Soygel Paint Remover

From Franmar.com:

Want a better way to remove paints, urethanes, acrylics, epoxies, and enamels without the back-breaking work of sanding and chiseling? Made with 100% American Grown Soybeans, SOY Gel does all that and more. Throw out the sand paper and put away the knee pads. Just put some SOYGel on the coating to be removed, allowing you to work on another project. Let SOYGel do the work, not you! Within minutes you can see the power of SOYGel start to lift the coatings, all while you spend time on other tasks. Not sure how many coats need to be removed? SOY Gel doesn’t care. One coat, five coats, twenty coats, SOY Gel will remove them all and leave you smiling. In addition Soy Gel goes a long way, with one gallon giving you up to 200 sq. ft. coverage. That’s THREE times the coverage of most traditional strippers!! With SOY Gel you won’t have to deal with harsh odors that we all know so well with other strippers. No odor SOY Gel is the perfect helper for anyone wanting to remove paints, urethanes, and enamels.

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ecoprocote by Get Real Surfaces

Get Real Surfaces is the premier supplier of architectural concrete in the Northeast. This week, they announced that they are now the exclusive New York dealer for ecoprocote (TM).

From GetRealSurfaces.com:

ecoprocote (TM) is the leading brand of specialty high performance sustainable coatings. The brand is marketed throughout the U.S. and abroad as a superior alternative to toxic chemicals used in the construction, remodeling and facilities maintenance industries.

The majority of Get Real Surfaces’ work is done in New York City (and in tight spaces) and we were in pursuit of finding a low-odor and environmentally friendly sealer to use on our products that would benefit our clients as well as our installation technicians. We discovered ecoprocote (TM) products while researching new sealers and found that the Eco-Tuff line of coatings met and exceeded our requirements. From this point we experimented with other ecoprocote (TM) products and made the decision to become a distributor of the ecoprocote (TM) line, allowing us to spread the news about the great green coatings and stains available to architects, contractors and other design professionals.

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Soy-Based Insulation

…the latest photo from Hays Hill.

The windows are installed. The clapboard is going up and the shingles for the second floor are on their way.

On the inside, the Raupanel radiant flooring is being laid…

…and the soy-based insulation has been applied.

Here’s some info on the SEALECTION Agribalance^® Spray Foam Insulation:

SEALECTION Agribalance® is a two-component, open-cell, spray-applied, semi-rigid polyurethane foam system that contains more than 20% renewable agricultural-based materials (refined vegetable oils) in the resin. This product is a fully water-blown foam system having a low in-place density with excellent adhesion to various substrates, including onto itself. SEALECTION Agribalance® incorporates the single-phase solution technology developed by DEMILEC (USA) LLC® for extended shelf life and easy processing.

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Passive House

From the Greenline blog:

The Passive House (Passiv Haus) standard is an ultra-low energy building design system which uses extremely efficient building envelopes to significantly drive down energy consumption in structures. The standard is completely voluntary but does have an extremely rigorous set of requirements that must be met in order to be classified as a Passive House.

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Thanks Bill…

Cradle to Cradle Controversy

Roger Cox sent me an email heads-up on a post written by Danielle Sacks. Its a follow up to her article in Fast Company magazine about green guru William McDonough. I posted about it back in November.

Mr. Cox is an attorney in the Netherlands who is one of green architect William McDonough’s most ardent fans and also happens to been leading Holland’s “cradle to cradle” movement. However, Cox is now launching a campaign against his hero to open up the C2C movement to all.

Read more here.