Kermit Was Right

It's not easy being green.

You would think that building a "green" energy-efficient house would be a no-brainer. Easy. After all, there are all kinds of environmentally "friendly" products available now. Wheatboard cabinets. Bamboo flooring. Low-e coated thermal windows. Energy-efficient appliances. Solar panels. It's all out there. But when you start doing research, you find out that all these decisions aren't so easy and obvious.

Take wheatboard cabinetry for example. In some installations, the cabinets have been literally falling apart in 5 years and have to be replaced. What's green about sending cabinets to the landfill after 5 years? I've chosen cherry cabinets made from all of the cherry tree, cracks, blemishes and all. Those natural characteristics will give me the rustic look I want and ensure that little or no wood is wasted. (Leftovers go to the local high school shop class.) They are somewhat higher end cabinets, made by a small company in Minnesota, Plato. Yes, they will have to shipped 1500 miles from there to here, but these cabinets don't look like the mass-produced stuff we commonly see. Because they aren't. Plato is a small company. Employees get a living wage with benefits. We will end up with high-quality, made-in-America-for-a-living-wage cabinets that wil be in style andl last forever. Or as close to it as one can reasonably get. I think that's green. You may differ.

Our Friday meeting with the architect focused on some remaining structural issues. But also on heating, cooling, window, and energy issues, all of which are tangled together like a ball of worms. We have Jen's energy calculations. And Randy's. Will the twain meet? Eventually. In the meantime, we still are struggling to figure out how much supplemental heating we need and where. And what window coatings to choose to optimize heat gain in the winter and heat lose in the summer. It isn't as easy as just slapping in low-e coated windows and a gas stove here and there. Wish it were. We have a long ways to go to deal with those issues and make those decisions. And 2 meetings scheduled with Jen the architect next week after she meets with the engineer(s) and the builder twice earlier in the week. Did I mention that we now have both a structural AND a civil engineer on this project? Never mind the surveyor who played out his part some time ago. And here I thought we were building a structure that was just a house. Sigh. Live and learn.