Building Green recently published their top ten energy efficient products of 2019. If you would like more information on these products you can watch the video from Building Green here. However, the following are the products and what they replace (in no particular order):

10. SolarEdge EV Charging Single Phase Inverter- This replaces the standard home outlet for charging vehicles or difficult to integrate renewable energy and EV charging stations.

9. Industrial Louvers Custom Aluminum Sunshades- These sunshades offer an answer for buildings with no exterior sun control.

8. Rheem Prestige Series Hybrid Electric Heat Pump Water Heater- To replace the old standard water heater.

7. Superior Essex Red List Free Communication Category Cable- Use these cables to replace PVC-coated high voltage copper wiring.

6. Rad Power Bikes Red Wagon- These fun bikes can help cut down on energy, traffic, and car usage.

5. Shaw PVC-Free Resilient Flooring- This flooring can replace vinyl resilient flooring

4. Urban Mining Northeast Pozzotive Ground Glass Pozzolan- Replacing high global warming potential concrete.

3. MSA Safety Chillgard 5,000 Refrigerant Leak Monitor- Reduces your risk of high global warming potential refrigerant leaks.

2. NantEnergy Zinc-Air Smart Energy Storage Systems- Replace toxic lead-acid batteries.

1. Seool  Semiconductor SunLike Series LED- Get a more illuminating and less offensive light than regular LEDs with these.

Seool SunLike LED

Whether you are building or renovating a home, or just want to learn new ways to help lower your carbon footprint, these are great alternatives to outdated energy uses.

If you live in the Bay Areas of Berkeley, Tiburon, Marin or San Francisco, and you are in the midst of or thinking about building the custom home of your dreams, make sure you have a knowledgeable project manager or owner’s representative to help you build an energy efficient home.

There are plenty of places to cut costs when building a home, but cutting costs at the expense of our environment does not need to be one of them.

Hiring a contractor for your custom home rebuild can be daunting. You are ready to build the home of your dreams. Maybe you have the design team set up and have begun initial planning. But you hired a contractor that you thought was capable and reasonably priced and mistakes keep happening and the budget keeps getting out of hand. Most of us don’t know the tiny details of building a home and what is rquired to maintain, say, a warranty on materials. This is why it is so important to have a building team that is trustworthy and capable.

It really comes down to the old saying “you get what you pay for”. There are thousands of places you can cut costs when building a home: perhaps your door knobs don’t actually need to come from Italy, or maybe your kitchen backsplash doesn’t

Home Construction

absolutely have to resemble a Monet. But do not cut costs when hiring your contractors and design team. This will likely only cost you money in the long run. As they say “the Devil is in the details.” Unless you are a highly knowledgeable contractor that keeps up to date on the latest building technology, they are likely to miss small things that can cost big money. For example, you may not notice in the first year or two of living in your new home that the walls were not installed properly, but by the second or third year you start to smell mold, eventually you may have a full on leak. Or let’s say piping gets installed incorrectly, your cost of labor could double as all the piping has to get uninstalled and reinstalled, or if the measurments on your foundation were just a half foot off and the concrete gets poured, then there will be way more labor involved to break up the concrete, re measure and re pour.

I have been Richard’s assistant for a few years now and have learned many things about building at the expense of mistakes made during the process. My heart frequently goes out to home owners who know what they want but have put their trust in the wrong team. It’s not just building mishaps we see at West Coast Project Management Inc. sometimes the personalities of skilled workers don’t mesh, things get misscomunicated and toes get stepped on. It can be a real nightmare. If you know someone that built a home with little to no hiccups, I can assure you they where on of very few people who’s home building goes seamlessly from start to finish. Here at WCPM we can help you come up with a plan to get your project in the green again, we can work with your design and building team to make sure everyone is on the same page, and most of all we can give you confidence in your team again.

Putting work into the design

If you went with a contractor that you thought was going to work out but now your project seems to be going haywire, then you need to bring in an outside consultant like an owner’s rep. Richard has been serving the Bay Area and mostly Marin County as an Owner’s Representative and Construction Project Manager. We see a lot of cases like the above where we are asked to fix a messy situation. Richard has over 40 years of experience and is passionate about the environment and keeps up to date on all of the latest technology to help build a beautiful, custom home with the lowest carbon footprint possible, for a cost that is reasonable for you and the work.

You do not need to throw in the towel on your dream home because things have gone awry. By hiring a mediator or owners representative you can get your building schedule back on track.

The green new deal was presented to Congress a few weeks ago as a lofty goal encompassing many of the features that would benefit humans and the planet in the long run. Yet it is being challenged as “socialist”, liberal conspiracy or impossible to pay for. This is the argument that has been posed over and over whenever any environmental issues are presented. It is said that it is going to kill jobs it’s going to hurt the economy it’s impossible for the automakers to meet the mileage goals, on and on with the complaints.

Wikipedia states it thus: “The Green New Deal is a set of proposed economic stimulus programs in the United States that aim to address climate change and economic inequality”. Pretty good goals wouldn’t you say?

Data for progress states it this way: “A Green New Deal is necessary to meet the scale and urgency of environmental challenges facing the United States, based on the best available research. A Green New Deal can bring job growth and economic opportunity, with particular focus on historically disadvantaged and vulnerable communities.” Wow! Can we really pull this off? Data for progress follows up by stating: “A Green New Deal is financially feasible and necessary”

In my work as a residential construction Owner’s Representative and Project Manager I get to interact with some very interesting clients. Just recently I had a thrilling discussion with one of my owners over the Green New Deal currently being proposed by the democrats.

I am certain that the ramifications of climate change are far greater than is being acknowledged in the media or known by the bulk of the public. There are insidious collateral damages that have a chain reaction effect threatening the balance of nature. Our planet is a living entity that has evolved over 3.5 billion years to become the cradle for the abundant life that we know and enjoy daily. Just two samples, the death of coral reefs which are the nursery for much of ocean life, or as we are just hearing now, the drastic decline in insect population world wide, will have impacts on the overall balance of nature that we cannot accurately predict.

In the last writing we focused on the on-site duties of a good construction project manager.  In this issue we will delve into the administrative duties that are also necessary.

Construction project managers have come from one or two basic paths:

• Those that rose up doing physical work on site, typically carpentry.
• Those that graduated from a college with a degree in construction project management.