Trish Holder Interviews Eco-broker Sarah Olson from LEAP Realty

Part 1

Real estate agents. The very word conjures up images of cheesy looking business cards with fake smiles and a lot of air brushing. But a new type of broker has emerged that has me intrigued—the Ecobroker®. Are they the same overdressed, overeager, over-perfumed lot we’ve all caught putting their lipstick on in showcase home powder rooms? Let’s hope not.

I don’t think Sarah Olson, co-owner of Leap Realty in Winston-Salem, NC is (or ever was) that type of agent. She’s smart, down-to-earth, and knows more than a thing or two about how a house actually works and there’s a good reason for that. She became an Ecobroker after a mold situation in her home caused one of her daughters to have serious respiratory issues. This situation led to a full-blown mold remediation and a self-imposed crash course on indoor air quality. That’s when Sarah decided she wanted to “bridge the gap” between what she had learned and what her clients did not yet know.

In this, the first part of a 2-part interview, I asked Sarah some questions about what it means to be a certified Ecobroker. Continue reading ›

By Jenny Engle

If you love a beautifully manicured lawn and have visions of golf course vistas in your head, let me share some green concepts my husband and I learned several years ago.

Bayscaping helps create wildlife habitats

We live in Lancaster, PA in the Conestoga Creek watershed, which flows into the Susquehanna River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay, which is extremely polluted. Not only did we want to help clean up the Bay, we also wanted to be smarter homeowners. That meant parting ways with several large areas of grass and “Bayscaping” our yard. So we set out to redesign our lawn using as many principles from the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay guidelines as we could. This “redo” occurred in stages, over several seasons. We did most of the work ourselves (my husband loves operating any kind of machinery!), but we also solicited the help of professionals as needed.

A Stream Runs Through It
Part of our challenge involved the fact that our ¼ acre lot slopes downward toward a stream that runs through the back portion, creating excessive water runoff and some erosion. Even though we use organic products on our lawn, we wanted to reduce as much storm water runoff into this stream as possible.

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Greenspiration Home Explores the Question in an Interview with Builders of Both Sexes

By Trish Holder

Nicole Goolsby

Clark Wilson

Could a male dominated construction industry be holding back the green building movement? I’ve wondered about this a lot lately, so I decided to confront a couple of builders (one male, one female) with some research as well as some of my own observations of the home construction industry.

Nicole Goolsby of Rion Homes in Cornelius, NC and Clark Wilson of Clark Wilson Builders, Inc. in Austin Texas were willing to indulge my questions. Both are experienced green builders and have worked within the home construction/real estate industry for multiple decades. Their answers shed some much-needed light on a subject I believe builders and homeowners struggle with: cross gender communication.

Part 2 Interview. (Click here to read Part 1)

Continue reading ›

Greenspiration Home Explores the Question in an Interview with Builders of Both Sexes

By Trish Holder

Clark Wilson

Nicole Goolsby

Could a male dominated construction industry be holding back the green building movement? I’ve wondered about this a lot lately, so I decided to confront a couple of builders (one male, one female) with some research as well as some of my own observations of the home construction industry.

Nicole Goolsby of Rion Homes in Cornelius, NC and Clark Wilson of Clark Wilson Builders, Inc. in Austin Texas were willing to indulge my questions. Both are experienced green builders and have worked within the home construction/real estate industry for multiple decades. Their answers shed some much-needed light on a subject I believe builders and homeowners struggle with: cross gender communication.

Part 1 Continue reading ›

By Trish Holder

Photo courtesy of Nancy Sidelinger of the Greensboro News & Record

I keep waiting for Diane Sawyer to show up at my door. Hasn’t she heard about the Greenspiration Home and all our domestically sourced materials and décor? Wouldn’t the Greenspiration Home make a fabulous feature on her World News “Made in America” series? Would someone please put in a good word for me at ABC?

Not for nothing, but I was talking about American-made home construction and décor a full two years before Diane Sawyer and ABC kicked off the popular series. I’m glad this important topic is finally being covered in a meaningful way, but a part of me feels as though I’ve been scooped. (It’s okay, Diane. My door is still open….)

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By Trish Holder

Alliumphobia: n. The irrational fear of LEEKS (or anything in the garlic family).

Okay, maybe my fear of household water damage isn’t quite a phobia, but I’m pretty paranoid about leaks. (That’s leaks not l-e-e-k-s, which are kinda yummy.) So the distinct sound of water dropping each time the kids took a shower upstairs was starting to make me a crazy.

It was a slow, steady “splat” sound that occurred every time the water was turned on in the upstairs bathroom. I imagined little drops of water collecting, unseen behind the walls of my new (green) home. I visualized the whole thing every morning while I listened from my office below. Splat…splat….splat. A fat drop of water, clinging to a run of pipe until it could cling no more. I envisioned the mold that was surely growing in the wall cavity below the upstairs bath.

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