The July issue of Real Simple magazine is now off the newsstand. So in case you missed it, I am reprinting my article about green renovations. The editors asked that the information be presented  as a series of questions for the various contractors that might work on a home renovation. I couldn’t really do justice to any of the subjects covered in that format and the space allowed, so I will try to expand upon some of them in future posts.

Crumbling house prices and economic jitters have convinced many homeowners that it’s safer to adapt what they have to what they need, rather than jump into a shaky housing market. But can a renovation help your house adapt to the planet as well?

Throwing a few photovoltaic solar panels on the roof won’t make your home green. And environmentally sensitive architects have moved beyond the singular obsession with energy efficiency. The catchphrase of green building in the 21^st century is “embodied energy.” How much fossil fuel went into the bricks, cement, steel and glass that make up your house? What quantity of greenhouse gases is your home responsible for even before you switch on the first light? For some houses, the embodied energy of day one will exceed the sum of a few decades worth of electricity and gas bills.

Building in harmony with nature means working with the local climate, local suppliers, and even local soil. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead of waiting for easy answers, start with the right questions. And if a contractor stares blankly at the ceiling in response to your queries, you may want to look for someone with greener credentials.

Architect:

How earthy can our house be? Green architects agree that adobe, cob and rammed earth are wall materials of first choice for low embodied energy. An architect who has worked with them will know whether they suit your project. The biggest concern: banks will not approve a bond for new structures supported by such raw materials. A home renovation, however, may be able to get financing.

Can we aggressively pursue passive solar? The right combination of windows, walls and floors can supply most of your heating needs in sunny South Africa. But a large roof overhang is vital to keep the high summer sun out. If your architect cannot calculate the ideal overhang based on your latitude, orientation, roof pitch and height, find another architect.

Can we build around a wood stove? If you have a local source of sustainable wood, such as suburban tree fellers, a closed-combustion wood stove is the greenest way to heat. But with all of your warmth concentrated in one spot, careful designing is needed to help the heat reach colder parts of the house. Keeping the stove central to an open plan but away from any double-volume ceilings is a good start.

How can our home use nature’s air conditioning? Your architect should know how to take advantage of prevailing winds. Low windows on the cooler, south side of the house can draw breezes to force out summer heat from high windows on the north side. Drain the pool of heat on your ceiling with small, high windows that you can leave open all night without worrying about cats or cat-burglars. Transom windows aid the flow between rooms. Trees or shutters can shield western surfaces from the afternoon sun. Don’t let some sweet-talking salesman convince you into electric air-conditioning until you’ve given nature a chance.

Do we really need a bathroom as big as a squash court? Small was beautiful in the ‘70s, and it still is today if you want to lighten your load on the planet. Every wasted square meter of your home will have to be heated and lit for decades to come, on top of the embodied energy of floor, roof and walls. Remember, your architect is probably getting paid a percentage of the whole building project. You aren’t.

Builder:

Which local bricks have lowest embodied energy? Capetonians may find that cement bricks from Cape Brick with recycled aggregate are the solution, while Gautengers may want Corobrik’s gas-fired clay bricks from their ultra-efficient, Midrand plant. The carbon footprint for these face bricks is about half that of a typical coal-fired clay brick. Local is most definitely lekker. Trucking a brick across the country could double its carbon footprint.

Can you work with alternative mortars and plasters? Cement is the bugaboo of green building. Worldwide, cement plants account for 5 percent of humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions. Lime, popular among green builders as a mortar and plaster, creates fewer emissions and then actually absorbs CO₂ for years. Your walls become carbon sinks. Where you cannot get away from cement—and it is inevitable—ask your builder to use one with a high fly-ash content.

What can we reuse? Building materials belong in houses, not in a landfill. Usually someone on your building crew will be happy to recycle your doors and windows, if they are carefully removed. You can also reuse bricks if your builder will assign the labour to knock them into shape. There’s no greener brick than a used one. And you may want to source vintage materials taken from other houses. The Yard in Johannesburg is a good starting point, especially for reclaimed Oregon-pine flooring.

What recycled ceiling insulation can you source? Whether you are perspiring in Phalaborwa or freezing in the Free State, ceiling insulation is the first step toward creating a comfortable, energy-efficient home. But some insulation is produced by toxic manufacturing processes. One environmentally friendly alternative is Isotherm insulating blankets made from recycled cool-drink bottles. For real comfort, install two layers, 100mm each, with the top layer overlapping the bottom and covering the joists. Cellulose insulation from recycled newspapers must be blown into your roof space by a professional, but is an efficient insulator and helps seal air leakages.

Will you use low-VOC paint? Wall coatings with volatile organic compounds not only cause city smog, they unleash carcinogens inside your home. Many South African paints would actually be illegal in California. Jutta Berns-Mumbi of Ecocentric consultants and developers trusts the low-VOC paints from Cape Town’s Harlequin Paints for her projects. “If it smells of paint, it’s probably not good for you,” she explains.

Plumber:

Can you flex your PEX? Copper pipe is starting to fall out of favour around the world, and many green builders are replacing it with flexible cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) pipe. Afripex (www.afripex.com) can help you find plumbers who are trained to install it. Though made from petroleum, PEX manufacturing is less polluting compared to making many other plastics, and certainly compared to mining and smelting copper. A further advantage is that hot water will reach your tap or shower slightly sooner due to the smaller inside diameter. If your bathroom is far from your geyser, you can save much more hot water by asking for small-diameter PEX lines running directly from the geyser to the tap or shower, instead of pushing all of that water through a main line to the bathroom. The savings on your utility bills should pay for the extra pipe within a couple of years. And your hands will thank you.

Can you identify water-saving fixtures that work? Low-flow showers and dual-flush 3/6 litre toilets belong in every environmentally conscious home, but your water consumption won’t fall if that trickling shower makes you opt for a bath or you regularly have to flush twice. A maintenance plumber should know what works and what doesn’t. A well-made low-flow shower rose will usually give a more satisfying, high-pressure shower than a flow restrictor added to an existing shower head. And it’s better to pay now for a good-quality dual-flush toilet, rather than pay the water company for extra flushes over the years to come.

Can my geyser stand tall? South African geysers tend to be mounted horizontally, even though this is known to be inefficient. Most heat losses come off the top of the geyser, a much larger surface area when your cylinder is lying prostrate. In addition, water stratifies better in a vertical tank, so that cold water entering the bottom is less likely to cool the hot water at the top before you draw it off for your shower. A renovation is the perfect opportunity to find a new home for the geyser, perhaps in a cozy spot inside the house near the taps, where you can access it to turn down the thermostat.

Electrician:

Can you make my house LED-ready? LED lighting is the green future. The bulbs use about 80 percent less electricity than incandescents and will probably last longer than you will. Unlike the diffuse glow of fluorescents, they project a beam, more like the popular halogen downlights. Affordable, high luminosity LED bulbs are not quite ready for your house, but your house should be ready for them. By 2010 or 2011, major manufacturers like Philips and Osram will be selling downlight replacement LEDs that replicate the ubiquitous 50 watt halogen. So if you must install downlights now, skip the 75 buck transformer for low-voltage halogens, and use the savings to put toward future LED purchases. (The bulbs currently cost hundreds of rands.)  Many electronic transformers won’t work with LEDs and these modern globes will be happier with 220 volt fixtures. The brightest LEDs also tend to need the extra space of a high-voltage, GU-10 halogen. Yes, the 220 volt halogens do not last as long as their low-voltage cousins, but you only have hold on for a number of months.

Can you install a timer for my solar geyser? Now that you are spending R15 000 to put solar hot water panels on your roof—because no environmentally conscious South African would want a roof without them—you will want the sun to work hard for you. But solar panels will have little to do if the electric element in your tank reheats the water after your 8 a.m. shower. A timer can shut the element off, give the sun a chance, and cut the geyser’s consumption by perhaps a third. Let the element come back on at 3 p.m. for a few hours if the temperature needs a top-up. For the ultimate in control, you can spend a little more for Geyserwise, a timer which also allows remote control of the thermostat setting.

Can you fix the fluorescent flicker? Noisy fluorescent tubes that flicker aren’t just an irritation, they waste electricity. The culprit is the cheap magnetic ballasts that electrical contractors routinely supply with fluorescent fixtures. Electronic ballasts cost more, but they can cut your fixture’s wattage by a quarter.

Sidebar: Building from Scratch

Though building a house from scratch will likely use a lot more energy than a renovation, it does create an opportunity to take the environment into consideration from the ground up. Quite literally the ground.  Topsoil is a precious natural resource that is usually ruined by builders, mixed with rubble and hauled to a landfill. Insist from the start that any removed topsoil is stored separately and covered for reuse in the garden.

As far as placement of the house, the mantra for real estate may be “location, location, location,” but in green building it is “orientation, orientation, orientation.” Maximize northern exposure so that your house can perform daily salutations to the sun for you. Twenty degrees off north in either direction is no tragedy.  A little bit of northeastern exposure is welcome on a chilly winter morning.

Now you can put all of that north-facing space on your roof to work. Since the sun is weakest in the winter, help it out with a steeply pitched roof so that solar panels face it directly. Solar installers use latitude plus 10 degrees as a rule of thumb. That’s about a 35 degree pitch in Johannesburg and 45 degrees in Cape Town. You will want hot-water solar panels up there right away. Photovoltaic panels for electricity make some sense for the environment today, but not for your wallet. In a few years, when solar-cell prices have fallen, Eskom rates have risen, and the government has legislated a feed-in tariff that pays you for your excess electricity, you’ll be glad for that north-facing roof.

Of course moving into an energy-efficient home is of little benefit to the atmosphere if it increases your rush-hour driving. The greenest home is any house within walking distance of work, school or shops. For parents, a 10 km commute to school may add as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as your entire daily electricity consumption at home. Location + Orientation = Conservation.

The 35 degree solution

For years I’ve had to avoid my wife, for fear that she would again ask me how long she must wait before I will replace our leaky, ineffective dishwasher. This Indesit was so old that the last few repairs have required salvaging used spares. I had been procrastinating that decision even though I knew that it would reduce wasted water and electricity. My procrastination had nothing to do with a fondness for mopping the floor or scraping crud off the bottoms of teacups. I simply feared the amount of research that would go into finding an energy-efficient, water-conserving dishwasher that gets dishes clean. I am happy to report that my new Bosch SGS44E12EU (also called the SGS43E02EU) arrived today, and the investigation was not quite as painful as I had anticipated.

Not that I got everything that I wanted. My first goal was to find a dishwasher that could make use of the spare hot water my solar panels produce for nine months of the year. Alas, a Bosch technical representative explained to me that no domestic washer has hot and cold intakes, and the intake valve on a Bosch dishwasher could not tolerate a temperature above 40 degrees. This would require me fitting an expensive mixer valve to cool the water before it entered the machine. Besides, he explained that the way modern dishwashers work is to start with cold water and gradually raise the temperature. Use hot water in the first cycle, he warned, and you will bake the food onto the plates. I gave up on that track.

The next step was to compare water and electricity usage of various dishwashers. In Europe, Australia and many other markets, this is a simple task. Each appliance is labeled with a large sticker showing energy consumption, water consumption and an overall A-G rating. Dishwashers in Europe get three ratings: one for energy consumption, one for washing efficiency and one for drying efficiency. The Department of Minerals and Energy has long been promising South Africans a similar system, starting with refrigerators in May of 2005. Two and a half years later, the only appliances with an energy labels are a few imports with their European label intact.

Still, through the Internet, brochures and the Which? website, it was possible to get information from overseas efficiency ratings. Bosch’s South African website, for example, clearly displays the European ratings and consumption data for all of its dishwashers. (Curiously, they don’t display that information for their tumble driers, which, like the vast majority of these energy hogs, get Cs.) All of Bosch’s dishwashers get European As for energy consumption, which means that they use less than 1.06 kilowatt hour for a standard 50 degree wash. Not coincidentally then, many dishwashers, including all of the Bosch dishwashers sold in SA use exactly 1.05 kWh. The one I chose also uses a modest 17 litres of water for a standard wash. The top-of-the-line SGS 46 E 28 GB uses a mere 12 litres. But it costs R6399, a full R3000 more than mine, which is a lot of money to pay to save the equivalent of less than a flush of the toilet.

More important, the upper-range dishwashers have 45 degrees as their coolest setting. The economical dishwasher I chose goes down to 35 degrees. My sister-in-law uses a Bosch similar to mine and says that she never moves it from that coolest setting. She doesn’t rinse anything before putting it into the dishwasher, and even sticky porridge bowls come out clean. I haven’t succeeded in getting the data from Bosch on the electricity consumption of a 35 degree wash, but I did my own calculations. Since it uses 1,05 kWh for a 50 degree wash, and since heating 17 litres of water by 15 degrees should theoretically require 0,28 kWh, the 35 degree wash should use approximately 0,77 of a kWh.

A while ago, I checked the consumption of my old dishwasher at home, using the same, moderately precise methods I used to check electricity lost to chargers, transformers, appliances on standby and other vampires. It used 1.35 kWh on its lowest setting and guzzled 35 litres of water. Worse yet, because it cleaned so poorly, we used many more litres rinsing dishes. This is a purchase my gardener will appreciate. (Why? See here.)

My dishwasher only gets a C for drying efficiency, but that’s because it doesn’t have the electricity-wasting drying feature. It should get an A+ for leaving that off.

If you want to read a good overview of dishwashing written with a sense of humour, check out the Appliance Advisor’s guide to green dishwashing. By the time you are finished reading it, you will be convinced never to rinse your dishes again before putting them in the machine.

But do you even need a dishwashing machine? Advertisements for dishwashers often claim that they use far less water and energy than hand washing. I’m not so sure. Washing carefully, with 5 liters of solar-heated rinse water in one sink and 10 litres of solar-heated soapy water in another, I could beat any dishwasher on energy consumption. But my new dishwasher is a big step in the right direction. And it’s a lot better for my marriage.