Western Region-It’s free lighting after the installation. It’s reasonably priced and the effects of bringing the sunlight into your home or business are dramatic. If you have an interior space with dark spots and you want to brighten it up, the solar tube may be your immediate answer.
Solatube is one innovative company in California that demonstrates the value of its product quite effectively on its website. The before and after illustrations appear to accurately demonstrate the effects of day lighting.
Green News has experience with solar tubes. The ones GN installed have been reliable, glowing and charming all at the same time.
And while day lighting is a key component of the Solatube business, the company provides other solar options on the roof. One is the solar-powered attic fan.
It may take more than one fan depending on the size of the roof but the virtues of keeping your attic cooler in the summer and drier in the winter at no cost are many.
Think about all the stuff you may have up in the attic. It’s likely to last longer and maintain its original quality longer, with a quality-controlled environment. Your old vinyl phonograph records will appreciate it.
Clovis, CA-Some talk about green leadership others simply do. A major school district out west has decided to go green with its next construction project. The administrators of Buchanan High School in the prestigious Clovis Unified School District are orchestrating construction of new science building on campus. The structure will be known as the Buchanan Energy Center.
In a major step forward in the green world, the Buchanan leadership has decided the building will be constructed to meet LEED standards. An incredibly difficult seal of approval to secure in the world of construction, but one many strive for in an effort to save energy and planet resources. LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design.
There’s an increased cost to reach LEED standards, but a significant savings after the project is completed. LEED strives to make its standards and practices more common than unique. Buchanan’s decision will make it the first school in Central California to build a LEED-certified structure.
Mark Alvis, co-founder of Alviston.com, is one of those advising the Buchanan project. Alvis gives a lot of credit to Buchanan administrator Reese Warne for taking this direction. There are numerous advantages to the decision and Green News will be watching and reporting on the progress at Buchanan over the next year.
Alviston, CA-It’s been six months since Alviston.com appeared on the world wide web landscape. The half-year progress report indicates Alviston.com strikes a “green” nerve with many of you. According to mayor of Alviston.com, Mark Alvis, “The increases in October are off the chart.”
Visitors to the virtual town increased by 65%. Thousands are turning to Alviston.com to learn more and more about the ever-changing world of “green.” One of the most popular stops is the Mayor’s Blog. Mayor Alvis touched on a variety of earth-friendly topics in the past six months, but the information in October attracted a record number of visitors. The mayor tells Green News, he is looking forward to more visitor comments on his blogs in the future.
Commenting for public consumption at Alviston.com requires a one-time, secure and free registration. Then visitors can contribute to what they see or read.
Alviston.com is a firm believer in the “seeing is believing” concept; with numerous video reports. The most-viewed report from the record-breaking month of October 2008 was the video exclusive on the “Green Home,” an energy, earth-saving home designed and built in the city of Fresno by Alvis Projects. Another indicator, according to the mayor, that the future is now at Alviston.com.
Fresno, CA-It’s a bright spot along the way. When you drive by, the colors jump out at you. It’s a new community/neighborhood out West but not a new concept. In fact, it’s a throw back. You can see it in the design. Front porches that face each other, community hall and pool. They call it LaQuerencia and this is what it means, right off its fresnocohousing.org website:
One of the most important colors used for LaQuerencia is green. It’s not painted on as much as built into the structures. LaQuerencia is green by design, energy efficient with numerous green applications. A completely unique concept in this part of the West.
A community within a community, complete with community dining options and other community-oriented gatherings. Evidently, people who buy into this concept want to know their neighbors. All types of families have a chance to connect in many different ways at LaQuerencia.
The buy-in is more than emotional, it is literal. LaQuerencia home units are for sale. It appears developers took the best of community planning and neighborhood associations, added a green spin and put it up for sale. So far it has attracted a number of community-minded buyers with room for more.
Western U.S.-No time like the present. If there was ever a time to revamp and fix the mortgage system in the United States, right now might sound good to a majority of Americans.
You would have to be on a desert island, in a hole or parallel universe to NOT be aware of the economic disasters facing the U.S. economy at this moment. Real estate in particular is hard hit. More specifically real estate loans.
Mortgagegreen feels it can provide at least one solution; financing of green construction. Obviously Alviston.com feels the green theme has merit or this virtual “green” city would not even exist.
Currently the green of cold hard cash is hard to find when you decide to build “green.” Mortgagegreen is committed to changing that green money shortage. Mortgagegreen is banking on it in fact.
Leader of Mortgagegreen, Tomek Rondio continues to get his ducks in a row from his Southern California base. Rondio hopes to change the world of “green” financing and lines out the green dream at mortgagegreen.com.
Green News will continue to provide information about the financing project of Mortgagegreen and others on the cutting edge of green finance, check back often.
Western U.S.-There were a lot of strings attached to the recent Federal bailout of Wall Street. Strings that stretch all the way to the sun. Congress used the financial crisis to push through a number of stalled concepts including solar power incentives. Here’s the way it reads now. Information provided by REC Solar, a respected solar system installer out West.
The solar investment tax credit (ITC) provisions will:
Extend for 8 years the 30% tax credit for both residential and commercial solar installations;
Eliminate the $2,000 monetary cap for residential solar electric installations, creating a true 30% tax credit (effective for property placed in service after December 31, 2008);
Eliminate the prohibition on utilities from benefiting from the credit;
Allow Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) filers, both businesses and individuals, to take the credit;
Authorize $800 million for clean energy bonds for renewable energy generating facilities, including solar.
The solar tax credits were originally enacted in 2005 and have created unprecedented growth in the U.S. The amount of solar electric capacity installed in 2007 was double that installed in 2006.
REC Solar and others are poised to provide solar options now more than ever. A booming marketplace and this Federal boost is more evidence that solar has arrived.
Western U.S.-The e-antiques keep piling up. You know the ones, those huge computers and monitors from the stone-age, circa 1990’s. Tried to pick up one of those monitors lately? That computer dinosaur is awkward, heavy and taking up space. A lot of the heavy e-waste continues to pile up nationwide. You can’t just toss the stuff in the trash and it’s difficult to find takers for the old equipment.
One answer to the build-up is to find e-waste collectors. Sometimes they’re fundraisers in the neighborhood. Those e-waste collections take the burden of e-discard off your hands and make a little something for the collectors.
One of those on the e-cutting edge of e-disposal is Archway Recycling based in Northern California. Archway and its E-Sweep program will take that TV, that computer, that monitor and the “that” list goes on to dispose of the electronic waste, e-properly. Again throwing it in the trash is not acceptable, in fact in some places it’s cause for a fine.
According to Archway Recycling President Andrew Lesky, e-waste dismantling is big business. The plastic, metals, leaded glass all need special processing. Once dismantled, almost all of the e-waste is recycled. That turns a profit for some and makes a lot of sense to those following the green movement.
Central CA-There’s been a lot discussed and a lot written about “green” home construction. Alviston.com felt it was time people actually had a chance to see what the “green-world” means. Through the cooperation of Alvis Projects, the veil is lifted on the concept of “green” construction and its potential. See for yourself in the following report.
Mariposa, CA-It’s one of the best-known communities on the way to a stunning national treasure. Mariposa, on Highway 49, is surrounded by beautiful green on the edges of Yosemite National Park.
But the gateway community wanted to know more about green of another kind. That’s where the creators of Alviston stepped in.
Fresno, CA-The push for “green” is steam rolling now. The candidates, the commercials, the children all sing a chorus of green these days. But there’s something quite out of tune with many in the building industry right now. A new reality for green builders has surfaced out West. The reality reads like this, various government agencies want green-building projects, but many lending institutions will only approve projects at old-code construction prices, which basically puts a red X on green plans.
Simply put, as the housing market continues its ride down, so goes the prices of building new structures. That’s good news for someone building with old-school sticks and stones. But a disaster for the evolving world of green construction. Green contractors, like Mark Alvis of Alvis Projects and Alviston.com, are first to admit building an energy-efficient “green” home will cost more. The idea is to save you long-term, especially with the energy bill. But full-cost financing for many “green” construction projects is fading.
In the case of Alvis Projects, an agreement with the City of Fresno to build energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly homes, on old vacant lots has gone from feel-good green to financial dilemma. Plans to complete the project have been dramatically altered. In the words of Alvis, “we’ll build them as green as we can, in the current financial climate.” But the idea of improving neighborhoods with highly energy-efficient “green” homes has come to a screeching halt.
