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.

Read more.

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.

Read more.

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.

Read more.

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.

Read more.

***

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.

The Beacon Institute

From TheBeaconInstitute.org:

Headquartered midway along the Hudson River Estuary in the City of Beacon, Dutchess County, New York, The Beacon Institute is an evolving nexus for new resources, new energy and new ideas about rivers and estuaries around the world.

The Hudson River is an ideal portal for exploration of the interaction between people and nature, via The Beacon Institute’s three-pronged approach focusing on Science & Technology, Education and Policy. With the Hudson as its operational base, and with satellite facilities to the north and the south, the Institute is committed to developing a cadre of scientists, engineers, educators and policy experts whose collaborative work will focus on some of the most important and endangered bodies of water in the world.

Beacon Institute’s first facility at the Denning’s Point campus, the new Center for Environmental Innovation and Education (CEIE), is a model of green design that is reusing a mostly undeveloped and abandoned industrial building from the former Denning’s Point Brick Works. This adaptive reuse of an existing late-nineteenth century brick structure launches a new beginning for historic Denning’s Point State Park.

Westchester Green Link of the Week: The Beacon Institute

Hays Hill: Before Construction

Check out the pre-construction image of Hays Hill over at Fivecat.com.

More Progress on Hays Hill

Portland Green Building Glossary

The city of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has one of the best Green Building Glossaries on the net. Ever heard of a desuperheater?

Fairchester Green Building Council

I received a comment from Richard Heller of Greener By Design today. He was looking for a Westchester Chapter of the USGBC and found my post about the New York Green Building Council. We still don’t have an official Westchester chapter, but a new professional organization recently launched called the Fairchester Green Building Council.

From FairchesterGBC.org:

The Fairchester Green Building Council is a new, non-profit serving the Fairfield and Westchester region.  The conviction of over 500 real estate professionals who value what we are working to achieve, is our mandate to support the implementation of sustainability across our region.

I am not sure if the group is an official chapter of the USGBC, but it looks like they are working to make a difference in the region.