As most of our regular visitors will already know; our Blog updates have been less than regular due to project and work time constraints.
However; Michaela has been regularly updating our project Facebook page with photos, videos and news.
In the blog, we will provide a regular synopsis of the challenges, obstacles, heartaches and resulting passions of this project. We will highlight the daily activities associated with the frustrations and joy of rebuilding an environmentally sustainable home that all involved will be forever proud to have been associated!
Check out the BTG Facebook page here and become a Built Totally Green fan!
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February 2009
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Archive Entries
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Recycling Statistics
February 20, 2009
The latest recycling statistics are in and they are very impressive numbers! The amount of glass is still the most surprising – especially when you see the photo.
Recycling Stats:
1.38 tons of Glass
1920 lbs of combined Metal
1600 lbs of Aluminum
286 lbs of insulated CU wire
132 lbs of Copper
36 lbs of Brass
Invited guests for the news conference on March 24th at 10am include: Congresswoman Corrine Brown, Mayor John Peyton, Tom Goldsbury – Chief of Building & Zoning Inspection; Derek Igou – Deputy Director, Environmental and Compliance Department – City Council member Bill Bishop.
I can’t wait to drive the Bobcat into the wall.
I feel badly for Steve because after the news conference, I leave for Orlando to speak to the FJA (Florida Justice Association). While it’s always a great rain-making session for getting new business, I hope he doesn’t get inundated by reporters.
Everyone who’s been to the website has said great things about it. Kudos to my wonderful husband, Steve, and John Snyder, Professional Web Solutions, LLC for building an awesome site.
We got our BuiltTotallyGreen.com business cards today. Of course, they’re made with recycled paper!
I can’t believe it’s Friday again already! The weeks are flying by…
Announcing News Conference
February 18, 2009
The Release for the News Conference on Tuesday, March 24th at 10am will go out tomorrow! Invited guests include: Congresswoman Corrine Brown; Mayor John Peyton: Tom Goldsbury – Chief of Building and Zoning Inspection; and Derek Igou –Deputy Director, Environmental and Compliance Department; City Council member Bill Bishop.
President Obama's signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act this week includes a huge portion for energy. It's a major piece of the $787 billion package, totaling about $38 billion in government spending and about $20 billion in tax incentives over the next 10 years.
Florida
National:
I also learned that there are Energy Efficient Mortgages (EEM)
I emailed our mortgage guy at NorthStar Mortgage to start researching this new product and find out which banks are lending. We won’t have an Energy Rater for about another month, but I want to get the process started now. The rating is a comprehensive evaluation of the home’s energy use based on the structure – not the occupants consumption of energy. HERS - the Home Energy Rating Systems is one of the most widely accepted methods of rating a structure. The certified energy rater gathers information such as number of windows, insulation used, types of heating and cooling, etc. then scores it on points and stars for its energy efficiency; i.e. 100 point/5 star house is the most efficient.
"That's our Goal"!
Piles of house!
February 17, 2009
Each night between 4-6pm, Steve and I walk to the end of the dock and look back at the site. Before the demolition began, Bobby Thomas, the VP at Video Law Services, Inc., installed a tripod for us to shoot time lapse video each day. And each day is so different. The bricks, pavers, wood, etc. are being stacked neatly and will go onto pallets so they can be moved around the site as needed. I had to laugh this evening as the Jacksonville University rowing team passed our dock and wondered what they must be thinking. “What are these people doing? They take down the house, but nothing leaves the property!”
Tomorrow we should have our banner tied to the end of the dock with the web site address - then all the boaters, jet skiers, rowers, and neighbors will know what’s happening.
Demo and Design Charrette take us to next phase
January 28, 2009
It’s our third wedding anniversary! AND demolition began today! Yes, we scheduled it for this day – so we’d never forget it – anymore than we would our anniversary! Mike Wetherington and his crew from Lockwood Quality Demolition know that virtually everything stays! The plan is to keep as much brick, pavers, and yes, even drywall and roof shingles for recycling into the landscape. A few days of dismantling and Steve and I drove up to our home and we could see through the entire house. The exterior walls had huge gaping holes because the windows were all gone. Initially, I couldn’t get out of the car – I just sat and cried. It was sad to say good-bye to our old house… but Steve hugged me and reminded me of the Dream Home we will have at the end of this process.
We finally got out of the car and saw workers carry huge plates of glass to a construction bin and proceed to pummel it with hammers. To my dismay, the broken shards and diamond size pieces of glass barely covered the bottom of the small skip. However when it was sent for recycling and weighed, we learned it was 1.38 TONS of glass. Yes, I guess we did live in a Glass house!
February 16, 2009 - The Design Charrette
Believe it or not – after all this time - we still hadn’t done on-camera interviews with our architectural team, Corie Baker and Courtney Mangum, of C2Design. How funny to know Corie and her husband, Mike, are going through a major remodel right now, too! We did their interviews and headed to Mary Tappouni’s office for the Charrette. It’s an opportunity for each of The Players to propose and discuss design/build options and everyone tosses around ideas freely. There are no rules… people get to imagine, inspire and energize the whole room with their ideas and passion.
One of the surprising outcomes today was to discover that the river isn’t deep enough off our bulkhead to install geothermal plates (it requires 12 feet of water) – so we are now looking at possibly having to drill TEN 150ft holes around the site. And of course the house is being built on stilts, which will require auger driven steel piles. I warned Mike and Peg, our neighbors that it could get really loud around here soon.
We’ve photographed, videotaped, and interviewed throughout this process – and of course, we will continue, until we get our Certificate of Occupancy. We want to scream from the roof tops. This is so exciting! The only thing I’ve ever built before is Lego with Alexander (who is now 18 yrs old). The learning curve and education of construction, LEED certification, etc. is non-stop, but worth it! The federal and state caps on rebates and incentives have been lifted and we are hopeful for the ROI. Pay now – but save later … AND save our planet!
We are planning a news conference for next week. We want to show everyone the piles of salvaged and recycled material on our property… we want to share our dream of this beautiful, new home. I will get to drive a Bobcat into the final remaining brick wall…
I can’t wait!! It’s the catharsis of knocking down the old and opening ourselves up to this brand new, Green home that will be responsible, sustainable, welcoming and our Final Home!
What we are doing…
The idea of adding solar panels had already been a dream…but faced with rebuilding as is and likely having to experience another flood, Steve and I had an aha moment! Let’s rebuild this house on stilts – yes, then let’s use solar and build a totally Green house! A trip to the City of Jacksonville planning department revealed that Codes were obviously significantly different than they were in 1958 when our house was built. To rebuild on stilts, we’d have to go up a minimum of 6 feet due to the 100 year flood plain – and our house sits squarely within the arc.
We called Mary Tappouni to the house for our first high-level discussion about building Green. She primarily builds commercial buildings, so out of friendship and empathy, she patiently answered our many questions of how we could rebuild a responsible, sustainable home. We were getting excited about the possibilities, but had no idea how much research and education we were about to embark on. It all started to sound a lot like alphabet soup, USGBC (US Green Building Council), FGBC (Florida Green Building Coalition) Energy Star, Florida Water Star, LEED points and certification.
Months of meetings and phone calls with general contractors, insurance adjusters, mortgage companies, banks, were making me insane. Each person seemed to have a different answer. It was the most frustrating experience of my life – because we couldn’t do one thing without doing another…however we could never get straight answers about what exactly we should be doing.
Summary –How we got here…
Aug 22, 2009 12:30pm
Intense rain, screaming winds, high tide – and we were flooded by Tropical Storm Fay! Very quickly we found ourselves standing in knee-high sewage water trying to rescue whatever possessions we could – and evacuate! We were in shock. We left with some clothes in a plastic bag and spent the night with Therese. At about 8:30pm, we heard from Mike, our neighbor, who was looking into our house with a flashlight and said, “There isn’t any water standing in there.” Great news – we thought.
August 23, 2009
At 7:00 am we met Ben Hightower and his team from ServPro at the house. It became surreal, noisy and chaotic. A team of men vacuumed more than 200 gallons of water from the carpeting, rolled in huge dehumidifiers and dryers to initiate the mitigation process. Then Steve and I took stock of the devastating damage and were told that anything cloth, or any porous material would be considered contaminated.
Soon we realized tha meant nearly everything. We now had four pieces of furniture – including a pool table! Everything else started getting carried to a dumpster. Flood water had wicked it’s way up nearly a foot throughout the house. An insurance adjuster arrived to give us information and we learned Flood Insurance doesn’t cover living expeses. Hmmm – now what? We left in the same pair of shoes as yesterday – since all others were ruined from being on the closet floor. We spent the night with Ruth and Alberto and were in even greater shock as the extent of the damage began to sink in to our hearts and minds. I cried and said “It’s unbelievable,” a lot…
For two weeks the dehumidifiers and dryers ran 24 hours per day. Steve and I were running on adrenaline, fear and the big unknowns! The required bottom four feet of drywall was cut out and much of the insulation was dripping wet.
The smell of sewage, dampness and the beginning of mold was disgusting. We lit incense, candles and Lamp Bergers - but it made little difference, the smell was pervasive and made many of us gag. A brave army of friends came to help us clean and move what was salvageable into a Pod. Our neighbors, Mike and Peg, had just renovated a house to rent only a half mile away. They took it off the market and allowed us to move in. None of us knew how long we’d be there!
We learned a lot about the NFIP (National Flood Insurance Plan). The FEMA underwritten policy allows them to depreciate the paint on the walls! So we would not receive full replacement value for anything we owned – the building or our possessions. Fortunately we photographed everything and were able to make a detailed accounting of our personal losses. Then we learned about Exactimate. It’s – the software insurance companies use to determine the cost to repair a home to its previous condition. Our General Contractor estimated the cost to be more than triple the amount of our 1st Insurance check.
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