Janet’s Book Nook

Today is the day. Brad Pitt started a project shortly after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. This project was in partnership with the international group Global Green. The idea behind the project was to create affordable housing in New Orleans that are also Eco friendly. He held a national contest to find a design and the winner was chosen. This is where my family comes in. My husband is a superintendent for a commercial construction company in New Orleans and his company was chosen to do the job. My husband has been working on this project for over a year and today is the day that they are cutting the ribbon on the first house. This house is a wonder to see. It has solar panels on the roof, a rain harvesting barrel that feeds the toilets which are dual flush, all of the wood in the house is either blue wood (borax treated to prevent mold and termites) or reclaimed wood and the systems in the house are like none I have ever seen. The house has a metal grid on the back wall of the house on which Ivy will be grown so that it will create a natural cooling system for the house. There is a green garden on the part of the roof for the first floor which also acts as a barrier from the sun and helps to cool the home. All of the appliances are energy efficient. The floors of this house were made from wood that was reclaimed from old warehouses in the New Orleans CBD. This house has been a labor of love for my husband. He hates and loves the house at the same time. He is so proud of what they have created but is frustrated with the time and energy it has taken. This is the first totally Green house in the New Orleans area. He has learned so much about Eco friendly building from this experience and has taught me some of it. The first thing we learned is that there are not very many suppliers of Eco friendly material in the south. The cost of building the house was ballooned by the fact that they were having to pay shipping charges that were sometimes greater than the cost of the material just to get it to New Orleans. One of the great things that happened because of this was that they have been able to get suppliers in the south interested in carrying green materials. Home Depot was one of the supporters of this project and they were able to get the blue wood stocked in one of their stores. This made it so much easier when you are looking for materials. New Orleans is a city full of  culture and history. This makes people proud to keep and recycle materials from old homes. There is a place called Green Project that carries reclaimed materials. They have windows, doors, lumber and even paint. I was amazed to see that they can take several scrap cans of paint in similar colors and mix them together to form a whole new usable can of paint. This means that the paints are being disposed of in an unsafe way and it is helping to save energy also. Great idea. So today is bitter sweet for my husband. I imagine a little like letting your child go to school. The house is mostly done and now it is being turned over and he will be moving on to a new project. I do think this will always be one of his most memorable.