Bill's Building Blog

Energy Efficiency in NOLA

There are several initiatives seeking to promote energy efficient building here in New Orleans, South Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast. One of the drawbacks of these programs is the high cost and difficulty of knowing how to repeat the process.

This project by Green Builder Media and BMI seem to have it right.

Not only have they accomplished a deep energy retrofit they have created a way others can repeat the process.

 

ABOVE: Typical Ranch-style home in Vegas retrofitted to achieve a -2 HERS score when the PV is installed

How about we do the same thing here in New Orleans, making a zero carbon footprint home that is also resistant to damage from storms, rising water and even termites?

Stay tuned to see if we can make that happen.

What we need:

• a home to retrofit
• sponsors
• money
• your support

 

Who is really doing the GOOD?

ABOVE: This home has been worked on by a contractor and by a miracle rebuilding group and still needs thousands of dollars of work before it is ready for weatherization. 

 I saw it again today, a home where at least one contractor and one of the "miracle rebuilding efforts" had worked...

and it was not even close to being done.

It seems the contractor absconded with the money. Absconded might be too civilized, let's call it robbery.

And the miracle was from NOLA 100. A quote form their website:

"NOLA100 was an intense, 100 day rebuilding effort that renovated New Orleans housing units from June to October, 2008. NOLA100 was designed to test a large scale, rapid implementation, energy efficient rebuilding template, especially suited for use in post-disaster situations.

The goal of the program was to achieve economies of scale by combining experienced construction supervision, motivated volunteers and coordinated logistics to quickly and cost effectively rehabilitate damaged housing stock. The project was designed and executed by the Hope Has A Face Foundation with support provided by the Clinton Climate Initiative and The Salvation Army"

Check out this photo we took of the back door. No threshold, no door bottom, no weatherstripping. If you check out the statistics on the NOLA 100 website it is apparent this house was at the lower end of the priority list. 

ABOVE: This back door without a threshold is typical of much of the rebuilding work being done in NOLA. Stop the insanity! 

Follow us on this blog page as we and help us to improve the way local contractors build in NOLA.