MEMO: You own the Housing industry now, Here is what you should do with it.
Now that the United States Government owns all the mortgages, the guarantors of the mortgages, and the reinsurer of all the insurers, and possibly pretty soon $700 billion worth of foreclosed houses, what should you do with it?
Not just because of safety; Fire Marshals have been demanding that for years. It is probably necessary if we want to build healthy as well as safe houses. Perhaps if houses had sprinklers, then manufacturers would not have to use flame retardants that are showing up in our blood.
Buildings consume 76% of electricity generated; they create 48% of our greenhouse gases; a quarter of our waste in landfills comes from construction. Over the past year we have suggested a dozen big steps that could be taken to make our buildings better and reduce their carbon footprint. We round them up here; they are long posts so you will have to follow the links. We invite suggestions for other big steps.
1. Ban Demolition.
As we know courtesy of FEMA's optimization experiments, Formaldehyde exposure is not a good thing. It gets worse; a new study links it to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease. As we know courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency, energy efficiency is a good thing, which is why they promote
We have stated that the real big step in building would be to ban demolition and renovate, but if the building has to come down, at least it should be deconstructed. The demolition numbers from the US EPA are shocking; Greenstrides summarizes the extent.
Building demolitions account for 48% of the waste stream, or 65 million tons per year; renovations account for 44%, or 60 million tons per year; and 8%, or 11 million tons per year, is generated at construction sites.
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How dumb is this? Use coal to boil water. Use steam to spin turbines and run generators to make electricity then transported long distances to connect to a coil at the bottom of a tank- to make hot water.
Solar hot water panels are dumb simple too, often just a box with a glass lid with black pipes in it; you can even build them yourself. Others, like evacuated tube collectors are more efficient if more expensive.
Developers don't like saving trees; it forces them to adjust the lot grading and road patterns for tree preservation rather than efficiency. The installation of services and construction disrupts the water table and the trees sometimes die anyways. Purchasers complain that crap from the trees is sticking to their cars. It is just easier for everyone to flatten them and stick in some cheap twig.
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