Construction Informer

To be honest I am a little dis-trustful of many things green. So it is with some trepidation that I explore this here. But I think there is some true greenness associated with this effort perhaps similar to what I have earlier discovered with efforts like the Hampton’s Green Alliance covered previously in this blog.

The GreenDepot has announced the opening of a new store in the Bowery in lower Manhattan. That is significant to me personally because it was from an old brick factory down there on Bleecker Street (just around the corner) that I received my schooling on street vending. I was a very young hippie waiting for a job that was supposed to materialize any day with Continental Trailways. The offer had been made, and I had accepted, but then two days before I was supposed to start everybody at that location went on strike. So, there I was, just a small town boy, ready to work in NYC, but in limbo while my soon-to-be co-workers marched around with signs demanding higher wages, or whatever. 

I had previously taken a lease on a nice apartment in Queens in anticipation of that regular work and I desperately needed cash. So, I would daily depart that building dutifully pushing a rack filled with leather belts and wallets that I would sell to passers-by on New York’s avenues. A rather large hippie named Martin and his diminutive wife, who cared for a baby and a German Sheperd dog, supplied the wares and the rack in return for 60 percent of the take. They lived and made the leather goods on one floor of the factory. Martin also had operations in Tucson during the winter. There is much more to this story but I’m getting off track.

The GreenDepot has as its mantra to make green building products and services readily accessible. The company claims to use a filter process to make sure there is really some green value in the products it carries. That filter looks pretty impressive and perhaps gets about as thorough as you can get when it comes to this type of thing. The site is rich with content and no matter where you are you can buy products like recycled cotton denim that is made into bats for insulation. Even if you aren’t going to buy anything this site is a good place to spend some time just looking at the range of earth friendly building products that are available. 

And, if you’re ever in lower Manhattan the store on the Bowery will offer you a little trip back in time. In 1885 that building housed the Young Men’s Institute (YMCA), and when the GreenDepot gets finished with the remodeling it will be LEED Platinum. For my part though, when I remember that area, I will always recall the smell of old brick, rusting steel, and leather.

Many people think of homes as the place where panelized construction is most common. If that is true then the idea is being challenged by companies in the commercial sector.

A case in point is the recent announcement by Codding Steel Frame Solutions that it had manufactured and delivered 1000 linear feet of exterior wall panels for the construction of a Whole Foods store.

The company claims that steel framing members provide more dimensional stability than lumber and they will not rot or support mold growth. The green aspects claimed include a high recycled content and material that is 100 percent recyclable at the end of its life. Codding does the manufacturing of the panels in a solar powered factory.

Codding claims that two people can build 250 linear feet of wall in 12 hours and erection time at the site is cut by at least 50 percent using half as many framers.