Eco Friendly Real Estate Blog: Deb Hurt, ABR, e-Pro,Green, TRC (Realty Pro Albuquerque)

I am sure that this s a question that has to occur to us as professionals. We talk and write about "properties" and "houses" and sometimes homes. Every now and then an experience or a client will have an impact that makes us rethink what home means.

Robert Frost penned what I consider to be perhaps the most depressing definition of home. Granted, the entire piece is pretty depressing on several levels, but as is often the case with great writers, he leaves us with a deeper understanding of life, human nature and human relationships.

In The Death of the Hired Man, Frost wrote, "Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in."Not a particularly welcoming vision of hearth and home. As we deal with many families facing foreclosure, renters who through no fault of their own have not only lost the place they called home but are unable to find another because they have no money for deposits or inadequate credit, I hope we can listen to their dreams of home, modest as they might be and help them to find a home.

For some, a warm, dry place to eat and sleep with minimal space or facilities is plenty. Different people need different things but our job is to remember that they, not we are going to be living there. It doesn't really matter how comfortable or safe we feel in a dwelling space if they are happy with it. If it is habitable and they can get financing, then we can provide all the relevant information and respect their decision to live in a place they can call home.

As for a literal definition--it depends. As a noun it can mean a shelter or dwelling, a usual residence, or a place of refuge (such as a nursing home) As a verb it can mean to aim or direct by use of coordinate (think military). There are many idioms we use as well. "It's nothing to write home about" or we are" home free." We speak of driving a point home when we want to emphasize getting someone to understand something.

Perhaps may current favorite definition si this one: the place in which one's domestic affections are centered . Simply another way, I think, of saying Home Is Where the Heart Is.  I like this definition because to me, it is freeing. It can be a physical place or not. Perhaps those of you who have traveled a great deal or who have been in the military understand this more easily than those who grew up in one place or who have family all centered within a small geographic area. There are places and people in the world that make you"feel at home". I was showing property recently and the owners of the home (it was a FSBO Open House my client and I stumbled across on the way to a nearby listing) told me they were selling and going to travel full time in their RV and see if they could find somewhere to settle down-or not.

How many of us, as adults with grown children still say we are "going home" for the holidays, or to visit family? We do not often think of having multiple homes but this is a way in which many of us do if we have famiy in other parts of the country or the world. Going home to have a birthday dinner with your mother could mean driving to the place that you usually sleep at night or it could mean flying across the country.

As REALTORS we have to remember that what counts is the client's definition of what makes a home, not ours. We can inform, educate, suggest and guide, but it is going to be their castle, not ours.

We know that the built environment has a huge impact on our carbon footprint. Many of us have done things to lower that impact including the smaller things like using CFLs and installing programmable thermostats. Many have planted trees that help provide shade , many xeriscape.

If possible, some of us have upgraded windows and doors and a caulk gun has become our best friend. Weatherstripping and rain barrels, insulating ductwork and hotwater heaters, tankles hot water heaters, using solar and wind energy where practical, all of these things are being done.

Here is a link to an article on Planet Green that describes three simple but not quite so easy steps to lower you carbon footprint dramatically. One involves our long distance travel habits, specifically, flying. It is amazing how much can be saved by flying less. Some of us travel a lot for our work, some for pleasure but the act of say taking the vacation at the begiining or end of one of those trips so that you are making one round trip instead of two, or planning so that you take the time to take train or even drive to a mid distance destination can make a huge difference in the amount of crbon emmission generated by the trip.

We often talk about the large carbon footprint of our food system. Buying at the local farmers market helps, growing some of your own helps. This article proposes the idea of being a "weekday vegetarian" and shows just what a large difference consuming a plant based diet the majority of the time can make.  You might also realize some health benefits like losing weight and having more energy. I believe it is Michael Pollen who wrote "Eat food. (meaning real food, not processed, imitation packaged stuff). Not too much. Mostly plants." to desribe a diet good for the body and good for the planet.

The other recommendation is to buy green energy. Most utilities now offer that option. If you use natural daylighting rather than turning on the lights, so much the better.

According to the New Mexico Business Weekly, El Paso Electric has signed an agreement to buy all the electricity from a concentrating solar power plant to be built in southern New Mexico by NRG Energy Inc.

The plant, to be built on a 450-acre site in Sunland Park, about 10 miles from El Paso, will produce 92 megawatts of electricity. It will be   the first commercial-scale solar thermal project in New Mexico. It is hoped that the construction of the power plant will be completed by the summer of 2011.

Concentrating solar power plants use mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto receivers that convert it to heat. The heat can then be used to produce steam to drive a turbine and produce electricity.

This project will help realize renewable energy potential here. We have an average of 300 days of sun every year and this is an efficient way to harness that solar energy.

Lest anyone think that this is new or untried technology, here is an excerpt from a document published by the US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Solar Energies Technologies Program:

Two large-scale power tower demonstration projects have been deployed in the United States. During its operation from 1982 to 1988, the 10-megawatt Solar One plant near Barstow, California, demonstrated the viability of power towers, producing more than 38 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The Solar Two plant was a retrofit of Solar One to demonstrate the advantages of molten salt for heat transfer and thermal storage. Using its highly efficient molten-salt energy storage system, Solar Two successfully demonstrated efficient collection of solar energy and dispatch of electricity. It also demonstrated the ability to routinely produce electricity during cloudy weather and at night. In one demonstration, Solar Two delivered power to the grid for 24 hours a day for almost seven consecutive days before cloudy weather interrupted operation.

In the process of working with a client who is dedicated to sustainable living, I discovered a really cool company in Austin, TX. These folks really know how to walk the talk.  Their homes are built and then hauled to the site ready to be occupied. They are constructed from reclaimed materials.

The materials used are from deconstructed homes and would otherwise wind up in landfills. The utilize passive solar design, great insulation and thoughtful touches like single pitch roofs which makes collecting rain water much simpler. These are designed to be small spaces so they can be  relocated  but I can't imagine any reason tat you could not build a larger unit or join two or more together if you needed a larger home.

Here is athe link to their website. ·        Reclaimed space

I think it is well known tat the more ways people are given information, the more likely they are to retain it- if the see it as well as hear it for example. There is a reason for having lots of pictures and visual tours of your listings.

Here is a visual aid for those of you who are interested in to help explain the importance of the  2030 goals and the complexity of the issue. Gavin Schmidt is a NASA scientist and he has teamed up with a great photographer to create a book that illustrates some of the not so common illustrations of the results o climate change. This is scientific fact and photographic record. It is intended to be educational and informative, not political. More and more people are coming to understand that this is a very complex issue that must be addressed in many ways.

.http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/06/01/gavin_schmidt/index.html 

I have been working on helping develop a recycling project as part of a program I am participating in through my local Realtor Association. I'm learning some interesting facts.

• Americans use an average of 6 cordless products in their daily activities - PDA's, cell phones. ipods,tools such as cordless drills and screwdrivers, flashlights, etc.
• The average cell phone user has 3 cell phones in their possession
• More than 40% of those cell phone users replace their phone every 2 years
• Most rechargeable batteries can be recharged up to 1,000 times

What happens to all those rechargeable batteries after they can no longer hold a charge? THEY SHOULD BE RECYCLED.

The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation is a nonprofit public service organization founded by the rechargeable battery industry in 1994. It's mission is to recycle rechargeable batteries that power many electronic products such as laptops, cell phones, remote control toys, razors, MP3 players, camcorders, electric toothbrushes, cordless phones, digital cameras and power tools. According to their information, they have recycled almost 50 million pounds of rechargeable batteries. Their website  lists numerous retailers who participate in battery recycling programs.

Where you live is a good place to start looking at sustainability in our lives, in more ways than one. The closer you live to where you work the less distance you have to commute. One of the reasons New York City is actually a pretty green city is that so many people live in small apartments and walk or use public transit to get around. Many people in large metropolitan areas with good transit systems do not own automobiles. If they need to go somewhere they want to drive to, they rent a car.

Many of the people reading this have a home office. The more you work there rather than commuting to another workplace, the less you are commuting. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to work exclusively out o our homes.

That means no commuting costs. Not owning a vehicle not only lessens the release of greenhouse gases it saves the expense of insurance, car payments, gasoline. One might speculate that it would also decrease the number of vehicle accidents and their associated costs.

Indirect savings might include removing the cost of a gym membership since you now walk and bike so much. Hopefully, that will result in a health increase as well meaning less money spent on doctors and medicines.

Live/work spaces are making a well deserved comeback. This is not a new idea-ask your grandparents. Not so long ago, it was common for a family to live behind or above their place of business. More businesses were small and family run then. The family farm really was where the family lived. The merchant, doctor or lawyer lived above, behind or next to his place of business. The church rectory is one of the few remnants of this practice. Perhaps the current downtown revitalization projects in many places and the growing popularity of live/work spaces will help revive the practice.

This is not a plea for a return to the old days. It is a gesture toward hope. Hope that we will be able to use our modern technologies and creativity to forge a balance between our runaway infatuation with efficiency and productivity and our ability to live a less frenetic, more creative life in which we can be as involved with friends and family as we have become with work and productivity. 

Like many parts of the country, things are starting to bloom here in the high desert. Plants are just as confused as the rest of us about the weather. I am seeing shoots on my Russian Olive tree and my apple tree. Iris are coming up= no blossoms yet but lots of green shoots. I hope we have seen the last hard frost and the lase big snowstorm of the season, but I have my doubts.

The butterfly bush and the roses in the planter in front of my house are beginning to turn green and new shoots are appearing daily. The weeds (aka plants we don't like) have a head start on everything. I am tempted to just think of tumbleweed as a perennial that I should trim and maybe treat it as a topiary plant instead of the never ending battle to eradicate the stuff. Tumbleweed was here long before I ever was and will probably survive me by centuries.

One of my favorites is rosa rugosa - not the fancy must be pruned exactly, finicky, display roses but the rosa rugosa that grows easily on its own root, spreads by suckering and needs no spraying little attention and gives much delight. This plant made its way from Asia to Europe to the west and still remains resistant to most disease and tolerates much more extreme weather than other roses....and rose hips tea is comforting, soothing and full of vitamin C. See, you can have edible landscaping even if you don't have a vegetable garden!

I used to think I was allergic to roses. Then I was introduced to these and figured out that it was probably the chemicals used to grow most of the roses I had come into contact with before that had caused my problems. This is a rose that grows in Siberia on sand dunes among other places on earth. That's my kind of rose! Not fancy, not demanding, just reliable, non demanding and beautiful.

Someone once described a kitchen garden as the shortest, simplest path between the earth, the hands and the mouth. I think that is a good definition of a kitchen garden.  A survey in France found hat about a quarter of the produce consumed by the population is home grown fruits and vegetables.

The French potager is their version of the English kitchen garden. There is an emphasis on beauty as well as practicality. Herbs often play a large role in the potager both because many of them are quite attractive while growing and because fresh herbs are an essential ingredient in much French cooking. One of the wonderful things about a kitchen garden is that it can be as organized as you want it to be. In general the kitchen garden mixes fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs, How they are mixed and in what proportions is largely a matter of personal preference. It can be large or small, manicured or loosely managed.

Thomas Jefferson kept meticulous records of his gardens at Monticello and the gardens are still one of the biggest attractions. Jefferson was passionate about peas. He grew 22 varieties, and challenged his neighbors to a competition every spring to see who could get the first English pea to the table. His orchards held 170 varieties of fruit. He knew that native species had a much better chance of surviving and he favored them in his plantings even though he also tried many new varieties of plants from other locations and countries.

A typically informal kitchen garden.

There are not really any rules about what you can or cannot grow in a kitchen garden other than what you can grow in your local climate zone. For a fascinating read from an avid gardener, Jefferson's garden books remain in print - (don't forget to try the library or your favorite used book store). Perhaps among the most famous gardens are the gardens at Versaille. The gardens were planted in blocks rather than in rows, with the vegetables filling in geometric patterns that sometimes were surrounded by low hedges. By grouping vegetables in blocks rather than in rows, their texture, color and structure became an integral part of the overall garden pattern. Blocks of flowers were often used to help create the tapestry-like patterns.

Versailles.

The gardens at Versaille are huge, covering hundreds of acres. In contrast, most of us could supply enough produce for a family of 4 in a normal back (or front) yard. Using small space gardening techniques can mean growing an amazing amount of food using little space.  Container gardens can be very productive as well. Window boxes and roof gardens are all possibilities.