Seeding the City
Posted on | January 12, 2010 | No Comments
We’re participating an a public art project called Seeding the City.
The project aims to install tiny green roof modules (about 4 square feet each) on a large number of city roofs and mark them with flags so they can be visually linked to one another. These links come from neighbor to neighbor referrals to increase the awareness about environmental issues in our community.
I love this project. If you live in NYC and want to participate, contact eve AT seedingthecity.org. Tell them Ellen sent you.
More about bringing your bike to work.
Posted on | December 14, 2009 | No Comments
An article in The Brooklyn Paper has more in depth information about the actual process involved with being allowed to bring your bike up to your office.
Bicycles are required to be allowed in office buildings in NYC
Posted on | December 10, 2009 | No Comments
This week is green buildings policy week at the Toeprint Project!
Yesterday, the City Council passed the Greener Greater Buildings Plan including 4 new laws requiring Energy Audits and Retrocommissioning for buildings over 50,000 SF, Benchmarking, the creation of a NYC Energy Code and new requirement about lighting upgrades and submetering.
More about this in detail tomorrow.
Tomorrow is also the day that the new law (local law 52 of 2009) goes into effect requiring commercial buildings to provide access to employees who request to bring their bikes into the building.
This is how it will work.
Starting tomorrow, a tenant can download a form from the DOB website for use in requesting access for the number of bikes it would like to accommodate in its office space.
The Building Owner or Manager will either:
Implement and post a Bicycle Access Plan that allows the Tenant’s employees to bring bikes into the Tenant’s office space within 30 days of receipt of Tenant Request
OR
Request an exception due to A) alternate bicycle parking facilities or B) safety concerns related to the building’s freight elevator(s) within 15 days of receipt of Tenant Request.
If the Building Owner or Manager submits an Exception Request, the Tenant or Subtenant should receive notification from the Building Owner or Manager within 30 days of the Tenant Request. Otherwise, a Bicycle Access Plan or a notice of its availability should be posted in the building’s lobby within 35 days of the Tenant Request.
Happy riding to work!
If you prefer your invitation to the Chelsea event in comic format…
Posted on | October 8, 2009 | No Comments
Check out the latest version of Green Queen! Click here for a .pdf format.
Details are:
October 14th from 6:30 to 8:30 pm
One Jackson Square 122 Greenwich Avenue, NYC
$10 at the door to cover costs.
Thanks to our sponsor, Susan Singer, SVP, The Corcoran Group, NYC’s first Eco-Broker. www.susansingerspaces.com.
Toeprint Project’s Residential Sustainability Teach-in is coming to CHELSEA on October 14th!
Posted on | September 25, 2009 | No Comments
Want to make your home more environmentally responsible?
Come to a Teach-In on October 14th from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at One Jackson Square (122 Greenwich Avenue, NYC) about sustainable strategies you can implement in your home.
Our goal is to have New York City be a model in sustainability as well as making our homes healthier, more energy efficient, water-wise and environmentally responsible.
Topics will include:
Energy Conservation: How much energy do homes use and what are options for renewable energy?
Weatherization: Improve the health, safety and energy efficiency of your home.
Solar Hot Water: Make your own heat and hot water.
Solar Photovoltaic: Make your own electrical energy.
Green Roof: Build a meadow on your home.
We will discuss costs and benefits of each of these strategies including pricing, incentives, tax credits, rebates and return-on-investment as well as feasibility for different types of homes.
Presenters:
Ellen Honigstock, LEED AP, The real deal on sustainable retrofits for your home, www.ehapc.com.
Jimmy Hatzis, ASK Construction, weatherization contractors extraordinaire, www.askconstruction.com.
Adam Heidt, HR Reps, solar hot water system expert.
Nicole Clock, Empower Clean Energy Systems, solar energy providers, www.empowerces.com
Beth Lieberman LEED AP, Alive Structures, green roof installer, www.alivestructures.com
Thank you to our Host One Jackson Square, one of the first LEED certified, environmentally-friendly buildings in the neighborhood.
sponsored by: Susan Singer, SVP, The Corcoran Group, NYC’s first Eco-Broker. www.susansingerspaces.com.
$10 at the door to cover costs.
Download a flyer here.
Ellen speaking about Energy Efficient Design on Monday, September 21st.
Posted on | September 17, 2009 | No Comments
On Monday, September 21st at 3:30 Ellen is giving a talk with Matt Bendix, PE entitled ”Energy Code Design for Residential Buildings”. The event will be hosted by HOK Architects at 620 Avenue of the Americas #6, NYC.
This session is part of the NYC Department of Buildings – Hosted Seminars in Energy Conserving Design and the Energy Code in conjunction with the Urban Green Expo being held next week.
This session is geared towards licensed professionals and will include energy-conserving strategies for residential buildings such as reducing air infiltration, tightening the building envelope, reducing lighting and cooling loads and providing efficient heating, ventilating and cooling systems.
Click here for more information.
Great fan timer and no liquid soap!
Posted on | August 25, 2009 | 1 Comment
On each House Call I learn something new!
On one site visit this week I saw a fantastic bathroom timer switch. You can set it to have the fan stay on for 1 to 60 minutes (The Home Ventilation Institute recommends keeping an exhaust fan on 20 minutes after using a shower to remove moisture from the room).
I saw this post about the timers at Re-Nest. You can get other great controls by clicking here.
The other fun fact I learned was not to use liquid soap.
Makes sense right?
It is engineered to stay liquid in the bottle so why wouldn’t it stay congealed in your pipes. Foam soap is better because the particles are smaller and less cohesive. My client’s plumber said liquid soap was the best thing that ever happened to his business.
And never use anti-bacterial soap. It’s bad for the waterways and your health!
Kids Today
Posted on | August 20, 2009 | No Comments
This is a follow up post about the Green Team program at the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women,
It was incredible working with these 11 spirited girls. Their presentation showing what they learned about ecology and green building was lively and informative.
Look what they did in just 5 weeks (and this is only 8 hours per week).
The courtyard will be used as an outdoor classroom with the homemade planters at the perimeter and the benches used for seating. The triangular shapes will be used as part of the geometry curriculum and the vegetables will be tended and harvested by the students in the fall.
Here are some of the girls’ experiences, in their own words:
Surquonna Soleyn, Maya Spiers, Quaisan P., Rema Bryce, Emoni, Kayonda Marshall.
This is one of the planters in construction
This is one of the benches
Broccoli and lettuce grown from seeds
Painted courtyard
Looking forward to next year!
Off the grid & off the pipe…in San Francisco
Posted on | August 9, 2009 | No Comments
This is a post from Green Architecture Notes published by Feldman Architecture out in San Francisco. It describes an energy-neutral house proposed to be constructed next year.
With all the building trends moving towards sustainability here in New York City, it is still SO MUCH more difficult to do a net-zero house here than in the Bay Area.
For one thing, our buildings are generally taller with smaller footprints so the proportion of available roof area (for renewable energy) to living area is much smaller. Also, our winters are colder and our summers hotter and more humid so we use much more energy for heating and cooling. Not to make excuses but a net-zero house here is kind of like the holy grail.
Given that we’re comparing climates, I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce the concept of degree days which are a useful tool to compare climates or assess energy efficiency strategies.
There are many ways to calculate degree days. The simplest formula is to subtract 65 degrees from the average daily temperature. If the number is greater than zero, it is equivalent to that number of cooling degree days (CDD), if the number is less than zero, it is equivalent to that number of heating degree days (HDD).
For example. Today’s high was 82 and low was 76. The average temperature is 79 degrees. 79 degrees minus 65 degrees = 14 cooling degree days. You can conveniently add them up to get monthly and seasonal totals and compare different climates or different time periods within the same climate.
For comparison purposes, I downloaded the last 12 month’s heating degree days and cooling degree days for San Franciso and New York City from degreedays.net.
As you can see, New York City has much higher number of heating and cooling degree days which means that a building in New York City would need to use more energy for heat and cooling to maintain the same comfort level as would a comparable building in the Bay Area.
You can also use this information to assess recent energy efficiency improvements.
You would adjust the post-improvement annual energy consumption with the pre-improvement consumption by degree days in order to compare “apples to apples”.
For example, if you are thinking that the extra insulation you added last fall didn’t work as well as you thought, it could be that we just had a colder winter so your bills were higher than you might have expected, even with the added insulation. The chart below shows that the 08/09 winter (in green) was, in fact, colder than the 07/08 winter (shown in blue).
Brooklyn Bio-Diversity
Posted on | August 2, 2009 | No Comments
We just heard about the Windsor Terrace Greenway Project.
About
Ellen Honigstock Architect PC is a creative, full-service architecture and interior design firm based in DUMBO, Brooklyn with a growing portfolio of residential, commercial and institutional projects. We have a versatile practice with the ability to design for a wide variety of building types and program requirements.
Our solutions are environmentally conscious and the criteria we use are based on national standards developed to bring long-term savings and well being.
Over 30 years combined experience building in New York City gives us an edge in meeting tough schedules and navigating the city's complicated zoning and code requirements.
Ellen Honigstock, LEED AP
Ellen Honigstock Architect PC
45 Main Street #806
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(212) 228-1585
ellen@ehapc.com
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