It’s building season. For some, that means finding just the right spot for constructing a home. In Fairbanks, that isn’t so easy. Unlike other places where location, view, and neighbors comprise the major considerations for choosing a building site, Interior Alaska presents a more fundamental question: Will the land itself even support a house? The presence of permafrost can ruin the best laid plans.

Permafrost is just what it sounds like: permanently frozen ground. Permafrost is soil or a combination of soil and rock that remains at or below 32 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. It’s all over the place, but, in the Fairbanks area, tends to be concentrated on north-sloping hills, in shady tree-covered areas, and in lower elevations. Seasonal frost – that crunchy stuff just below the surface of the ground – is not necessarily permafrost. It could just be seasonal frost that thaws in the summer. To make it even more complicated, permafrost is often discontinuous, meaning that it can occur in patches.

The trouble with permafrost comes about when it’s not so permanent. Clearing land of shade trees, excavating for foundations, and the added weight and heat of a house can cause permafrost to melt, setting off a series of destabilizing events that are difficult to manage. Parts or all of a section of ground necessary to support a foundation can shift or sink. These events can cause pipe and drain fittings to break, window and door frames to buckle, and even crack a house in two if not dealt with in time.

What do you do about permafrost? First, you need to know if it exists in the places you want to build. There are old sourdough ways of predicting the presence of permafrost – most of us have been told to be wary of black spruce stands – but the fact is that the only sure way of detecting permafrost is to test for it.

An engineering firm or excavation company will drill the soil and take core samples. These cores will reveal the soil composition, the presence of permafrost at what depths, and if bedrock exists at a certain level. Check with neighbors or existing records, which may testify to the presence of permafrost.

If the core samples show the presence of permafrost, the safest bet is to it avoid it altogether and move on to another piece of land. This is more easily said than done, unfortunately, particularly due to the scarcity of buildable land near Fairbanks that can be affordably purchased. If you decide to build on permafrost, do so as strategically as possible. Smaller and simpler structures will tend to fare better than larger more complicated ones. Minimize any activity that can affect the permafrost. These strategies include:

•  Elevating and properly insulating the bottom of your house and all pipes to prevent your house’s heat from reaching the ground with an adjustable post-on-pad system;
• Using gravel pads as thick as four to six feet to insulate the ground and spread building loads;
• Building using wood or steel piles, or helical piers that anchor in permafrost is an effective, but generally more expensive means of supporting a foundation;
• Installing thermosyphons to draw heat away from the soil;
• Avoiding cutting ground-covering vegetation, especially the moss and root layer, that helps to shield the ground from the sun’s heat;
• Cutting trees sparingly (while permitting for a fire break);
• Building a wrap-around porch, which will help shade the ground around a house;
• Installing gutters and manage drainage well away from the house;

These are just some tips to help you start thinking about the very real challenges of building on permafrost and ways to mitigate the risks. In addition to professional advice, a very detailed guide on dealing with permafrost is available for free online. Funded by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation several years ago, the Design Manual for New Foundations on Permafrost by the Permafrost Technology Foundation is a comprehensive resource online.

Or, call UAF’s Cooperative Extension Service at 474-5211 and browse their online publications.

Energy Focus articles promote energy awareness for the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC). For questions or comments please contact CCHRC at (907) 457-3454

Here’s a primer on how to choose more environmentally-friendly paint. Paint ingredients reflect the demands we place upon paint. Outdoor paint must withstand sunlight, heat, cold, and rain. Indoor paint is scuffed, exposed to humidity, and subject to the whims of fashion. All paint produces fumes; some are more noxious than others. Close label reading and careful selection can help you identify the best product for the job, with the fewest undesirable side effects.

The biggest toxic compound in paints was phased out decades ago – lead. But if parts of your home haven’t been painted for a couple of decades, it’s worthwhile to check for the presence of lead paint and remove it in a responsible way. Depending on the scope of the job, this might best be handled by a professional. Lead is particularly harmful to children and pregnant women.

Most modern paints contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are not good for you. Off-gassing by these VOCs is usually temporary, but can be obnoxious until the paint dries completely. Paint with lots of ventilation and never sleep in a newly painted room. Some ingredients can be very toxic, such as formaldehyde. Paints that advertise being mildew resistant can contain biocides such as ammonia, cadmium, or cobalt. If you’re using paint like this, you have a moisture problem that would better be dealt with at its source.

Latex or water-based paints will have lower VOCs than oil-based paints. Look for paints labeled “low VOC,” “zero-VOC,” or “no-VOC.” But if you find one, make sure the paint will perform the way you need it to for a particular application. Even so-called “natural paints,” which are made of substances such as linseed, soy oils, and pine- and balsam-derived turpenes can give off nasty fumes.

You may want to test a given paint in a small, inconspicuous area to see for yourself how the paint performs. If you’re in a hurry, the best method is to shop at a full-service store that sells paint with knowledgeable salespersons and to ask a lot of questions. Ask if you can return the paint if it doesn’t perform the way you need it to.

If you want to avoid fumes altogether and don’t mind having to repaint more often, you could try milk-based paints. Lots of manufacturers produce this kind of paint commercially as a green alternative, but you can make it yourself. It’s cheap this way. Milk paint is only good indoors, but uses only non-toxic ingredients. A basic recipe generally calls for curdled milk or cottage cheese, citrus of some kind, and natural color pigments.

Finally, dispose of unused or old paint responsibly. The Fairbanks North Star Borough Solid Waste Division collects paint and other toxic fluids at each of its transfer stations and at the landfill itself.

Energy Focus articles promote energy awareness for the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC). For questions or comments please contact CCHRC at (907) 457-3454

Environmental savings can be elusive, and the benefits and costs confusing. To help households wade through the information, consultants armed with stepladders and gadgets are selling advice on energy efficiency, indoor air quality and even methods for creating an eco-conscious wardrobe.

The field of personal and home eco-consultants is relatively new. GenGreen, a Colorado company that offers a national directory of businesses marketing themselves as green at gengreenlife.com, says it has just over 3,000 listings under the umbrella term environmental consultants, up from 657 when the database was started in 2007. They include energy auditors, health and wellness experts, interior designers and “eco-brokers,” real estate agents who specialize in green homes. While real estate agents can get training and certification as “eco” or “green” by trade organizations, and states like New York run energy audit programs with accreditation rules, there are no industry standards for most eco-consultants, who can range from environmental engineers to the self-taught.

Click here to read the whole story.

Susan Carpenter breaks California state plumbing code three times a week. Her accomplice is her washing machine. Rinse water from washing machines usually goes into the sewer — so what if you could recycle it? That’s what Carpenter does, using it to water plants at her Southern California home.

“The washing machine is filling up with water, and it is going through its normal process of washing clothes,” she says. “And after about eight minutes, you’ll start to hear it spin and we will run outside and see it squirting through the tubes.”

The “it” is gray water, which looks like its name — a bit gray, a bit cloudy. After all, it’s the wastewater from bathtubs, sinks and washers.

The gray water lapping up Carpenter’s dirty clothes will soon be lapped up by her passion fruit trees — and no, the fruit won’t taste like Tide. She uses a special type of detergent that doesn’t contain salt or boron, compounds which dehydrate plants.

Click here to read (or listen to) the whole story.

I don’t fish. I don’t fish because fish depress me, particularly unhappy fish. In part, this has something to do with having once witnessed my father club a fish repeatedly, chasing it madly around and around a small unstable rented boat. By the time the fish succumbed, the boat’s gunnels had dipped twice beneath the waterline. Our feet were soaked; the boat was sinking in Lake Erie.

Looming over the broken fish – one of its eyes fixed heavenward, the other lost – my father congratulated me for having reeled it in. Now resembling shoe leather, the fish was our only catch for the day. This mattered. “Too bad it’s a junk fish,” he said, throwing it back into the water. “They’re no good for eating.”

Alaskan fishing, no doubt, is a more fulfilling experience. You might catch so many fish this summer that you’d be wise to consider where you’ll store it all. Freezers are a reliable choice. But what kind? Is one kind of freezer more efficient than another? Are there ways to optimize your freezer use? Well, of course. You don’t think I’d write this column otherwise, do you?

The basics: Locate your freezer in a cool place away from sources of heat or sun. Porch freezers are handy, but at least try to keep them under an awning and out of the sun – not to mention dry. Don’t open your freezer unless you have to – no jeering at your kill or reliving triumphant moments with the fillet.

Keep your freezer coils, which may be located behind or beneath the unit, free of debris and dog fur. Allow for good air flow around the freezer. Make sure your freezer door closes and that it seals well with good, clean door gaskets. Use the smallest freezer to suit your needs and keep it full – a full freezer will use less energy than a partially empty one. Set its thermostat at 0 degrees Fahrenheit – colder is unnecessary.

If your freezer is more than five years old and especially if it’s older than 10 years, consider buying a new freezer. Due to better insulation and more efficient compressors, Energy Star rated units manufactured since 2001 use up to 40 percent less electricity than older models. Plus, federal rebates exist to help fund your new freezer purchase. Check out this handy calculator to estimate your possible savings.

When buying new, you have some big decisions to make. Do you want an upright dedicated freezer or a chest freezer? If you’re in the market for a refrigerator-freezer combo, do you want the freezer up top or on the bottom? Auto- or manual defrost?

A chest manual-defrosting freezer will be the most efficient option, especially if it is rarely opened. Cold air doesn’t spill out of chest-style freezers like it does from upright units, resulting in up to a 25 percent energy savings.

Also, consider units that do not defrost automatically. Defrosting cycles are necessitated by the introduction of humid air to the inside of the freezer. If you don’t open the freezer door often, chances are that you can get away with defrosting your unit annually by hand instead of employing a more energy-consuming automatic defrost system. Manual systems consume up to 40 percent less energy than automatic units.

I wish I could say whether freezer-refrigerator combination units are more efficient if the freezer section is located on the top instead of the bottom of unit, but this is a very controversial subject among appliance manufacturers and is subject to variables in materials and technology. Good thing appliances come with those handy Energy Star stickers to help you compare specific units’ energy consumption.

As the next-to-last final resting place for your fish, freezers are an important factor in your home’s energy use. May your fish be caught happily and plentifully. I’ll be sticking to the hiking trails.

Adam Wasch promotes energy awareness for the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC). For questions or comments please contact CCHRC at (907) 457-3454

Building green can open the door to plenty of legal pitfalls, a new study warns.

The study, by Harvard Law School’s Environmental Law & Policy Clinic and sponsored by Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox, a Philadelphia law firm, says that green building raises a number of liability questions.

What if the building set out to meet LEED certification or other government green-building standards, but falls short, for example? What if it fails to garner expected tax breaks from the government for building green?

Click here to read the whole article.

Don’t keep an open bucket of smoldering ashes in your house. If it doesn’t burn your house down, the carbon monoxide emissions can kill you. This simple fact escaped me during my first winter in Alaska. I thought it was a shame to waste the heat of unspent coals, so I kept an open bucket of coals inside and went to bed.

Fortunately, I had smoke detectors equipped with carbon monoxide sensors. I ignored the first alarm. Then, my eyes bleary from the gas, I finally heeded the second alarm and discovered my error – alive.

You don’t need to be as foolish as I am to benefit from smoke detectors. But if you’re at least as foolish as I am, I don’t see how you can live without them. Once clunky and expensive, smoke detectors now come with a variety of handy features and at very affordable prices. One should be placed in every sleeping area of your home, on every floor of your home, in stairways, in main hallways, and in garages. Alarms should be placed on ceilings.

There are two primary types of smoke detectors for residential use: optical and ionization. Optical smoke detectors have a photoelectric sensor that activates when smoke alters the focus of a small beam of light. Optical smoke detectors are a good choice for placement in kitchens and bathrooms because they are less susceptible to false alarms triggered by cooking fumes or steam. On the down side, optical smoke detectors are somewhat slower to detect rapidly growing flash fires than ionization detectors.

Ionization detectors are generally a little cheaper than optical sensors, but can be more prone to false alarms. However, ionization detectors are great at detecting flash fires that produce very small smoke particulate. These detectors use a wee bit of a radioactive element that alters current between two electrodes when exposed to smoke.

Perhaps the best alarms are the ones that combine both optical and ionization detectors into a single unit. This way, you can get the best features of both technologies. Less common, but still available are air-sampling detectors, which can be highly calibrated and programmed with multiple alarm thresholds.

Some models of smoke detectors also offer carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide detection – but be sure that the model you choose is labeled to monitor gas levels full-time, even in the absence of fire. The kind I have actually talks to me, which I appreciate. It will tell me in words when its battery is low, if there is an alarm, and even the amount of CO or CO2 detected.

A word about batteries: They’re necessary. If your house was built to code, chances are that your detectors are hard-wired with battery back-ups and interconnected so that if one unit triggers, all will sound. But even these units’ batteries need periodic changing to remain effective. A good rule of thumb is to replace batteries at least once a year. Again, some smoke detectors will make an audible chirp or announce when their batteries need changing.

Smoke detectors themselves should be replaced every eight or ten years. So, if you have a yellowing hunk of plastic on your ceiling and you don’t know how old it is, this would be a good time to buy a new alarm. Newer alarms have a slimmer profile, are more efficient, and offer more features. Test your alarms regularly to be sure that they’re working and so you know what they sound like.

Finally, if you hear an alarm, do something. Don’t assume a false alarm or throw something at the unit. A recent study published in the Western Journal of Medicine found that Alaskans are several times more likely than residents of other states to pull the batteries out of smoke detectors because of false alarms. Don’t do that. What are Alaskans doing to trigger so many false alarms, anyway?

Adam Wasch promotes energy awareness for the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC). For questions or comments please contact CCHRC at (907) 457-3454.

There were kids whose toys were not powered and those whose toys were. Batteries made the difference. I was a powerless kid. My toys only went as far as I could throw them. My best friend Brett, however, had self-propelled cars, a portable radio, and an electric-eyed Skeletor who said, “I must possess all, or I possess nothing,” when pushed. I thought Brett was better off. Decades later, I still feel defeated by the stamina of battery-powered toys.

Batteries weigh on my mind in other ways. What do you do with them after they go bad? Where do they go? And, are rechargeable batteries better? What’s the environmentally sound solution? These questions are all the more pertinent given the premium placed today on portability. Can batteries be recycled? The answer depends on the type of battery. First, some trivia.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), some 3 billion dry-cell batteries are sold every year. The average person disposes of eight dry-cell batteries a year. Most of these batteries find their way into landfills, where their toxic metal content is contained, but not eliminated. Batteries can contain mercury (an ingredient phased out by law since 1996), lead, cadmium, or nickel that can leach into ground water if not disposed of properly or enter the air if incinerated.

Non-rechargeable dry-cell batteries include alkaline and carbon zinc (9-volt, D, C, AA, AAA), mercuric-oxide (button or so-called watch batteries), silver-oxide and zinc-air (button), and lithium (9-volt, C, AA, coin, button). Common rechargeable batteries come in a variety of standard and customized sizes and contain Nickel Cadmium Battery (NiCd), Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH), or Lithium-ion. (Li-ion). There are also lead acid batteries, most commonly represented by car batteries.

In theory, any battery contains materials that can be recycled, but in practice only a few types of batteries are recycled. For example, nearly 90 percent of all lead-acid batteries are recycled, but few if any alkaline batteries are. Here in Fairbanks, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Solid Waste Division collects car batteries at its main landfill and at each transfer station. These batteries are stacked and shipped for recycling elsewhere. The lead is extracted and reused. Even the plastic can be recycled.

Rechargeable batteries (NiCd, NiMH, Li-ion) are increasingly collected and recycled by the same national store chains that sell cordless power tools, cellular and cordless phones, laptop computers, digital cameras, two-way radios, camcorders, and remote control toys. Locally, call Sears, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Radio Shack, Wal-Mart and other stores to verify if they can be dropped off. The EPA says button cells are increasingly targeted for recycling because of the value of recoverable materials, their small size, and their easy handling relative to other battery types.

The best way to manage battery waste is to create less of it by reducing your dependence on batteries to begin with. Cordless drills and whatnot may be in vogue, but in reality few of us really need that extra portability. For those applications where a cord just won’t do or is unsafe, rechargeable batteries are the way to go – but only if you commit to recycling them responsibly. Otherwise, rechargeable batteries have the potential of adding even more toxic waste to landfills than regular batteries.

For more information on battery disposal and recycling, check out the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation online  or the Environment, Health and Safety Online website.

Adam Wasch promotes energy awareness for the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC).
For questions or comments please contact CCHRC at (907) 457-3454

It’s not easy recycling in Fairbanks. Just as soon as you load your vehicle full of cans, bottles, and plastics to drop off at the last place you took them, it turns out that whoever accepted recycling before has since stopped, disappeared, or is serving time. In all fairness, it’s not easy being a recycler, either. Unlike other places where recycling options are plentiful and profitable, Fairbanks is remote enough to make recycling a costly business. After all, it takes labor and fuel to process and transport recycling.

So, hurray for Interior Alaska Green Star, which is hosting the first ever Recycle Roundup event this Saturday, May 16th at the Tanana Valley Fairground’s parking lot located at the corner of College and Aurora roads in Fairbanks. If you’ve collected it, there’s a good chance you can drop it off there.

Accepted items include newspaper, mixed paper, cardboard, food cans, aluminum cans, glass, plastic (#1 & #2), glass, building materials, clothing, food, compostable material, and household hazardous wastes (such as used oil, paints, and batteries). If it can’t be recycled, it will be re-used or disposed of safely. Help will be on hand from the Fairbanks North Star Borough Solid Waste Division.

The Recycle Roundup is also your chance to dispose of electronic waste such as unwanted computers, monitors, and televisions responsibly. For a small fee that helps defer costs charged by Green Star’s business partner in the Lower 48, electronic waste will be stripped of recyclable metals and reusable parts here in the United States while toxic contents will be properly managed.

Not able to make it to the fairgrounds this week’s event? Take a look at the handy chart below to see where you can take different kinds of recycling throughout the year – but call and double check before you do. Recycling can be a tricky business in these parts. Contact Green Star at 907- 452-4152 for more information or visit their website.

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For an up-to-date copy of the Fairbanks Recycling Options file and additional information, please see Interior Alaska Green Star’s pdf.

Adam Wasch promotes energy awareness for the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC).
For questions or comments please contact CCHRC at (907) 457-3454

President Obama ordered the Energy Department on Thursday to immediately draft long-overdue standards to make a variety of appliances and light bulbs more energy efficient.

Over the last three decades, Congress has demanded stricter efficiency standards on 30 categories of products, as varied as residential air-conditioners and industrial boilers. But successive administrations have failed to write regulations to enforce the laws, even when ordered to by the courts.

In remarks to employees of the Energy Department, and in a presidential memorandum, Mr. Obama said he intended to comply with the laws, starting this year with nine categories of products, including ovens, vending machines, microwave ovens, dishwashers and light bulbs.

He said the new standards would cut energy use and reduce emissions of the heat-trapping gases that scientists blame for global warming.

Click here to read the whole article.