Name: Regina
Location: New York
Profession: architect, AT co-editor
To kick off July's Green@Home giveaway, we're sharing a few green tactics from our own homes. In case you missed it, check out Janel's Simple Small Steps at AT Chicago. In our family's home, we try to take advantage of the building's bones...
On these hot summer days, it pays to live on the first floor, with all of the hot air in the building pulling right up the stairs. Our apartment, built in the 1870's, has thick brick walls under the plaster. The walls stay cool and keep our apartment cool, too. We use a ceiling fan to get the air moving and have had to succumb to the a/c on only a handful of days.
The fact that the building is so old is in itself a green move. The old details left from the past are not only pretty, they are signs that the life span of the building's materials is a very long one. Surfaces like the floors, plaster walls, and doors have lived through four or five generations and are prepared to keep on going with proper care.
Please send us photos and info on how you live green@home. This is not a contest, just a way to build up an AT inspirational database of sorts on how real folks are living greener at home.
Simple, straightforward ideas are welcome, like how you deal with your recycling bin in a small kitchen, and so are ambitious projects - like your amazing green roof. We hope to have a big archive of ideas to inspire us all by the end of the month.
In exchange for sharing your green@home ideas, Ecover is giving the first 100 of you that we post a thank you gift from their line of green products.
The submission form and all the details are here - hope to hear from you today.
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
What is it with all the Anti-A/C comments lately???!
You say that you "had to succumb to the a/c on...." ?? Sheeesh... A/C is good...being hot, sweaty, & sticky is bad. Nothing pains me more than being invited to someones home for a summer dinner party or gathering and find out that they are the "Anti-A/C" types... Get over yourselves and crank the A/C for the sake of your guests and the people that will be around you after you leave your swamp pit abodes...
view jamilkb's profile
regina,
i live in one of those homes, too, to the opposite effect. because it's a rent-controlled building, the landlord doesn't maintain the building. I'm on the *top* floor, where the brick plaster walls actually BULGE from god-knows-what abuse. (my theory is 50-60 years without them pointing the building, but who knows...) As things fall apart, repairs are made as cheaply as possible, w/ no regard to the environmental impact. To cope, the residents also make the least expensive choice. Old is not necessarily good.
view kushkush's profile