With so much rain and so many ecosavy homeowners, Seattle is well on its way to becoming a rain barrel mecca in the Northwest. When you also consider that a half-inch of rain collected from just a 300 square foot section of roof will fill a 55 gallon rain barrel, it's easy to understand why every household should have 10+ rain barrels, or find a new way to use the water. So how about flushing a toilet with it?

It just so happens that there exists a practical how-to guide on this exact subject (and it's written by a Seattleite of course). This is a DIY project, but this guide takes it step by step, explains the very low costs and makes flushing with rainwater seem like a very natural thing to want to do. Here are a few highlights from this Rain Barrel to Toilet Installation Guide:

A few years ago, I bought a 90 gallon rain barrel and hooked it up to my rain gutter on the far side of my house. I used it once in a while, but found it time consuming to fill watering cans and so it went mostly unused. Living near Seattle, I get about 37 inches of rain a year. I often see installed rain barrels around here used for gardens and flowers that are full and overflowing, not living up to their potential. I thought there must be a simpler way to use more harvested rainwater year 'round.

My solution was to relocate my rain barrel on my back porch and then hook it up to my downstairs toilet. This configuration sets the rain barrel about 8 feet above the toilet. When flushed, gravity refills the toilet with rain water from the barrel.

Rainwater to Toilet Diagram

I did a lot of hunting around on the internet and was unable to find much practical information about doing this on a residential basis. It is my hope that this web page may inspire and help others to hook up a rain barrel to their home black-water (toilet) system.

Ever used the john at the Phinney Neighborhood Center? If you have, you're flushing with rainwater. The same can be said of a number of Seattle establishments, including the Seattle City Hall, Carkeek Environmental Learning Center and the King Street Center, which has a rain collection virtual tour for your viewing pleasure. This practice is also encouraged by both the Built Green and LEED for Homes green home rating programs.

If you were worried about the legalities of collecting rainwater, rest easy, SPU received from the Washington State Department of Ecology a water right permit to capture and use rainwater that falls on rooftops and structures in the combined and partially combined sewer system. The water right permit clears the way for property owners by removing legal uncertainty. SPU plans to develop initiatives that will encourage and hasten adoption of rainwater harvesting to reduce peak stormwater flows that enter Seattle's sewer system, and to conserve potable water currently used for non-potable purposes.

The City of Seattle promotes rainwater harvesting for beneficial use and has partnered with Seattle King County Public Health to develop rainwater harvesting policy and procedures titled, Rainwater Harvesting and Connection to Plumbing Fixtures. The policy provides design guidelines and addresses specific regulatory requirements and procedures for commercial and residential rainwater harvesting systems, including system components.

I'd love to hear from homeowners in Seattle who have taken the leap to flushing with rainwater, or who have other unique uses for this great resource.

For those ready to jump into the toss-and-turn housing market and buy a newly built home, it now pays to go green.

Countrywide Home Loans, a division of Countrywide Bank, FSB, has announced the retail launch of its Green Incentive Program, which will initially be available to qualified home buyers in thirteen states, including: Alaska, Colo., Iowa, Idaho, Minn., Mont., Neb., N.D., Ore., S.D., Utah, Wash., and Wyo. The program provides an interest rate reduction of .125% on a Countrywide loan used to purchase a new home that is built meeting recognized green and energy efficient standards.

"This program gives qualified home buyers more incentive to purchase energy-efficient and green-built homes," said Dave Porter, senior vice president and division builder manager for Countrywide. "Concern for the environment and saving precious natural resources doesn't have to conflict with buying a newly constructed home. Reduced interest rates, combined with the fact that most owners of green-built, energy-efficient homes pay lower monthly utility and water bills, make this program very attractive."

The Countrywide Green Incentive Program's interest rate reduction applies to newly constructed homes that meet third-party, certified standards of recognized green building programs, including Energy Star, Earth Advantage, LEED for Homes and Built Green programs of local home builder associations, as well as the National Association of Home Builder's Green Building program. Additional information is available through many local Countrywide home loan consultants in areas where the program is available.

So how do you find homes that qualify for this program here in Seattle? Homes that are certified Built Green, Energy Star or LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) are now listed as such on the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Just ask your real estate agent to include these certifications in your search criteria.

As an agent myself, I'll be interested to see this program in motion. Exactly what does Countrywide mean by "qualified buyers"? How will they be verifying a home is certified by one of these rating programs? Will this program include all levels of Built Green (some of which aren't as energy-efficient or green as others)?

This program will definitely offer an up-front value, and puts a specific value on going green. Way to go Countrywide for pioneering this! I'm sure many others will follow.

Green building does not happen at just the design level – those who facilitate the use and sale of green buildings must also be able to speak the language of "green." To address this need, the Cascadia Region Green Building Council and the Commercial Brokers Association (CBA) are venturing together on an initiative called Certified Green Broker® commencing with a conference on May 22 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland.

Geared towards the commercial real estate and finance communities, Green Broker® will introduce brokers and other commercial real estate service providers to practices of marketing, financing, leasing and selling of green buildings.

"It is often the brokers and finance professionals, not the architects and builders, who directly interface with the end user: the owner, landlord, and/or tenant. Therefore they have great influence on how owners and users may perceive the affordability and overall value of green buildings," said Jason McLennan, CEO of Cascadia.

With session topics that range from market trends to the art of crafting green leases, presenters from all disciplines of green building expertise will provide attendees with a comprehensive foundation in green issues related to the commercial brokerage industry –a knowledge base that is becoming increasingly vital to the financing, sale and leasing of commercial real estate.

"Sustainability has become a fundamental issue for the bottom line of commercial real estate, which will impact property values, leasing rates and practices and employee/tenant satisfaction," said Tricia Deering, president and CEO of CBA. "A commercial broker who is familiar with green issues will provide the best service to their clients."

Green real estate leaders and advocates Bill Browning, co-founder of Terrapin Bright Green LLC, and Martin Melaver, president and founder of Melaver Inc., are the conference's keynote speakers. For more information about this event and how to register visit Green Broker Conference. Also available - Green Broker flyer.

In 1979, Senator Gaylord Nelson, announced at a conference in Seattle that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric.

Thirty-eight years after Earth Day began, April 22 has become an occasion to focus attention on human-generated climate change and the policies around it - or so we thought until...

Is Earth Day the New Christmas? - Ad Age

This year it seems that just about everyone has found a way to attach themselves to what is fast becoming a marketing holiday that barely resembles the grass-roots event founded in 1970.

Earth Day: Balancing consumer passions and eco values - CNN.com

As more and more people become interested in marking Earth Day, it seems more and more corporations want to reflect their customer's new values in their marketing. Plus, in an increasingly materialistic world many people seem to equate "participation" with "shopping" and the mall seems to have replaced the protest march in many people's minds -- and big business is there to meet them.

What Killed Earth Day? - Washington Post

Earth Day died because, it turns out, saving the Earth is going to be very complicated. It is going to require attention spans, intelligence, sacrifice and lawyers and more than one day a year. To save the Earth, Earth Day had to go. Earth Day is survived by its longtime companion, Mother Nature.

Gaylord Nelson knew better than most that Earth Day could only be a symbol of our intent to help the planet, and presents exceptionally lucid explanations of a host of current ecoissues, and what we can do about them in his book Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise.

No...I don't believe boycotting Earth Day is a good idea. Go out and plant a tree, clean up your street, sign up with Seattle City Light to support Green Power, teach your children how to recycle, but don't, for the planet's sake, take them shopping at Walmart because they just finished an eco-friendly makeover.

Maybe next year Earth Day could be the day we publicly prosecute corporations for the unrestrained rape and pillage of the planet their mass marketing campaigns and blatant greenwashing causes! Oh wait...that would be our fault for buying into their schemes.

SEATTLE – New analysis shows "green" homes may be a bright spot in today's real estate market. Environmentally certified homes sold for 4.8% more and stayed on the market for 24% less time than comparable homes sold last year.

In the first year since it began tracking environmentally certified homes, 19.8% of new homes in Seattle sold on the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) were environmentally certified. These homes averaged 1,477 square feet, just slightly smaller than the 1,492 square foot average for all new homes sold. On a square foot basis, this means green homes sold for a 5.9% premium. Green homes certified by a third party sold for a 10.5% premium on a square foot basis.

"In today's changing market, this is an important finding for homeowners to consider," noted Ben Kaufman, founder of GreenWorks Realty, who conducted the analysis. He added, "Environmentally certified homes offer homeowners a way to get the most value and sell more quickly."

Environmentally certified homes include those certified by Built Green™, Energy Star™ or LEED for Homes™. From September 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008, 168 environmentally certified single-family new homes were sold in the City of Seattle out of a total of 848 new homes sold.

"Until now, the idea that people are willing to pay more for environmentally certified housing has been mostly based on anecdotes," said Aaron Adelstein, Executive Director of Built Green. "Now we have the first hard data to back up what many of us have believed for a long time – green sells for more," he added.

Kaufman noted, "When buying homes, it seems buyers understand the benefits of green homes – from lower energy bills to healthier indoor air." Kaufman initiated the effort to include environmental certification checkboxes in the NWMLS. "These new figures will help appraisers, homeowners and real estate agents understand what buyers are willing to pay for an environmentally certified home," added Kaufman.

GreenWorks Realty is the first local real estate agency to specialize in green properties and communities. Kaufman established the company in 2002 with his father to foster a healthier planet and healthier people by growing the marketplace for green building.

It looks like there will be approx 350 exhibits to explore with shopping, a "Green Kids' Zone" for the little ones, organic dining, local beers and wines, and lots of info on green education, city resources, green power and more!

Find more info at http://www.greenfestivals.org/content/view/767/390/

If you go to the Seattle Climate Action Now site, and sign up for their newsletter it looks like you can get a coupon for free admission. Otherwise, it's $10-15 per person.

p.s. Did you know Seattle was named one of the top 10 green cities in the U.S. in 2005 by National Geographic's The Green Guide?

I'd like to bring a new local green building blog to our readers' attention. Katie Zemtseff, Environmental Writer for the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, has just launched their new green building forum for internet junkies like us! So head on over to blogDJC and give her a big welcome - Katie is a great writer and this will surely be a very fun and informative blog.

The number of cohousing communities around the world is expanding steadily. There's even a cohousing association here in the U.S. It promotes cohousing and serves as a central hub for people who want to plan, build, or live in a cohousing community. Denis Du Bois interviewed Craig Ragland, executive director of the Cohousing Association of the United States, to get a broader view of cohousing trends.

Denis: What typifies a cohousing community?

Craig: It's a little bit hard to say what's typical and what's not. There's quite a bit of diversity in cohousing, depending on the specific group. Some are rural, some are urban, and some are suburban. What typifies it is that it's a type of collaborative housing where the residents participate in designing and operating their own neighborhood.

Denis: When and where did the idea of cohousing get its start?

Craig: The concept of cohousing was brought to the United States by a pair of architects, Katie McCamant and Chuck Durrett. They brought it here from Denmark, where they discovered it in doing some architectural studies when they were in school. They wrote a book entitled Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves in the late eighties. The idea spread all over the United States. There are now about 100 built communities.

Denis: What's the attraction of cohousing here in America?

Craig: Part of what makes cohousing attractive is that it specifically attempts to create a model that is close enough to the mainstream. It can be financed by conventional bank financing, and frequently uses production housing to help control costs. It's a part of the broader, intentional communities movement, or can be seen as part of that. But it's close enough to the mainstream that it can actually happen more readily, and that appeals to a large number of Americans.

Denis: I've been researching cohousing communities, and you've told me about the community you live in, Songaia, North of Seattle. There are recurring themes of the not-so-big house, of energy efficiency, and of green building. Are these common considerations in cohousing communities?

Craig: Yes, very much so. There's a strong tendency and attraction to ideas of sustainability. I wouldn't say it's a universal thing -- there are certainly groups of people that have organized to develop pretty conventional large houses on large lots, using cohousing as an organizing principle. The vast majority of them are saying, we want more in the way of community shared resources and reducing some of our individual impact. It's very common to see lots of green values that are realized in a wide variety of ways within the different communities.

Songaia at Dusk

Denis: Are there developers or builders who specialize in cohousing? Is this field open to just any builder to build homes -- or whole communities?

Craig: I don't know that there are many builders that specialize in cohousing. There are a few developers, but very few. Many of them can be found on our cohousing website. We have a section called marketplace that has a Professional Directory. Currently it has about ten professionals on it. Typically, cohousing communities are self-developed. Those communities that work with professional developers typically take quite a bit less time than the ten years that we took.

This is both a movement and an emerging industry. There are cohousing architects listed in the Professionals Directory. There aren't as many developers, and we'd love to find more professional developers that are interested in this. From a developer's point of view, it is an interesting thing to have a number of the units pre-sold.

Denis: What about financing the construction? Do lenders get nervous when you mention cohousing?

Craig: It's not actually been much of a difficulty. They are often excited about the idea. It's easier to get building financing frequently to do the construction, because so many of the units are often pre-sold. In our case, we actually had all of our homes pre-purchased before we started our construction. We didn't have any difficulty finding a mortgage broker that would work with us. That does not seem to be a barrier very often. Since they're legally structured as condominiums, the communities typically are not built unless they come pretty close to the numbers all working in terms of market value.

Denis Du Bois writes the P-I's Energy Blog and consults with companies on bringing their energy innovations to market. He interviewed Craig Ragland in February, 2008. A podcast of the interview is available at Energy Priorities, along with an audio tour of a recently built cohousing community in New Hampshire.

The just completed "Footprint on Pigeon Hill" is a stunning single family home by Footprint Developments located in West Seattle. This home embraces natural light and takes full creative advantage of every available opportunity to frame the beautiful, arboreal views of the site's natural surroundings--from the immediate to the distant. Situated at the summit of a woodland slope directly across the street from Puget Park, this home is graciously enveloped in a sun-soaked garden oasis, which is itself encased in an outer perimeter of urban forest.

The light filled open kitchen w/ cathedral ceilings is the heart of this home which also includes a master suite, 2 guest bedrooms, 2 baths, spacious living and dining rooms with extensive garden & woodland views, an atrium entryway and a carriage house w/ garage, extra storage and recycling areas, a laundry and mechanical room and upstairs bonus room w/ bathroom.

The home's passive solar design captures natural daylight through expansive triple glazed windows. With pre-wiring for solar panels, radiant floor heating, heat recovery ventilation for superior air quality, high-efficiency boiler space heating and hot water systems and a plethora of non-toxic, renewable and energy efficient features easily qualify this home for both Energy Star and LEED for Homes certification.

Exterior Features Include:
Drought-Tolerant Native Plantings . Recycled Wood Beam Garden Bench . Permeable Pavers . Atrium Entry Area . Backyard Birdhaven . Spacious Canopy Covered Garden Patio with Edible Landscape . Private Master Bedroom Deck . Territorial, Mountain & Woodland Ravine Views

Stop by the Grand Opening, Sat & Sun March 15th & 16th, 1 to 4pm, 4529 21st Ave SW, Seattle WA 98106. For more information visit Footprint on Pigeon Hill.

Designed by Architect Tony Case, these green homes in Columbia City hit the market last fall with a splash and sold w/in a week. The exterior colors helped a lot of course!

As a backcountry ski instructor and former mountaineering guide, Tony's feel for simplicity and respect for nature runs deep. At the same time, Tony is well-versed in personal, political and commercial dynamics of bringing architecture into diverse, urban environments, where looking good only counts if it does good too.

Tony's unique experience with "topographically challenged" lots enabled him to build creatively where others dared not tread. Two of these 3 homes have sky bridges and stairways up to the main street.

For more information and photos visit 34th Ave Project.