recycled materials

If you are making eco-friendly changes in your home, you are probably noticing the repetition of natural colors and their calming effect. But what if you want to jazz it up? Decorating with tile is one way to add color, and to personalize space. Now there are many eco-friendly choices in vibrant colored tiles. The floor, the ceiling, the wall, even outdoor pathways, can all be decorated with eco-friendly tile. My favorite is the tumbler pathway see here.

The recycled glass is laid in pathways where you would commonly see rock, bark mulch, brick, etc. The effect of the colored glass is a look of motion, adding the illusion of movement to an area. Tumbled glass is softened and safe for children and pets. It is available in 3/8'', 1/4" up to the size of a half dollar. Sample packages are sold in 5 lb bags. Bedrock Industries doesn't use pigment in addition to its use of 100% recycled glass. Indoor flooring gets vibrant with crushed glass mosaic tiles, too. Recycled glass tiles and other eco-friendly flooring is available on www.ecofriendlyflooring.com.

The designs you commonly see in kitchens, bathrooms, and around fireplaces are mapped out for you in a concept design section of their web-site, www.sandhillind.com. Sandhill, uses a low energy method to produce it's 100% recycled glass tiles. They have field tile priced per square foot, Mosaics and specialty pieces. The great colors and textures available in eco-friendly tile are an inspiration for decorating projects. Adding colored tiles to lighting fixtures, frames, borders, pots and coffee tables can really make it pretty, and personalize your space.

This is what happens when my husband goes away... he really does keep me sane, you know.

Until recently, I could brag that our office only used *at the most* three reams of paper a year.

And then the children went on a drawing binge.

It's driving me bonkers- on one hand, I cringe, "Don't waste paper!!!" then cringe at myself: "How dare you call their artistic pursuits wasteful?" So I stack the drawings in a corner, guiltily...

Today I was pondering over how to finish our casa ti interior. I've always envisioned it with sleek, organic, simple plywood, which I thought would look really good with the more industrial concrete flooring. But I like to consider all options, and even published a post on how to make SIPs stew.

And then I thought... "Why not recycle those drawings?"

They are mainly scribbly ink drawings on notebook paper left over from college days, or grabbed from our office shelf. So the overall effect would be clean, white, but with scribbles and occasional bursts of color... I could easily attach it directly to the SIPs walls, then maybe minwax / beeswax it once hung... just for... fun!

I still see the end result eventually being plywood... but to in the meantime reuse the paper / childrens "art" for our house? Fantastic!

My hands have been on this keyboard for 100s of hours now, researching these last details of our house. Since most of the materials, applications and fixtures are not normally used in residential applications, I've had to swim through oceans of information to find these items with the help of my architect. Jan says that most of the residential norms are crap, so we HAVE to research every little corner and crevice for the ultimate THING. Most of the stuff we want has primarily been used in the commercial sector or green building, and as Ted says, it's because those things are built to last and simply are better (sigh!)... so here we go, I am freakin' tired, but am grateful that the Internet was invented in my lifetime.

First, insulation. Yes, we are using SIPs for most everything. But because our 2nd story cantilevers (overhangs) out above our pool, we have to use something other than our beloved SIPs. So, Ted suggested using batt on the floor of our 2nd story overhang to save money, but now I want to look at this natural fibre insulation that's safe, environmental because their made with post-industrial waste (recycled blue jeans!) and they are good quality for not too much money. The advantage is that even though they are more expensive per square foot ($0.39/sf batt insulation vs. $0.89-1.09/sf natural fibre insulation), you will save in labor costs because batt has to be stapled in and handled with care because of the itch and fiberglass irritation. This stuff can be put in by hand and don't need to be stapled in, so they are quickly installed and safe to handle as you can see with the baby below.

I found this company:
Bonded Logic at http://www.bondedlogic.com/

I couldn't resist posting this adorable photo:

Then on to ventilation ducts. We learned of a system that removes humidity from our bathrooms that can be planned with fewer punctures through our roof because they share the same vent to the outside. They are quieter & better designed so that you can control 2 or more bathrooms with the same ventilation duct....MORE HERE

Broken concrete recycled into a wall on a residential street in Albuquerque: this wall was laid up with some mortar, but it could have been laid up dry. The material works really well for retaining walls, also. It's attractive, cheap, and easy to work with (for someone with a strong back).

This particular wall really wasn’t laid up that artfully – the joints aren’t staggered as well as they probably should have been, and it’s not so level – but still, I think it looks good. It’s certainly functional. And, there’s no shortage of broken-up concrete – it's readily available.

I had a big pile of broken-up concrete that sat for a l-o-n-g time before I found someone to lay it up into a low retaining wall. My neighbors weren't very happy about this part of the process!

Gigacrete is a new, eco-friendly cementitious building material that uses no Portland cement; rather, it consists of a proprietary nontoxic binder, and a filler utilizing waste ash from coal fired power generation stations, of all grades, not just the fly ash currently used as a ten percent filler in concrete. Other fillers include waste paper, cardboard and plastics, styrofoam packaging, sludge from paper mills, and agricultural waste fibers (leftover from food crops like rice, corn, wheat and other grains). Since most of these materials would just end up in a landfill (sacrilege!), they instead make a great alternative building material. All of the above materials become totally fireproof and can be made very lightweight, yet are as strong as traditional concrete, sometimes even more so. Gigacrete composites do not shrink or crack like concrete, they're fireproof and water/insect/vermin/mold/hurricane/earthquake resistant. Products include: PanelSystem, Stuccomax, StuccoMax-E (Environmental), Floor Overlay, PlasterMax, GigaCast and GigaPatch. The site is definitely worth a look-see.

From the site:
PanelSystem is the basis of a complete panelized building system with many residential, commercial, and industrial applications. Utilizing new manufacturing technology, the PanelSystem is vertically cast in a factory and delivered to job sites ready for rapid installation. The PanelSystem is engineered to be fireproof and water, insect, vermin, mold, hurricane, and earthquake resistant. While GigaCrete™ panels have minimum compressive strengths of 1,200 PSI, the panels are a fraction of the weight of most Portland-based concrete panels and require only hand labor to move and construct. The GigaCrete PanelSystem can be molded for structural walls, interior walls, floors, and roofing - providing a turnkey building system that significantly reduces the time and cost of construction.

GigacreteUSA

Voted one of the top 25 "Best of Green Design", by Popular Mechanics