Tag: neighbor

Crafting a House From Scrap Lumber

  • Kelvin Potter on the third floor of the house he's building with scrap lumber. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally friendly house. The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods
and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally-friendly house.
The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw
away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


Four men are raising a timber frame house on an old farm
in central Michigan. Several feet up in the air, they’re piecing together
some beams, 12 feet long and 12 inches thick with some help from a small
crane.


(Sound of engine)


“Cable it! Cable it! Cable it? Yes!”


(Sound of tool dropping)


The framing is like assembling giant Lincoln Log toys. Neighbor Nick
Van Frankenhuyzen is holding a rope attached to some beams.


“Look at that. Look at how far that is extended. We lifted one of
those beams yesterday by hand and they’re not light. Now this wall has to
come back. This has to pop out again to make that one fit and I don’t
know how that’s gonna happen.”


Facing these kinds of challenges is what people in the green building
movement seem to relish. Kelvin Potter owns this farm. He’s using materials
that most builders overlook.


Potter: “Yeah we saved all these timbers, developers were burning all these.
So. These were all going up in smoke. And some of these logs came off my
neighbor’s property. They had died and were standing. We dragged ’em over here. He planted them. He’s
standing right there.”


Van Frankenhuyzen: “Yeah we’re standing on them. And then Kelvin
said I sure could use them. Because they’re the right size. Go get ’em. So he did. And here they are. Can’t believe it. Much better than firewood.”


Kelvin Potter’s home is one example of a growing trend in green building.
The U.S. Green Building Council includes 4000 member organizations. It’s
created standards for protecting the environment. The standards include
reusing material when it’s possible, using solar and wind energy, renewable
resources, and non-traditional materials. Sometimes from surprising
places.


(Sound of truck)


A city truck dumps wood chips onto a municipal lot. On other days it
dumps logs like sugar maple, oak and pine. The trees came from routine
maintenance of parks, cemeteries and streets.
Kelvin Potter is also here, checking for any fresh deliveries. While other
guys come here to cut the logs with chainsaws for firewood, Potter says he
makes better use of it as flooring or trim. Even saw mills don’t take advantage of this kind of wood. That’s because
trees cut down in backyards often mean trouble for the mills.


“Sawmills typically aren’t interested in this material because there is
hardware, nuts, bolts, nails, clothes lines, all sorts of different things
people have pounded into them by their houses. ”


Potter says sawmills use big machines with expensive blades that get
destroyed. So THEY throw the logs away. Potter instead keeps the logs and
throws away his blades. He uses cheap ones, making it worth the risk.
When it’s finished, Kelvin Potter will have an environmentally friendly
house, even if it doesn’t meet all the criteria to be certified as a “green
building.”


Maggie Fields works for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
She says there are many ways to build green. Anything that helps the
environment is a big improvement on the status quo.


“Every material that we reuse is a material that doesn’t have to be cut
from the woods, if that’s where it’s coming from, or remanufactured. And that means that the pollution that’s associated with that material getting
to that use state isn’t having to be created. So, it doesn’t matter if they
get the green seal. If they’re taking steps along that that’s great.”


(Sound of climbing ladder)


Kelvin Potter is climbing a ladder to the belfry of his new house. He
shows off his shiny steel roof, the kind now covering barns. He compares it
to asphalt shingles.


“It lasts 100 years versus 15, 20 years. We actually fill a lot of landfills with shingles. They don’t compress. They don’t decompose. Steel will
go right back into making more roofing or cars or what not. It’s a win-win
situation. It’s a lot cheaper all around and I can’t see why it’s not a lot
more popular.”


The point Potter and other green builders are trying to make is, good
building material isn’t just the stuff marketed at lumberyards. They say, “Look around. You might be surprised what you can use.”


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

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Living Entirely Off the Grid

  • Solar panels aren't just for rocket scientists anymore. Consumers are now starting to use solar and other alternative energies to power their homes. (Photo courtesy of NASA.gov)

With no power lines in sight, one western Pennsylvania couple lives pretty much like the rest of us. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story of a home “off the grid”:

Transcript

With no power lines in sight, one western Pennsylvania couple lives pretty much like the rest of us. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story of home “off the grid”:


Ted Carns is busy hanging art in the foyer of his house. While he holds a picture in place against the wall, he plugs in an electric drill.


(sound of drill)


Ted and Kathy Carns’ entire two-bedroom house uses electricity powered by the sun or wind. Their rustic stone and plank home sits on top of a steep wooded hill, miles from the nearest neighbor.


“There’s no water, there’s no soil, there’s no public utilities up here. So everything that we designed, you have to keep in mind, was done in this harsh condition.”


It’s taken the Carns twenty years to design and expand their alternative energy system. Ted, a self-described scrounger and handyman, has found many components through flea markets and friends. In fact, Kathy says their off-grid system began with a gift of shoebox-sized batteries.


Kathy: “Somebody gave us a bunch of batteries-nickel cadmium batteries. And then we started thinking about how to recharge the batteries. Thinking wind. The windmill came first.”


Ted: “It took me eight climbs to install the new windmill, I had a different one up there. The bottom of the tower I built.”


Murray: “How tall is that?”


Ted: “Seventy-six feet.”


(sound of chimes)


The metal tower now looms over the house, outbuildings and organic garden. As the wind whips the chimes at its base, the turbine blades whirl and drive an alternator to generate electricity. The electricity is stored in a bank of batteries.


Murray: “Is the wind consistent here?”


Carns: “Winter good. Summer not. Then in summer the solar panels kick in. So it just sort of balances out.”


The Carns’ rooftop solar panels accept sunlight into silicon chips and convert the light into electricity. Because it’s sunny today, Kathy can run their specially manufactured clothes washer with solar energy. First, she pushes a button on the living room wall and a red light starts to blink. The light indicates that stored electricity is being converted from a DC to AC current.


“That means the house is on 110 power. Turn the water on and then just… It’s on.”


The Carns also vacuum when the sun shines or the wind blows. They run their TV, stereo and lights off 12-volt DC batteries, much like a car. They heat their water with solar energy in the summer and wood in the winter. And warm their house with a wood stove. They also capture air from underground and use it to refrigerate food and cool their house. All told, Ted and Kathy have spent about 3,000 dollars to upgrade their alternative energy system. Ted says, except for burning wood, the system is nonpolluting. He believes it’s also pretty much hassle free.


Carns: “There’s no inconvenience that we’ve seen… There’s maybe two or three days that we don’t have ample hot water. The nice thing about that is that it – you never stop appreciating the conveniences because periodically for a very short time sometimes you have to do without.”


Perez: “More and more people are discovering that they can power their homes and small businesses using solar and wind.”


Richard Perez is the founder and publisher of Home Power Magazine. Perez says states are doing far more than the federal government to encourage the residential use of renewable energy.


“There are tax credits, there are rebates, there are buy-downs. Every state has a slightly different scheme but most states have some sort of financial incentive for installing small-scale renewables in your home.”


Perez says homeowners don’t have to wait wait for government support to set up a system. Ted and Kathy Carns agree.


(sound of plates and silverware)


As the couple gets ready for dinner, Kathy says they want to inspire the many people who come to see how they live off-grid.


“We have a friend who has a solar lawnmower now. We have friends in Philadelphia that took some solar panels; it’s not their total system, but it’s a little part of their system. If we get enough company and enough people have been here, it sort of branches out, and goes off.”


An estimated 180 thousand households in the United States generate some or all of their own electricity. But alternative energy systems aren’t for everybody. For people who are downright afraid of technology or inconvenience, life off the power grid isn’t a real option just yet.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ann Murray.

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The Foibles of Suburban Lawn Care

  • Although a well-manicured lawn offers certain benefits... not everyone thinks it's worth the effort. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)

One of the great rituals in suburban America is mowing the lawn. A manicured lawn seems to say that the house is well cared for, that it belongs to the neighborhood. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Ed Herrmann wonders whether this obsession for the perfect lawn is worth the effort:

Transcript

One of the great rituals in suburban America is mowing the lawn. A
manicured lawn seems to say that the house is well cared for, that it belongs
to the neighborhood. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Ed
Herrmann wonders whether this obsession with the perfect lawn is worth the
effort:


(sound of evening insects)


It’s a late summer evening and at last I can go outside and enjoy the
sounds of the neighborhood. There’s a little breeze, the air is cooler. The
chorus of insects is soothing, gentle but insistent, an ancient throbbing
resonance. Much better than during the day…


(roar of lawn machines)


Summer days in the suburbs are the time of assault, when people attack their
lawns with powerful weapons from the chemical and manufacturing
industries. Anyone who uses the words “quiet” and “suburbs” in the same
sentence has never been to a suburb, at least not in summer.


It takes a lot of noise to maintain a lawn. Besides the mower, you’ve got edgers, trimmers,
leaf blowers, weed whackers, core aerators, little tractors, big tractors, slitting
machines. I don’t know whatever happened to rakes and hand clippers. One
thing’s for sure. This quest for lawn perfection wouldn’t be possible without
the industrial revolution.


(machines stop)


So where did we get the idea that a house should be surrounded by a field of
uniform grass kept at the same height?


Well, with apologies to the Queen, I’m afraid we must blame the British. It
seems that, along with our language, our imperial ambitions and our
ambivalent morals, America also gets its notion of what a lawn should look
like from the English. Of course, the estates of the English aristocracy were
tended by a staff of gardeners. England also has a milder climate, and the
grass that looks so nice there doesn’t do as well in North America. In the
1930’s the USDA came up with a blend of imported grasses that would
tolerate our climate. Since these grasses are not native, they need help, and
that calls for fertilizers, pesticides and lots of extra water. Since normal
people can’t afford gardeners who trim by hand, that means lawn machines.
American industry to the rescue.


(mower starts up, fades under next sentence)


A quick Google tells me that today we have 40 million lawn mowers in use.
Each emits 11 times the pollution of a new car, and lawn mowers contribute
five percent of the nation’s air pollution. Plus more than 70 million pounds of
pesticides are used each year and over half of our residential water is used
for landscaping. Don’t you love those automatic sprinklers that come on in the
rain? Add to that all the time that people spend mowing and edging. Of
course the two billion dollar lawn care industry is thrilled about all this
enthusiasm, but I gotta ask, “Is it worth it?”


Call me old fashioned, but I actually prefer the looks of a meadow with mixed
wildflowers and grasses to the lawn that looks like a pool table. My own lawn
is somewhere between. It’s mowed, but it’s what you might call multicultural.


There are at least five different kinds of grass with different colors and
thicknesses, plus clover, dandelions, mushrooms, a few pinecones, and a
rabbit hole or two. There’s also some kind of nasty weed with thorns, but even
that has nice purple flowers if it gets big enough.


Clover, by the way, used to be added to grass seed because it adds nitrogen to
the soil. Now we just buy a bag of nitrogen fertilizer, so who needs clover?
And what’s wrong with
dandelions? You can eat them, some people even make wine out of them,
they have happy yellow flowers; yet to most people they indicate your yard is
out of control. So I’m down on my hands and knees pulling dandelions. I’m
not sure why, but I hope it keeps the neighbors happy.


One thing I won’t give in to, though, is the chemical spraying trucks, painted
green of course, that roll through the neighborhood.


I can only hold my breath. (sound of trucks and mowers) Try not to listen. And
wait for the evening. (evening insects)


(air conditioner starts up)


Although, with all these air conditioners, even the night’s not too quiet.


But that’s another story.


Host tag: “Ed Herrmann is an outdoor enthusiast living in the
suburbs of Detroit.”

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Winter Storm Survival

The blizzard that crippled the Great Lakes Region is behind us. But after
bringing the area to a standstill for several days, Great Lakes Radio
Consortium commentator, Suzanne Elston, wonders how previous generations
ever managed to survive: