Hello Robert! Welcome back. I hope you're receiving messages okay now. Please let me know if you have any problems.
Re wasted wood, I picked this up somewhere or other, for the US, not Canada: "In 1999, for instance, 7.5 million tons of wooden pallets - platforms associated with shipping - went into the solid waste stream, accounting for over 60 percent of all wood waste." And: "There are an estimated 6 hardwood palletts in landfill for every resident of the US." "During 1991, Ohio produced about 32 million pallets. Hardwoods make up 72 percent of the total production, softwood 15% and mixed 13%. One-third of the pallets were constructed for reuse and two-thirds of the pallets were one-way, or disposable pallets. Only 7.5 million pallets were repaired or recycled. The study estimates that disposing wood from pallets into landfills claims the equivalent of the saw timber on more than 18,000 Ohio acres each year. Eventually, a substantial quantity of wood pallets enter landfills, thus rendering this valuable resource useless." http://www.epa.state.oh.us/opp/recyc/pallet3.html Pallet Management Guide :-( > There's a lot of ignorance about energy issues out there. I suppose >people in forums like this one have a LOT of educating to do. . . Yes... and a LOT of learning to do too. At least I feel that way, though I'm very impressed with the knowledge of many members of this group and others. I just posted this somewhere else: "... the United States is now far from being a sustainable society, and in many respects is further away than it was at the time of the Earth Summit in 1992. Unlike many other developed countries, the United States has not used a strategic process to move the country toward a sustainable future and has not educated the American people about the opportunities and challenges of sustainable development." -- From "Slouching Toward Johannesburg: U.S. Sustainable Development Policies", by John Dernbach, law professor at Widener University. http://www.fpif.org/progresp/volume6/v6n23_body.html#slouching No need to pick on the US though, in particular, no country is doing very well at this. The US is indeed the most profligate with energy, and much else, but compared with the distance left to travel, the differences among the industrialized countries are small. The governments aren't doing too well, no use relying on them. Hassle them about it, sure, but... DIY. Like your house! Congratulations, quite a feat - I hope you'll be comfortable and happy there. Regards Keith >Hello Everyone! > > It's been five months since I've been able to post here. My wife >and I have built a new house, and not only have I learned a lot about >the building process, I've been astonished at how much waste and >inefficiency goes into putting up a home. > > 1. Builders love concrete. We used WAY more concrete than I >believed we would when we first considered this project. I'm not >certain we could have done much better than we did because our property >slopes considerably, but concrete manufacturing is VERY energy intensive >and next time we'll have to be more careful about property selection. >Any ideas about alternatives out there? > > 2. The amount of waste generated by a building is simply >astonishing! I own a Ford Ranger with a short wheelbase and a small >box. I filled the thing 4 times with dimensional lumber cut too short >for use, and hauled all of it out to my father in law so that he could >mix it with his firewood this winter. (Generally speaking, dimensional >lumber is so dry that it burns too quickly for a clean fire and >therefore produces excessive smoke.) Surely gasification or clean >pyrolysis would be much better alternatives than the landfill, where all >of our oriented strand board, drywall, carpet scraps and other waste >ended up. What's worse, is that our tradesmen kept saying that we >actually had very little waste. . . Some of the houses going up around >here have huge dumpsters that get filled more than once during the >building! (I had asked the architect who drew our plans to minimize >waste by making room sizes as close to standard dimensions as possible. >We ended up with a bigger house for less money that way. Strange, isn't >it?) > > 3. There's a certain "momentum" in doing things the "conventional" >way. The lender at our credit union looked at me as if I was crazy when >I said I wanted solar hot water. The builders simply didn't understand >why I was so particular about southern orientation, minimizing north >facing window sizes (our view is to the north, so I lost on that one. . >.), and people scratched their heads when I specified a relatively small >electrical panel ("just" 100 amps of service!) and high efficiency >lighting. We argued about extra insulation in the ceiling, heat in the >floor and the "tiny" size of our natural gas boiler. > > There's a lot of ignorance about energy issues out there. I suppose >people in forums like this one have a LOT of educating to do. . . > >robert luis rabello ------------------------ Yahoo! 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