosquitoes come out to play.

We pulled up the old red brick tile and installed new tile in a “river” pattern.

The Lanai becomes a western style dining area as opposed to the Tatami dining area (foreground.)

The lanai new lanai may now be the most used room in the house with it’s great views of the river.

And the gardens. The “river”pattern snakes across the floor toward a water feature.

A water feature occupied by the Goddess fountain.

More Kauai Before and After posts to follow. Visit the Kauai Remodel Gallery for more great photos of this fantastic project. Design by Trilogy Partners and Azaya Design.

New reports have revealed that the remodeling industry is bouncing back and is ahead of the building industry in the recovery curve. According to Builder magazine, national spending on remodeling reached $300 billion in 2010, as reported by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The report offers predictions that remodeling spending will increase at a rate of about 3.5 percent this year and in the years to come. While that is below the 12 percent annual pace of the housing boom that occurred from 2003 to 2007, it is quite higher than the downturn from 2007 to 2009, in which remodeling spending dropped by nearly 13 percent.

Gwen Biasi, spokesman for the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, said “It’s picking up somewhat out there. We’re hearing from members that their phones are ringing again and people are coming up with money for remodeling projects. The project aren’t as huge as they might have been five years ago, but [remodelers] are seeing an increase.”

Perhaps this news is a sign that the building industry will see an increase in spending in the next few years, too.

Photo credit: Nchsa.org.

After Hurrican Iniki hit Kauai in 1992, the Kauai House was remodeled. The master bathroom featured painted green and white porcelain tiles and a glass block shower stall. Very early 90s themes. For our bathroom renovation the plan was to expand the bathroom by combining it with a large closet. In doing so we would create a bathing “lanai”  overlooking the Wailua River. The lanai would also be a sitting area for the master bedroom, in a sense creating a very island style “bridge” between the bath and bedroom.

Master Bath Before Remodel

Master Bath Before Remodel

The new bathroom features a lanai with twin tubs. A wall of folding glass doors separate the lanai from the rest of the bathroom and the master bedroom.

Twin tubs on the lanai overlook the Wailua River. The lanai also serves as a sitting area for the master bedroom. Because the lanai is in essence open to the elements, the doors between it and the bed and bath are closed during inclement weather.

The master bath features an antique Chinese Chest converted to a double vanity. The feel is tropical and the look timeless.

To the right of the vanity is a shower with twin shower heads. Tile includes tumbled Ankara on the floor, Ankara brick on wainscot, and a chipped gold Onyx on the walls.

The shower stall with twin shower heads and Ankara and Onyx tile.

More Kauai Before and After posts to follow. Visit the Kauai Remodel Gallery for more great photos of this fantastic project. Design by Trilogy Partners and Azaya Design.

Architectural feats of our day are no less than marvels. But among the most breathtaking spectacles are the practical green buildings that are becoming more and more prevalent in our communities. Efforts for environmentally friendly architecture have resulted in a vast array of simple and affordable building techniques that are adaptable to almost any building type. Ideas like white roofing, organic insulating, and the use of high efficiency windows are a few of the simple moves making a huge impact.

The roof of a Wal-mart store in Chino California

White roofs
As we know, light colors, especially white, reflect heat while dark colors absorb it. Today, white roofs are catching on as an integral part of the green architectural movement, and an attractive alternative to traditional dark toned roofing materials. These cool-roofs can cut household cooling costs by 10% every year, meaning energy bills are slashed and energy use is reduced. Though these roofs may not be ideal for cities that have harsh cold winters, due to increased heating bills, they are perfect for homes that spend more on cooling than heating. Even large international corporations like Walmart are utilizing white roofs to help curb their energy consumption and make their operations more environmentally friendly. It is a relatively affordable and easy to apply tactic.

Recycled Denim Insulation

Organic insulation
Living with old insulation is not only expensive and less efficient, it is also dangerous. Asbestos is a carcinogen that can often be found in old insulation. This toxin can cause a cancer called mesothelioma. Symptoms of mesothelioma often lie dormant for 20-50 years and mesothelioma life expectancy rates are extremely low. One sure way to avoid mesothelioma and to simultaneously reduce energy costs is to use organic insulation. Sheep’s wool and cotton insulation are toxin free and prevent the accumulation of moisture indoors. Not only does this remove harmful toxins, this also reduces the chance of bacteria and mold-related illness. There are many products available including recycled denim insulation, that are affordable, organic, and high performance. Another option is to explore the use of straw bale insulation which is growing in popularity.

High efficiency windows
High efficiency windows by Energy Star and other popular green companies also help to reduce energy costs. These windows use double or even triple glazing techniques and low e-coating to trap heat and to increase coolness respectively. Also, the materials used to frame the windows can reduce heating costs by not conducting heat. Using wood, vinyl, and fiberglass frame windows is preferred over the commonly used aluminum, while it’s also a great idea to insulate the window frames.

To reduce energy waste, to cut energy costs, and to avoid occupant health issues, it is advisable to consider green architectural techniques for your home or business. Using white roofs, installing organic insulation, and upgrading to high efficiency windows are great, affordable, ways to take steps towards a greener and healthier future while combating devastating climate change.

From Talkitech.com by Krista Peterson