Portland's Harpoon House

Tickets are on sale now for the City of Portland’s 9th Annual Build It Green! Home Tour and Information Fair on Saturday, September 25th!  

.  

This annual event in Portland, Oregon is a fantastic way to learn about the latest, greatest, and most inspirational things happening in green building in the Rose City! This year’s tour features 21 homes – each of which incorporate outstanding sustainable elements, from energy-savings to sustainable material use. These homes will be open for ticket holders to tour, and the homeowners will be on hand to answer your questions!   

.  

Among the homes open on the tour will be the super-energy-efficient Harpoon House (recently featured in the September issue of Portland Monthly) in which you can see the use of dramatic tigerwood flooring, rainscreen siding, and eco-roofs. You can also look around the newly retro-fitted Everhart home that is so efficient now that it no longer needs a furnace. Another “don’t miss” home on the tour is the Vermont Street Project , a timber frame home with walls covered in American Clay, and advanced mechanical systems for energy and water conservation.  To see a preview of all the homes on the tour click here.

. 

Tickets are available at Ecohaus Portland (cash only) or online. 

• $15 Adults
• $10 car free/students/honored citizens
• Free for children 14 and under

.  

The BIG! Tour ends, as usual, with a fun, resource-rich, Information Fair in the Ecohaus parking lot! Enjoy music by the Wicky Pickers, taste free beer samples from Hopworks Brewery, see green building product demos and visit our varied exhibitors like:
    - The Oregon Native Plant Trailer
    - The Portland Water Bureau
    - Solar Oregon
    - and more!  

You will also be able to ENTER TO WIN a free dual-flush, one-piece Caroma Toilet!  

.  

For information on having an exhibitor booth please  contact susannas@ecohaus.com. Availability is limited. 

.

Microhouse has a range of backyard cottage plans.

In November of 2009 the City of Seattle voted to allow homeowners in neighborhoods across the city to construct accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on their property. These “backyard cottages,” as they are commonly known, have the potential to transform our communities in many positive ways. Not only do they offer individuals a way to create urban density, they can also provide housing for aging parents, grown children, and renters! Legal in Seattle and Portland, backyard cottages are also common in San Francisco, where vacationers can even rent them out by the week or weekend for a cozy retreat in the middle of town!

 .

Because by nature it  must be small, an ADU can provide a manageable opportunity to experiment with a building project that incorporates efficient and creative space design, sustainable practices, eco-friendly materials, and implement recent energy saving innovations! There are a number of architecture firms around that specialize in backyard cottages – and help with all aspects of the project, including the often-perplexing permitting process.

 .

Microhouse, a collaborative firm of architects, designers and landscape architects in Seattle, is even offering construction-ready plans which come standard with Ecohaus materials and finishes!

 .

You can see some other nice examples of backyard cottages in Seattle by clicking here.  

.

Congratulations to Rosa Parks Elementary  in San Francisco – one of three Grand Prize Winners of the CBS & EcoZone Green My School Contest!

.

In total, 45 schools across the nation participated in the contest. Each participating school submitted a short standard submission form and a creative response exploring what being green means to them and why their school should receive a green makeover. The three winning schools are Rosa Parks Elementary School in San Francisco; Everett M. Dirksen Middle School in Chicagoland; and Miami Northwestern High School in Miami. The winning schools recieved extensive green makeovers with the eco-remodel at Rosa Parks including a solar installation on the roof, a rainwater collection unit, and alternative interior wall coverings like American Clay.

. 

Our friends at Yolo Colorhouse Paint in Portland Oregon contributed Zero-VOC exterior paints to Rosa Parks Elementary School for the striking murals that now adorn the walls of the school and playground.  All YOLO Colorhouse coatings are completely free of carcinogens, formaldehyde, phthalates,  hazardous air pollutants and ozone depleting compounds. You can find Yolo Colorhouse online at www.yolocolorhouse.com.  Scroll down for more pictures of the new colorful murals at Rosa Parks Elementary!

.

.

.

Poor indoor air quality can contribute to an array of health symptoms and developmental disorders such as headaches, respiratory disorders, ADHD, chemical sensitivities and more. The  objective of the Home Health Assessment program is to promote health (especially lung health) by increasing awareness of home environmental pollutants and encouraging people to take action to reduce exposure.

.

Last week the ALAW used our Seattle showroom as a venue for a volunteer appreciation party. The accomplished mountaineer, and ALAW volunteer, Lou Whittaker addressed the crowd and expressed his gratitude for the support of all the volunteers at the event – from the teens that participate in the program Teens Against Tobacco Use to the people who collect pledges to participate in the Climb for Clean Air on Mt. Rainier.  ALAW Executive Director, Astrid Berg, gave each volunteer a token of appreciation – a red rose.

.

If you would like to have your home assessed by a Master Home Environmentalist, please click here.

If you would like to go through the (free) 35-hour Master Home Environmentalist training program, please click here.  To complete the program, participants follow the training with 35 hours of community service over the course of a year – offering assessments of people’s homes.

.

To learn more about the American Lung Association in Washington, please visit www.alaw.org.

.

Sustainability explored through Multi-Media Dance Performances:

.

Deborah Slater Dance Theater celebrates 20 years of theatrically innovative work with the world premiere of Men Think They Are Better Than Grass in seven performances April 30-May 9 at Z Space / Theater Artaud in San Francisco. The large-scale, evening-length work is inspired by the beauty and fragility of the natural world and W. S. Merwin’s poetry (from which it takes its title) and explores the interrelationship between humanity and the environment. Choreographed and directed by Deborah Slater, Men Think They Are Better Than Grass incorporates text, animation, visual design, an original score and video. The work uses interactive technology to create a stage environment that changes over time, through a wikipedia-like web component that will be uniquely different from performance to performance. This reciprocity between art, technology, and the stage–artistically innovative, participatory and solution-oriented–is at the heart of Men Think They Are Better Than Grass and will shape the creative process and the performance experience for artists and audiences alike. Performances will be given Friday, April 30, at 8 p.m. (Preview); Saturday, May 1, at 8 p.m. (Opening Night with post-performance Gala); Sunday, May 2, at 5 p.m.; Thursday, May 6-Friday, May 8, at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, May 9, at 5 p.m. Z Space / Theater Artaud is located at 450 Florida Street, San Francisco.

.

Tickets for Men Think They Are Better Than Grass are priced $20-25 with discounts for seniors, students and groups and may be purchased at www.brownpapertickets.com or by calling 1-800-838-3006.

.

Zem Joaquin at our San Francisco Grand Opening

The Grand Opening Celebration for our new San Francisco store is picking up steam! 

Our celebration kicked off last weekend with big events in our store and exhibiting at the Green Festival just two blocks away!  The glamorous eco-celebrity and founder of ecofabulous, Zem Joaquin, helped set the tone on Friday night. As she welcomed us to San Francisco, she shared a story about the positive effects of green building materials on the health of her family – her kids have gone five years without an asthma attack since she decided to go green in her own home.  You can see her tell this story herself – and give us a nice plug too – on Kelly Ripa’s first Green Idea Swap webcast (she comes on around 8 minutes in!) 

At the store our Grand Opening Specials continue and Yolo has extended their Spring Sale rebate to San Francisco Customers through May 2nd! Also, check out our schedule of workshops and events on our San Francisco Community Page. 

The community gathers at our Grand Opening

Ecohaus is buzzing with activity this week as we get ready for the GRAND OPENING of our new San Francisco store this weekend! If you are in the Bay Area, stop by our location on the corner of 9th and Bryant. To help us celebrate, product experts from many of our suppliers will be in the San Francisco store throughout Saturday and Sunday to answer your most in-depth questions. You will have the opportunity to meet the inventor of Squak Mountain Stone Countertops; a Bamboo flooring expert from Eco-Timber; an American Clay Earth Plaster Artisan; carcinogen-free, plant-based paint innovators from Safecoat; an Eco-friendly Cabinet specialist from Neil Kelly – and MORE!

Every weekend for the month of April and into May the San Francisco store will be hosting how-to workshops on a range of our products – from the application of American Clay to installing  a click floor! Click here to see the line-up!

We are also putting many products on special, across all three stores, for the entire month of April! Click here to see our Grand Opening Specials.

We are also gearing up for the San Francisco Green Festival on April 10th and 11th, 2010 at the Concourse Exhibition Center!

Blue Pine Wood is responsibly harvested from Oregon's forest land.

Ecohaus (a retailer of wood products from well-managed forests) and Sustainable Northwest Wood (a distributor of wood products from well-managed forests) have long partnered to bring a wide range of beautiful, Northwest, FSC certified wood products to a local audience. Our commitment to this joint-mission comes from our conviction that sustainable forestry can -and does- positively affect the lives of people in our community and beyond. 

An excellent example of this principlein motion is our Blue Pine, a unique offering from Sustainable Northwest Wood. The story behind this beautiful wood product has more to it than just the wood’s striking aesthetic, this is a story that has helped create jobs locally and improved forest health, too. 

Recently in Grant County, Oregon the closure of four out of the five sawmills in recent years resulted in layoffs for over 20% of the local workforce, devastating the local economy. In an effort to revive community enterprise while restoring forests; local environmental groups, loggers, federal agencies, and community leaders worked together to find common ground to remove standing dead trees, mostly blue pine, from local forests. This effort, whose focus on good stewardship and restoration, won them support from a diverse group of stakeholders and helped supply local mills with the timber they needed to stay open. Mike Billman of Malheur Lumber Company says “Working with local and national environmental organizations, Malheur Lumber Company has seen advancements in forest restoration projects on our local National Forest land. We expect that our collective efforts will improve forest health and ecological diversity while providing for forest related jobs and supplying raw materials to the forest products industry. We are excited to work with Sustainable Northwest Wood and to be an integral part of sustainable forest management!”

Through Ecohaus and Sustainable Northwest Wood, the wood from community initiatives like this one can, in-turn, become a strong and sustainable part of the buildings that house and sustain communities up and down the West Coast. 

West Coast wood = West Coast jobs 

Responsibly managed wood = Jobs for years to come. 

SW-COC-000023

We recommend especially their recent post about saving money while remodeling.  

Enjoy!

.