Celebrating Earth Day with Interiors

Did you celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd? Did you do anything to make your home interior environmentally friendly? Here are some questions to ask yourself when considering a home improvement project or purchase.

1. Have you switched all your incandescent bulbs out for compact fluorescent light bulbs? If not, next time you are in your local hardware store, pick some up. You will have them ready when that next light bulb burns out.
2. Do you really need your heat or air set at the same temperature when you are out of the home or sleeping? Consider installing a programmable thermostat? It will save you money and help save the earth.
3. Is air flowing into your home under doors and windows? Plug them up! Air leaks allow air and heat to sneak outside, making it more difficult for us to control the air in our home. In turn, this makes the air conditioner or furnace work harder. It ends up costing you more money and wasting precious resources.
4. Buy local products. Products made overseas require tons and tons of fuel.
5. Buy items with post-consumer recycled content. This can range from clothes to fabrics, plastic containers to furniture, even coffee mugs.
6. Do you reuse? Reusing ensures less waste goes into landfills. Can you reuse that old piece of furniture? Can you reuse paint you already have in your basement? How about shopping at a thrift or antique store? It’s amazing what your mind can come up with when given the opportunity to save money and make something beautiful for your home!
7. Buy Energy Star Appliances. Replace old appliances with Energy Star models when they break. Your appliances will run more efficiently and can save you money in the long run. Remember to unplug your small appliances when they are not in use because they can still suck up energy.
8. Don’t forget to ask the experts. Decide if buying a sustainable product is an option for you before you buy anything for your home. If so, just ask the expert for more information. I bet you learn something interesting.

Celebrate Earth Day all 365 days in your home! How have you made the Earth better today?

So What is the Big Deal About LED’s?

Light-emitting diodes are being used for all kinds of lighting projects these days. Some of the applications are good uses while others are not.

PROS

Light: LED’s first gained national public attention as rope lighting. So why is everyone trying to work them into a lighting design? They produce more light per watt than an incandescent lamp, which creates more heat than light per watt.

Color: You can also use LED’s to produce a single color – red, blue, green – without having to use color filters, which is more efficient and can lower costs.

Size: LED’s are smaller than most existing lamps. This allows for designers to reduce the size and dimensions of their product.

Speed: LED’s respond to full brightness faster. When the switch is turned on, they take only a microsecond compared to other lamps (HID), which can take up to 15 minutes to reach full brightness.

Cycling: If we are typically turning on and off a light multiple times in a day, we will burn a lamp out in a very short time. Consider how may times we use our turn signal in our cars. LED’s are the perfect choice for such applications. Cycling LED lights does not affect their lamp life and they reach full brightness almost instantly.

Materials: Because LED’s emit heat through the base and not the lamp itself, they are able to be used in decorative lighting fixtures with a wider range of materials than before.

Life Span: Incandescent lamps last approximately 1,000-2,000 hours; fluorescent tubes, like those in overhead fixtures, last 10,000-15,000 hours and LED’s last 35,000-50,000 hours.

Strength: LED lights do not break like fluorescent and incandescent lamps.

So if they can do all of this, why not change everything over to them right now? There are a few disadvantages.

CONS

Cost: LED’s are more expensive. Expense in the lighting design business is based on output of lumen. LED’s do not put out a great deal of lumen like incandescent and fluorescent.

Temperature: LED lights do not operate as well in high ambient temperature levels. They overheat and fail.

Lighting Coverage: LED’s provide more of a point of light illumination rather than a broad sphere of coverage, so it can take many more of them to cover the same area as one incandescent or compact florescent.

Color: LED’s seem to lean towards blue rather than white light.

The disadvantages seem small compared to the advantages. As time and technology move forward, these disadvantages may be easily corrected. What experiences have you had with LED’s? Would you be willing to pay more for that extended life?

Key Points of Life Cycle Analysis

You are probably asking yourself what life cycle analysis has to do with interior design. The answer is: everything! Life cycle analysis, otherwise known as LCA, is the awareness of where a product comes from, what it takes to produce, how it gets broken apart and what happens as the end of its life. If you are concerned with sustainability or eco-conscience design in any way you should take the time to answer the question LCA with every purchase you make.

Let’s take a common household interior purchase, a sofa, and break down its LCA for better understanding of why this is such an important topic (at least I think so!).

When you purchase a sofa at your local furniture provider it has already lived a full life before it is delivered to you. First, all the individual components of the sofa have to come from somewhere. The frame, fabric, cushioning and fasteners all have an original harvest and production location – all before they are shipped separately to the final assembly location. So the more parts and pieces a furniture selection has, the more embodied energy it contains (see our blog “Embodied Energy – What Is It and What Does It Represent In My Home?” for more info about this term). So after considering the harvest location (where the material is found in its virgin form), the production location (where man-made materials are produced or where natural materials are turned into usable form) and the assembly location (where all the parts of the assembly are put together), next is the distribution location.

After the pieces of furniture is put to use – so our sofa has officially been crushed, re-fluffed, washed, drooled on and has a proper about of popcorn stuck in the cushions – you then have to ask the almighty question of what to do with it.

First, in regards to furniture, there is always the option to donate. This takes the sofa and puts it right back into use for the same purpose. There is limited energy for this use, just the trip in a pickup or a moving van.

The second option is to recycle what you can. This will require breaking apart all parts of the assembly. While recycling is a great choice, it is important to keep in mind that this does use energy to fulfill. All the individual parts have to be shipped to different location for processing and then shipped to become their next product.

The last option, I hate to even mention, is throwing the piece of furniture away. It’s sinful even to say.

In the end, the key to LCA is to consciously think about each purchase with an exit strategy. So, out of the stuff in your home right now, how much of it do you have an exit strategy for??

Embodied Energy – What Is It and What Does It Represent In My Home?

Simply put, embodied energy is the amount of total energy a tangible article houses. Energy, in this terminology, represents physical exertion, production, environmental growth effort, shipping, crating, recycling, and anything else that requires a form of effort to produce an object. The smallest of objects to the largest of buildings all contain embodied energy.

Heck, even the sweater I am wearing right now has embodied. It’s wool, so the energy used to feed a sheep, sheer the sheep, box the raw wool, ship it, mill the wool, spin to production fiber, ship again, dye the yarns, weave the sweater, ship the sweater, stock the sweater, my gas to get to the store, the department stores energy necessary to sell the sweater, bag the sweater, drive the sweater home and finally remove the tags and wear the sweater. Phew! Please notice I stopped here and I could go into what energy is needed to dry clean the sweater!

So in short, embodied energy of the total of all types of energy. This is such an important attribute to be aware of as an interior designer because it provides clarification and weight to all the decisions being made for an interior. All of a sudden, deciding on the arm chairs shipping from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Detroit became a better choice over the chairs shipping from Spain – at least in regards to the embodied energy attributes.

Having awareness of embodied energy not only assists you in making wise purchasing choices; it can also help guide you in what to do with the sweater when you are ready to pass it on. I believe when you remove yourself from your own reality for a second and put yourself in the shoes of an object (I know, odd concept), you can have clarity and really start to think about your purchases differently. As Americans we are consumers, but what if we all just made the conscience decision to consume less. Think about the overall impact you could have on embodied energy.

One of the best examples I like to use for reduced embodied energy are vegetables. Think about the energy difference between a cucumber bought at the grocery store versus one grown in your backyard… its an interesting concept.

What easy steps can you take to reduce the embodied energy surrounding you?

What is LEED?

How many times have you picked up a newspaper to read about another LEED certified building? Do you find yourself wondering what LEED is? Being green is all over the news these days.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED buildings are certified through the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). “LEED certification provides independent, third-party verification that a building project meets the highest green building and performance measures.” (www.usgbc.org)

Every couple of years an updated rating system is released and individuals can take the LEED Accredited Professional Exam. In 2009, individuals are now accredited in their specific area of work. There are 5 types of exams:
1. LEED for Green Building Design and Construction
2. LEED for Green Interior Design and Construction
3. LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance
4. LEED for Homes
5. LEED for Neighborhood Development.

Many different professionals are responsible for creating a LEED certified building, including architects, landscape architects, electrical engineers, HVAC engineers, civil engineers, interior designers, and construction managers. Basically anyone involved in the building has to play a part in the process; from manufacturers guaranteeing their products meet certain minimum standards to the actual workers who build and execute the installations.

The LEED rating system is determined by meeting a minimum number of credits. Buildings are certified as silver, gold or platinum. Their certification level depends on the number of credits that are reached during the design and construction process.

The main areas that LEED addresses are sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. There is also an additional section for innovation and design which may allow an achievement over the minimum requirements for a credit or a creative solution to make the building more sustainable.

Paperwork, drawings, photos and many other items are submitted at two different times during the development of the project for review through the Green Building Certification Institute. They are responsible for determining if the building has met the necessary requirements to become certified. The Green Building Certification Institute has taken over administrative responsibilities during certification for the U.S. Green Building Council. This is a time consuming process and will only get done if everyone works together as a team!

If you are interested in having your home or business LEED certified, research a qualified professional in your area to assist in determining what your needs will be. This can be done by searching for a LEED AP. For more information go to the U.S. Green Building Council’s website at www.usgbc.org