News

The Disasters will be Devastating. California is number one in so many things, but unfortunately one of them is earthquakes. We’re all waiting for the big one which will come sooner or later to each region, North, Central, and Southern California. In dense population centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles, there will be lots of damage.

There’s no code restriction against installing a fire fighters pole (that's right!) in your home. Think about it, you're late for work in your third-floor bedroom and you have to make it quickly down to the garage. What to do? No problem...... Faced with this question on a four-story home we were designing in Capitola, we settled on a 3-inch diameter highly polished seamless stainless steel pipe. After a little research at the local firehouse, we settled on stainless steel instead of brass to simplify daily maintenance (fire fighters spend a lot of time polishing brass). You also have to provide a leather padded "doughnut" at the bottom to land on when you're not quite prepared to use your feet.

Organic building materials, such as wood, straw, cotton, and paper – are all potential food for termites and mold. When these materials get damp, inspects and fungi eat them and the problems begin, building damage, and even health dangers. The solution is simple—use wood on surfaces inside and out where they can be appreciated, but make the building structure out of inorganic materials like steel, stone, or concrete. Then insulate with inorganic foam or fiberglass rather than with cotton or cellulose, and use inorganic interior materials wherever there is a choice. Moisture from showers and cooking can cause problems with interior organic materials, so these must be designed very carefully, especially in kitchens and bathrooms.

Many of our buildings collect rainwater, which is then filtered and stored underground in large plastic tanks. Though not pure enough to drink or to be used for showers, this water is great for plants, toilets, car washing, etc.

Rather than blowing hot air around, radiant systems use hot water in tubes to heat (usually) the floor. Fresh air windows can be opened, even in the coldest winter, to flush out stale air. Brisk yet toasty; the perfect comfort system. People who’ve lived with radiant never want to go back to central heating.

A big part of green design is how we use energy. It’s now possible to collect all the energy we need for buildings from renewable clean sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and from streams and rivers. In building design, our first step to heat or cool a building is to consider the exterior color. Dark colors absorb the sun’s energy, making buildings hotter, while light colors reflect the sun’s heat, keeping the building cooler. Therefore, public buildings which normally have a lot of people heating them up usually need cooling, so therefore should be light colored, while residences more often do better with darker exteriors. Our strategy usually is to first consider building colors, then incorporates the greenhouse effect (heat build-up through the windows), and finally by using collectors to heat air or water. We use floors and walls of concrete and masonry, and sometimes volumes of water in tanks, to store the heat so it can be used later. For insulation, we like spray foam. This rigid material is sprayed as a liquid from a gun into crevices and framing spaces.