Blog : February 2010
Volunteers Make the Building10 Conference Possible
by Laura Roach
Thanks to dedicated volunteers like James Petersen, the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) will be holding the Building10 Conference from March 9th through the 11th at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, MA. James Petersen of Petersen Engineering is on theBuilding10 planning committee and has been meeting with more than 60 other professionals to since April to invent the theme and schedule for the conference. Due to the vision and drive of the committee, visitors to the conference can expect to see 160 exhibitors with the most recent development in sustainable technologies and over 150 speakers. The theme of this year's conference is "Reduce, Retrofit, and Renew."
Over the three days of the conference, there will be 72 educational sessions all regarding efficiency and renewable energy as they relate to construction and current buildings. Specifically seminars and workshops will focus on climate change solutions, emerging trends in renewable energy, energy conservation for new buildings, retrofits for buildings, mechanical systems design, building materials and conservation, and whole systems in action. Petersen will be the co-chair at educational session three.
James Petersen is the founder of Petersen Engineering, a mechanical engineering consulting firm specializing in building mechanical systems, energy efficiency, integrated design, sustainable and green design. Petersen Engineering is a corporate member of the Green Alliance, green business co-op. Together these firms worked to reduce carbon emissions and transform the way energy is created and consumed.
92.5 the River gives away 6 tickets (and a lunch!) to see Citizen Cope live in their Music Hall studio
This morning 92.5 The River gave away 3 pairs of tickets to one of their intimate Music Hall studio shows. Six lucky winners will receive a free pass to the February 26th show featuring folk rocker Citizen Cope, as well as a free lunch. Not a bad deal, eh?
The winners -- all GA Green Card holders -- were the first to respond to a mass email sent out by the Green Alliance earlier today. Taken together, the tickets and lunches are valued at over $100 for each pair, meaning these Green Card holders already trippled their initial $35 GA membership!
Always looking to promote their incredible studio sessions as well as their membership in the GA, The River has in the last year run promotions for nearly half a dozen shows, in the process giving away dozens of free tickets to Green Alliance Green Card holders.
Check out Wednesday's Foster's for exclusive GA content and info for this weekend's Green Living Show!
To cooincide with this weekend's enormous Seacoast Green Home & Living Show at Portsmouth's Frank Jones Center, on Wednesday Foster's released an exclusive 15-page guide for the two-day expo. In it you'll find an hour-by-hour program for the weekend's events and programs, exclusive profiles of some GA business partners, including Zev Yoga, Water Revitilization LTD, Cardea Chiropractic Well Being, and Tim Gaudreau, as well as a detailed map of all the vendors and booths.
To see the program in PDF format, just click here, or check your local newstands for the hard copy.
And be sure to stop by the Frank Jones Center this Saturday and Sunday and check out how the Seacoast is bringing green innovation and lifestyle to the top of the fold.
Happy Birthday ZESstudio!
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by Laura Roach
This February marked the one year anniversary of ZESstudio, design studio and business partner of the Green Alliance. Zach Smith, founder of the fledgling company, is the mastermind behind designs frequently observed on the Seacoast for venues like the Stone Church and the Newmarket Farmers Market. He also recently renovated the monthly GA newsletter with a professional touch that we, here at the GA, are very pleased with.
Not only does Smith have a good eye for design, he also follows a strict code of "inner-office ethics" which he incorporates into his business whether he is designing logos, photographing or consulting a client on the layout of a building. His ethics are about maintaining a sustainable business model while remaining environmentally conscious. His efforts on this front include a "zero paper" policy which demands that all business contracts and designs are sent digitally in PDF form. The studio itself is heated with biofuel provided by Simply Green.
Perhaps the most incredible attribute of ZESstudio is the amount of pro bono designs it releases. In exchange for advertising, Smith may spend up to 50 hours making a poster for the Stone Church or another local business. Generally he does not complete the "grunt" work himself. He will sketch a design and pay a contractor to finalize the image on Adobe InDesign or Adobe Photoshop. But in the case of his donated work, Smith does the whole project from start to finish. In this way he is supporting other local firms and his philosophy of sustainability.
When interviewing clients like the Green Alliance, Smith is very attentive to their ideas. “A client will lay out his philosophy and what he is trying to achieve, a more modern or a classical aesthetic, a simple or complex layout" and then Smith will go to the drawing board. He does not have any employees, so any technical work that he does not do himself he contracts out, such as html coding for web design.
Claremont company proves green building can be both efficient and affordable
By Jim Cavan
Despite a still fragile housing market, the growth of the “green home” industry in the last few years has remained strong. In fact, industry research firm McGraw-Hill Construction predicts green buildings will represent 20-25 percent of new commercial and institutional construction projects nationwide by 2013, compared to between 10 and 12 percent today.
Still, what about the issue of cost? Without a doubt the major hindrance for people looking to build new, energy efficient homes is that they can often run up to 15% more to construct. And while the case can certainly be made that the money “lost” up front can in all likelihood be “gained” down the road -- through more efficient insulation, appliances, etc. -- in these uncertain economic times, people want to know how they can save money today.
But one New Hampshire company is looking beyond this false choice between investing now to save later, offering homes that are not only greener and more efficient, but more affordable and customizable as well.
Preferred Building Systems (PBS) is a Claremont, New Hampshire construction firm specializing in affordable modular homes that are built green and built to last. A division of Granite State staple LaValley Building Supply, which also owns Dover and Hampton-based Middleton Building Supply, PBS was launched in 2006. After taking over the old Holson-Burnes Photo Album factory in Claremont, the company retooled the facility to manufacture their custom energy efficient modular homes.
Since then the company has constructed over 300 homes throughout New England, along the way working extensively with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), as well as with the Green Building Council (GBC) and EnergyStar in an effort to stay abreast of the latest developments and recommendations in efficient home building.
For Jeffrey Michaud, head of sales and promotions for PBS, such commitments to sustainable building have been a part of the company’s ethos from the very beginning. “When Harold LaValley formed the company, their main objective was to have a company that could build affordably, efficiently, and durably,” says Michaud. “But what we really want to impart on everyone is that their homes can be all three of these things, and also be custom built to their specifications at the same time. So really you’re getting four things in one.”
Warehouse Clothing Outlet to give away free “green” hats at UNH hockey game
By Jim Cavan
UNH’s Whittemore Center certainly won’t be devoid of heat when archrival Boston College arrives on March 5th for a weekend series against the Wildcats. But that isn’t stopping Dennis Randall from giving free hats to everyone in the arena.
For the fourth consecutive year Randall, who owns Warehouse Clothing Outlet in Portsmouth, will be handing out custom fleece garments to everyone in attendance. Sharing the fabric with UNH’s requisite Wildcat logo will be EARTHTEC, the name of Randall’s line of jackets and accessories that are made of recycled number one plastic bottles; twelve bottles, to be precise.
Launched a little over a year ago as a way of promoting his company’s erstwhile commitment to reducing their environmental impact, EARTHTEC has since made Randall a familiar figure in the local media, most recently earning him a lengthy segment on WMUR‘s New Hampshire Chronicle.
For Randall, forging a promotional partnership with UNH Athletics seemed like a no-brainer. “We were excited to be partnering with a school that had already proved it was committed to sustainability on every front,” says Randall. “Usually you see cheap disposable stuff handed out -- like towels and foam fingers -- that just end up in the landfill after the game. But with the eco-tec hats we fill like we’re providing a quality product to a clientele that really gets it and appreciates it.”
The promotions effort started back in 2007, when Randall and Amber Radovic, then head of promotions for UNH Athletics, decided to take the notion of freebies in a new, and decidedly green, direction. “I had known for a while it would be a great idea to tap into the UNH market,” says Randall, whose main company, Trailtex, services a number of name-brand clothing providers nationwide. “So the idea was to get them into as many hands as possible, and after meeting with a number of people involved in UNH’s sustainability efforts, we saw that football and hockey games could be the perfect outlet.”
After switching to free scarves in 2008, Randall has since gone back to handing out the hats, finding that they seemed to be a bigger hit with fans.
So whether March 5th finds you looking for a quick warm up after an icy trudge across campus, or simply in need of a hat to match the blue and white jersey, Dennis Randall and the folks at Warehouse Clothing Outlet got you covered.
Meet TVC: part of the brains behind UNH’s growing ‘green’ brawn
By Jim Cavan
Last August, Sierra Magazine released its third annual list of “Cool Schools“, ranking the nation’s top 20 green universities. The University of New Hampshire, which had never cracked the list, placed #12 out of 135 schools.
Citing “energy” as one of UNH’s most impressive strengths, the Cool Schools rankings only validated what many on the Seacoast community have known for years: that their flagship state university has been and will continue to reside squarely on the cutting edge of green technology, policies, and initiatives.
But beneath the no doubt impressive clean and green facade -- the bio-diesel buses, ever-growing organic gardening club, and myriad green energy initiatives, just to name a few of UNH’s sustainable pillars -- some nitty gritty technology is helping that cause.
Back in 2003, one of UNH’s first major overhaul’s to its infrastructure -- contracted through nationall-renowned Emcor Energy Services -- involved replacing their old-fashioned boiler plant with a state-of-the-art co-generation system, which is capable of producing both electricity and heat from a single source. That’s where TVC Systems, a decades-old Portsmouth-based firm specializing in cogeneration system design and maintenance, stepped in, devising a system allowing the school to generate much of its own power from a single location -- a novel concept for any university at the time.
Then in late 2008, Emcor and UNH came back to TVC for help in converting the five-year-old system to allow it, after slight modification and combining it with pure natural gas, to run on methane generated from a Rochester landfill. The project was so successful that, soon after, the University added a second turbine, this one capable of running solely on methane, without the aid of a “cleaner” gas.
Federal and state rebates for first time buyers, efficiency means huge savings
By Jim Cavan
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Despite a still struggling economy, all is not dour, at least with respect to the housing market: interest rates remain low, financing is available, and home prices are starting to once again stabilize. In many ways, there’s rarely been a better time to buy. To bolster recovery, the federal government recently extended its First Time Homebuyer’s credit -- $8000 or 10% of the home’s value -- through April of this year, as well as providing a similar $6500 credit for existing buyers.
But often lost in the stimulus shuffle are the many rebates available for existing homeowners looking to make their homes more energy efficient. The Federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes a number of provisions providing federal credits and rebates for a whole host of alternative energy systems and initiatives, including solar, wind, and geothermal, as well as rebates for hybrid vehicles, EnergyStar certification, and improvements in overall home efficiency. They Include:
American EcoThermal Inc. Prepares to Move into a New Sustainable Building
by Laura Roach
American EcoThermal Inc. (AET) has outgrown its warehouse at 233 Vaughan St. in Portsmouth and is moving to a more sustainable residence in Hampton. The company is temporarily working out of a building across the street from the site of their permanent location which is in the making. The new facility will be constructed with a geothermal climate control system and AET expects to move in a year and a half from February.
Originally founded in 2008 by Andy Livingston, Shawn Bristow and Chad Knowles, AET is a leading provider of Geothermal Heating and Cooling systems for both commercial and residential customers across New England. When the company was first established it was run from an old warehouse that has previously housed a meat-packing plant and European Antiques. After gaining eight new employees and the expiration of their lease at the end of February it became clear that AET needed to move. The permanent location for the business is currently being designed with a closed-loop vertical geothermal system.
GreenPoma.com to be Featured on the NH Chronicle
GreenPoma.com, an online retailer of premium energy-efficient lighting solutions will be included in an upcoming segment of the five-time Emmy Award Winning TV show NH Chronicle produced by WMUR-TV. The report, scheduled to air in the first week of March, will introduce viewers to the Green Alliance, an association of 83 sustainable entrepreneurs located in New Hampshire, Southern Maine and Northeastern Massachusetts. Sarah Brown is the Executive Director of the organization.
In the segment, GreenPoma.com Co-Owner Peter Ellinwood shares thoughts on the significance of the Green Alliance. “When we heard about the Green Alliance last summer, we were quickly intrigued” says Ellinwood. “In our meeting with Sarah, it took us about 10 minutes to decide to join. We’re proud of the fact that we were the first Alliance member based in Concord”.
As the School Board Goes, So Goes the Student: A Student’s Perspective on the Solar Panel Installation at Exeter High School
By Barona DiNapoli, Exeter High School Senior
The trek from my car into school at 7:15am is not typically an enjoyable experience. On this particular December morning, the air was sharp and biting. When I finally reached the refuge of the Exeter High School foyer, an unusual commotion caught me off guard. Among the students rushing to their first period class was a trail of solar panels being carried up to the second floor of the building. As I stood there and marveled at the new addition to our school’s energy source, I felt proud. I was proud of my school for making this economically and environmentally-conscious decision. I was proud; for a moment.
Acorn Organics bring green style to Boston's first ever green wedding expo
Fresh off the launch of their exclusive, 100% organic hair product line, this Saturday the girls at Acorn Organics Salon in Dover will be adding another first to their resume.
As the exclusive fashion show stylists for this weekend’s first ever Elegantly Green Wedding Showcase in Boston, Allie, Laura, Tasha and Amy will each be creating 4 distinct hair styles for four different models during the expo’s runway show. Of course, they even get to use their new line of organic shampoos and conditioners.
Far from being a typical runway show, the models will instead use their face time to talk about the latest in green wedding fashions, products, and services.
For Acorn’ Laura McKay, the show is a stylist dream come true. “Just to be a part of Boston’s first green wedding expo is pretty amazing,” says McKay. “We all love doing wedding hair, and when it comes to that, it doesn’t get any cooler than this.”
On top of seeing the girls of Acorn in action, visitors will have a chance to attend educational seminars, book signings, free tastings, tour the Green Hyatt Harborside, enter special drawings and giveaways, and talk with dozens of vendors from around New England.
For more information about the show, ticket information, and directions, just click here!
Local Restaurant Owners Turn Competition Into Love; the Romance of Blue Moon and the Loaf and Ladle
By Laura Roach
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Blue Moon Market & Cafe and the Loaf and Ladle of Exeter, NH would appear to be bitter rivals to the common walkers-by. Several characteristics of the cafes contribute to this conclusion: restaurants cater to the hungry hankering for a bowl of soup or sandwich, both provide wholesome original recipes and they happen to be situated directly across the street from each other. But the rivalry is mere conjecture. In reality Blue Moon and the Loaf and Ladle are the site of an across the street romance.
Andrew Ulery of the Loaf and Ladle and Meadow Ulery of the Blue Moon had been working across the street from each other for twelve years before getting married in June of 2007. What makes them seem like perfect rivals makes them the perfect couple. They both work for their parents at popular restaurants and are the oldest of their siblings. "We have similar roles and we really relate to each other," says Meadow.
National building supplies classifieds site goes local
By Jim Cavan
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Like a lot of people around the Seacoast and around the country, Gavin Barbour is looking for a deal. No, he’s not clipping coupons from the Sunday paper or caffeinating for a weekend mall sale. Rather Barbour, a builder and carpenter based in Kittery, is gathering up boxes of bathroom tiles, long dormant in his family’s basement, to sell online. The only question now is, where to sell them? Lucky for Barbour, a new classifieds website launched just last month may provide the answer.
DiggersList, a national site launched a little over a year ago, recently went live and local with the launching of a New Hampshire DiggersList, along the way offering Seacoast residents and businesses a chance to buy or sell quality building materials -- new and recycled alike.
For Barbour, who already plans to utilize DiggersList for his family‘s ever-growing list of renovations and projects, the opportunity to give the good-as-new tiles a second life was just as appealing as the prospects of making a few extra bucks. “It just seemed like a great move all around and for everybody, in that you’re getting rid of stuff collecting dust in your basement, while making a few bucks and keeping stuff out of a landfill at the same time.”
A California-based website launched last summer, DiggersList specializes in building materials, supplies, and services – all at cut rate cost, and all tailored to specific regions and cities. The website, which had already housed individual sites for over a dozen cities across the country, recently made New Hampshire DiggersList their latest addition. Partnering with Dover’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore and other businesses in the Green Alliance, a local green business union and discount member co-op, NH DiggersList had for months been building up an impressive stockpile of materials, including much of Re-Store’s massive inventory.
New Hampshire DiggersList- Goes Live Today!
By Emily Powers
The much anticipated NH DiggersLi.bmp)
st has officially been launched today! Now Seacoast residents have the ability to buy and sell quality recycled building materials and supplies. New Hampshire DiggersList has partnered with Dover’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore and Green Alliance to help bolster its inventory.
A California-based website launched last summer, DiggersList specializes in building materials, supplies, and services – all at cut rate cost, and all tailored to specific regions and cities. The website already houses individual sites for over a dozen cities across the country, and now the New Hampshire DiggersList is live and active! Homeowners, renters, contractors, etc. can browse through building materials for sale, as well as available services and local projects. In addition, ads for materials, services, and projects can be posted to the site for free! Essentially, New Hampshire DiggersList operates much like craigslist.
Become a Green Alliance member today and START SAVING on local, green goods and services! JOIN NOW
