Welcome USGBC Webinar Attendees

If you have come to this blog after David Gulyas' presentation on the ReGreen remodeling guidelines and their application to kitchen and bath projects, congratulations. You are in the right spot! For a quick list of projects he helped with, you may look at related blog posts here or here. Or visit a summary of our green remodeling.

I must say David was instrumental in helping us go green with our kitchen remodel of Humphrey House, encouraging us to do things behind the walls such as tightening up the building envelope and maximizing daylighting in the space, as much as focusing on the materials and resources selected in our kitchen remodel. When evaluating materials, he helped us to think of products in terms of their overall lifecycle contributions, pointing out that the "embedded energy" in a product like bamboo cabinets, due to the manufacturing in China and transportation to the US, may make them less sustainable than cabinets made from local hardwoods.

And although the lack of green in our budget didn't allow us to be as green as we may have wanted, David was very supportive by telling us that was okay and "real" because we had to struggle with compromises and trade-offs.

It is great to see David get some attention and allow him to give back and help spread his knowledge among professionals. www.davidgulyas.com

GreenBuild Anticipation

This week, Chicago is treated with the largest conference on green building in the US, if not internationally. The USGBC's international expo, GreenBuild, comes to McCormick Place in Chicago for most of the week. The official dates are Wednesday 11/7 - Friday 11/9, but as with any large conference there are pre- and post-conference workshops and other events that extend the experience to basically all week.

The event has many educational sessions as well as several keynote speakers including former president Bill Clinton. It also has what looks to be an impressively large expo hall which is one of the things I'm personally excited to see. There are going to be all kinds of neat building technologies on display. And although the mass focus for the audience is commercial construction, I'm sure that with the growth of LEED for Homes rating system, there will be some neat residential exhibitors as well.

I'll be helping one of the exhibitors at the expo, and looking forward to posting my reactions to the event. And although it's kind of last minute, I may be able to get some free expo passes. So if anyone in the Chicago area is interested in a free Expo pass for Wednesday or Thursday (9am - 6 pm), leave a comment and I'll see if I can help you out.