Green Building

We are currently in escrow on 4 separate parcels of undeveloped land very near the mouth of the Navarro River where it meets the Pacific Ocean (where Coast Highway 1 meets Highway 128). Our intention is to build some very nice “Green” homes on these parcels. We intend on using lumber / timbers milled from logs on the property, metal roof, and redwood siding which we will make at our timber farm.

In 2007 we built our new welding shop.  We built this in a green way.  All of the lumber in the building came from trees that we milled off of our timber farm!  We made all of the steel truss brackets.  Approximately 60% or more of new steel comes from recycled scrap iron.  Also, the roof on this building is made of corrugated steel and fiberglass panels.  The fiberglass provides lots of natural light inside the building.  The floor is concrete and I’ve heard that concrete isn’t a very green material due to the large energy consumption to manufacture the cement and the fuel needed to truck it to the final destination. Well, I suppose that two out of three isn’t bad!

Each year, more and more building contractors and developers are deciding to build green. These professionals wouldn't be casting off their old ways if it didn't make good financial sense. Green building is a good thing! Good for the environment and guilt free! From what I can see green building means building with locally available materials (instead of trucking them in from somewhere else), building energy smart and for energy efficiency, and building with sustainable and recyclable materials. Believe it or not, this is how we have been doing it since 1969 (to one degree or another). The original homesteaders didn’t know this when they first built on the land, but it just worked out that way. Their home was built with locally produced lumber and their windows came from a scrap / dismantling yard in Oakland. They didn’t quite get the energy efficiency / energy smart part (couldn’t afford insulation and dual pane windows weren’t readily available at the time). But I guess that two out of three isn’t bad!