*WIR = Week in Review; a Saturday showcase of excellent links.
This is seriously lowbrow, and I’m embarrassed to join the likes of celebrity media, but ole’ Mrs. Parker has something interesting to say about green building. She’s building a new home in San Antonio, Texas, and wants to go as green as possible. But the builders have been giving her flack. Apparently, the problems were so bad that the project was nearly at a standstill. She said, "Everything is going to be environmentally friendly. We are going to install solar panels for part of the house. All our water is recycled for the lawn for irrigation. It was a fight with our builders; a lot of people don’t want change. But it’s worth it."
You can do most things for the right price, so I can’t understand the issue here, but maybe she flat out hired the wrong builder. Lesson is, get people with experience. Green building is high-quality building. And Joe Dirt probably can’t do it. Maybe we can blog about her home when she’s done? Eva?!
I ran across some news that Marquiss Wind Power just raised $1.3 M in series A funding, which, in and of itself, isn’t that big of a deal to me (because funding doesn’t = anything). That said, Marquiss Wind Power has quite the value proposition with their ducted wind turbine product called Aeropoint, a product that comes in three sizes. It’s a small-wind turbine built for commercial buildings of 1-3 floors. Based out of Folsom, California, the company had encouraging results with the first three test turbines. Actually, the results were so good the company claims purchasers should have a payback period of 2-7 years. You’ll notice that depending on a lot of different factors, a 2-7 year payback is about 2x faster than the payback for solar.
