questioning >> so then is akin to once we want a better shadow study? >> with increments 025 feet we can actually get rid of. >> just to clarify were looking for increments quantitative increments in terms of showing x number of square feet at this time, etc.? quantitative data? >> just like we saw was easy for us to see, they were the shadows it and for how long. >> okay. i guess there's two different-there's the quantitative data and then there's the graphical >> i think were much more graphically inclined. i can sit there and look at a table of numbers and get the full picture. we showed up there when he kind of went through was really helped get in other words the dr request or number two showed >> but that style of graphic >> yes. >> insofar as the intervals, i mean it's difficult to do hourly intervals for section 295 reporting but it sounds like what you're wanting is something of a more granular.

during time just obviously many times it would either one hour would be already passed >> >> sure. it's actually commit of those other things that might-maybe you could get within this continuance or not get with the dr requesters shadow experts and come up with something that we could actually understand and agree on >> well, there's an existing model for all shadows of these are done which is section 295 model which of the various established menorrhagia is transparent instead of by the planning department >> item of you use that were not >> he did not >> let's use it and see what the impact is >> okay. we will follow with it a typical section 295 set of deliverables which would show >> clear map of the gardens >> identified exactly >> awnings and trees >> okay. >> how long would that take? >> well, i would probably be able to compare that level of study within two weeks.

>> i won't be here in two weeks but if we can make it three weeks. >>[inaudible] [off mic] so >> sold february 2 >> i won't be here that day. >> i'm sorry to weaker i when i doing competing studies were only tasked mr. phelps-i just want to clear about that >> so is established methodology and stylish way to do shadow studies. that's what there can be preparing. maybe you can send them a copy of it and he could look out if any questions you can come to the person that's using the establishment. if you're using a stylish methodology it's a different answer the way of a problem. >> every 16th, commissioner squeak? >> yes. february 16. we have a motion and a second. without

objection under the second >> i seconded spears shall i call the question on a motion to continue the matter on separate 1612 for further shadow analysis, commissioner johnson nay koppel aye melgar aye moore aye richards got so moved the motion passes for-one with commissioner johnson voting against. >> which places under general public, to which i have no cigna speaker cards. >> any general public comment? one general public comment. not on-you have 3 min. >> yes. i want to bring attention the fact that we just added another three weeks a lot of expense to a project for housing in the middle of a crisis literally because of shadows, not falling on a

public park but on a private business. a private for-profit business. i just want to bring attention to that fact into the fact that it is scandalous and is literally embarrassment for san francisco. thank you. >> any additional speakers? we have 3 min. each. seeing none, the hearing is close. >>[gavel] >>[adjournment] >> >> >>

>> thank you all for coming today. what is today. it's may 19, third thursdays we always do a department building

inspection. brown bag. subjects brought up by you and people that come and that we think we can help provide the information. today we are doing some thin we've done twice before. learning the history of your building. it's a popular topic in terms of doing something in a building in san francisco as far as adding a unit or selling your building that's useful to know when the building was built and how it was legally or otherwise altered without or with permits so we have with us today three people. just scratching the surface of the available resources in san francisco about persons who know about historical buildings and jeremy paul permit consul stapt that does a lot of work

trying to help people try and solve permit issues, many of which relate to learning the legal issues of their building and sorting out the records and, the survey coordinator for the planning department and historic research surveying is becoming more and more important and just recently we got a substantial cash settlement from a problem that took place at the moratorium that will be surveying and i don't think that's going through the planning department but the survey resources are so important and that's the settlement of a lawsuit is let's do more surveying. alan, right side is records management, arad yen cussad yen

manager of records the department of building commission ran out of space so we moved into offices next door as well so room 303 has files and files of microfiche, cards that have been here since after the 1906 earthquake. the regards prior to that were mostly destroyed in the fire following the earthquake. i just got a call from someone from berkley with millions of pages of copies of plans of san francisco buildings. millions of sheets that somehow got rescued in the 1906

earthquake. part of what we're doing in the building and planning department is how to assemble the records and your about to see they're not in one place. the biggest lesson you'll find is your challenge is to go to all of these agencies and get a set of records for your building. right now your assembling a program to do a single records management program to dial up on the computer your address and get the historical data. right now we can do that for a very short timeframe so if you go to,sfgov dot org. the cities website you can go to the beldings department link, hi alice, and go to permits. it says check on-line permit status and it's a permit

tracking function and you can enter your address and i think all the permits since the mid 80's now will come up with their disposition and what happens, who reviewed them and all of that. that's the first step. that's as we were rushing headlong into the 90's and we're trying to move into the next decade and right now negotiating some vendor to scan these and put them all underseparate addresses. okay where do we go from here. >> right now you can do that yes. >> but it's not on going? >> we're going to increase it. we've initiated that about three to five months back. if you have a permit in for review you can check the status and see who has it and who is the next plan station and if it's prepared for issuing and you feel free to jump in.

>> what's on-line is the same we have in our lobby the permit tracking system. applications from about mid 80's to whatevers today issued and that's information you get. it's not the actual copies of documents but the computer indexing the central department does when they accept permits. from the same link at,sfgov, you can get to thesf viewer program that can give you assessors information about what the asses or knows and also links to map's and ariel photos which can be useful in various stages. you know i think in order to talk about these records that

we're launching into, i think it's a good idea to put into perspective why we look at our records. this is a good thing for me to go off on. that, speaking in the residential field especially, because that's where i do most of my work. the way the building department and planning departments view changes that you might propose, including legalization of existing features you take for granted as existing is all documenting how it got to be the way it is. it's important to think about these building records as being a record of actions, not necessarily of things. so, quite often the best place to start is when did the building get built and what was it when it was built? how

large was it, what was it's function and different uses there? once you established it's original use and original configuration, then you have a marker by which to track changes through the history of the building and that's where you'll find yourself going through many of the different resources that the chief inspector has laid out that we'll talk about today. >> i'm a very product oriented person. one reason i like being a building inspector unlike planning looking in the future, you look at a plan, approve it and the thing getsibility. i like things in discreet little bits. my recommendation for that concept of myself is everybody for their house should have a notebook and in this, you should start to insert the

records for your building. keep them all in one place in those acid free slip cases and that way you have a product and you can begin chronologically. when i upgrade my house i felt an electrical permit in the wall. i slid it in there it's kind of yellow, but it's useful if i ever have to say yes this work was done legally in 1932. the city does not retape that. so we want to keep hard copy. forget the electronic stuff. >> can we get those on-line? >> map's are available on-line through subscription by various libraries through the sand born

map company. the san francisco library for a period of one year had a trial subscription and the use did not justify the cost so they suspended and the public demand to return that may occur again. >> what is sand born. >> the short answer is, no. sand born was a mapping company that was part of a fire insurance program that went around cities all over the united states and maybe beyond and actually, physically, mapped by hand every building, hold that up for me -- every building and every out building and set of stairs and updated these map's on an annual basis walking around the city and unfortunately someone had the mistakes of canceling the

subscription ten or twelve years back but we have these historical map's and their fantastic in many ways. they don't give you a full history of the building but at the snapshot, i think this was in the 40s. you can look that building and actually see, if you look carefully, you can see the number of floors. two floors with an addition in the back and a bunch of an abbreviationses and the big key in front of the thing and the one with the little stairs. so how is that important to you. san francisco has amendment to the code that says if you have a stairs and a deck on your back porch and you want to replace them you can replace them in their original configuration if they were properlyibility in the first place. how can you prove they were?

in many cases that's hard to prove. but here it is this shows exactly where the shaping configuration of the stairs is. so we have a set of the most current inborn or sand born map's behind the planning department counter that will be happy to make or let you look at them and make copies of them there's a free copy machine. i've seen the old ones. not in the last year or two, do you know where they are? >> the series four books are on the sixth floor of the san francisco public library and early series are micro film also from the library. if you belong to a library in another jurisdiction like san jose or oakland they might have subscriptions for their area

and that might extend -- they have maybe all california map's. >> do you know where the ariel services are and where. >> the planning department has three that are as of yet unconserved. >> what does that mean. >> we have not had the time or resources to digitize them. they're very large. more than this book here. they're about 32 inches square and cover the whole city in 1948 to 1950, somewhere in the mid 50s or 60's. >> to go on the resources that are available to us there's aerial photography that goes back to the -- actually pre first world war and they're amazing and held by pacific

ariel survey off,,hagen burger road by the airport. what they did in the early era is they had a large format cameras that they went with the originals over the city and did long exposure photos with very high resolution lenses so when you want to find something in the archives, they'll give you aqua drant go to and a loop and you can't see much resolution but they will blow it up for you and the resolution will be so high you will be able to determine the make of many of the autos you see on the street. in the teens and 20s. >> so let's go back to learning history of your building to find out when was your buildingibility and who

built it. what do you think moses? >> for the newer buildings i believe their data base comes from building permit records. >> how do people access that. >> sfgov dot org. you're going to tell he is a historicle person. for newer buildings after the 06 earthquake. you mean the 89? >> one of the greatest faults with the assessors data base is they make up date for builds that pre existing 1906. their records are not fully accurate for buildings after that but i think their 90 percent correct for after 06 so if there was building that was surviving when i started shop

again in later 06 they said it was in the 1900's. could be from 1850s but they said 1900. so that's kind of how you know it's pre 06 and that's all you can do. >> power of bureaucrat. >> this is a remarkable thing the assessors records. first of all you can't get a copy of this unless your the owner or the owners agent. but it's remarkable because there were field inspections done of almost every building in san francisco and it contains photographs of those buildings and it's a terrific, counted sinks and rooms and bathrooms. a tremendous resource. in addition to finding out from the assessors recores probably the place i would start is an original permit building for a

building after 1906. here's a building permit and you can get these by filling out one of those little forms we have over there. micro film records request. right, alan? and you take it to the accounter and say, here's what i would say -- i want to see every record available for my building including the permits, the plans, the job cards because that's where the inspectors sign off on and what else do we have over there. >> well, basically we have building permit applications or job cards or jobs done by district inspectors department to say it's final or not finaled with an expired job

card and, plumbing, electrical permits. >> how come -- i thought we didn't. >> we do have some and miscallaneous documents and letters where people sent to the city and documents tham come through another department before us. now, what we don't have and we have building plans let me say buildings -- most wood frame houses residentials don't have plans in my recollection but commercial buildings almost always there's some plan, if there's a multi unit large residential building will have plans? >> well, i was going to say what we don't have, inspection records, job cards, we have from about 1933 going forward,

plumbing permits and inspections from about 1976 going forward and electrical permits from about 1985 going forward so just as mr. corn field said if you find a tag or something on your circuit breaker box or something and it's old. with a straight edge or something take it off and save it. it may be the only record that something was done at that time. >> yeah, you had a question? >> you have permits for modifications. >> the question is do you make a request for documents and nothing turns up which happens frequently, maybe. where else would we look? where else would we look for the documents. >> the planning has historic

files similar to what was said about the inner office between various city departments and ours have not been micro films. they're still in paper files so we have the originals. they're from about the mid 30s, um... forward. so if like the planning department approached the owners concerned something at that site, we would have our copy of that up there. >> here you go. block book has a notice in it. >> down on the bottom floor of the planning floor at 1660, we have block books that are another source of research. >> this is book number ten. volume ten and right down on the first floor you can see them. there's a huge selection. must be 75 or a hundred for

covering the whole city. >> we've got them from 1935, 46, 54 and current ones that are up to 2004. i think they've been updated. in the older sets in the 1935. with a lot the owner of record. also in a color wash is the zoning that existed for that time. pasted in are zoning changes that happened various lots during the 30s and the 1940s when the next set was issued and there are little pencilled in notes, sometimes with permit numbers written in. especially valuable for

billboards noted in the books. we will have the build board permit number written on top of the lot. if there was a variance decision or a zoning decision. >> like a notice of special restriction. >> like from the 1930s i've seen, like the parking for this buildings to be located at this other building because they were under the same ownership at some time. those sort of restrictions that are also suppose to be recorded against the deeds at the assessors reporting office would be also here if if it was a case of some decision. >> some other things you need to know, the dimensions of your lot. 100 by 25 on this side of the street. it does not have the official addresses and all of us will

talk about that in a second but it has a great deal of pencilled in information. notes from the planner and fantasticly valuable so find the old block books and use our free copy machine and make a copy of the page. how can you make sure it's the right building. this is the cities official address street from block 2129 which is,pachako, 2029, and this is maintained by the first floor on this building and this has the official address of the city. the date the address was issued and maybe the date the address was changed and other alternate addresses we may initially applied to the building. when you look for the history of your building not only do you look at every address it

might have been called by. example you might ask for both streets it intersects and always reference block 21, 29 block or block 1f. we're referencing blocks and addresses are nothing but trouble. people make them up. they come and go. 1125 abc. we have tremendous problems so use blocks primarily. >> in addition to map's there's other resources showing characteristics of lots that are very valuable resources. that's title companies. your title companies the major

ones in san francisco, all have original copies of the assessors block map's and changes to those individual blocks which include lot line adjustments and ease meants that often make all the difference in whether another city agency will accept something or agree to a change in that thing. with the -- after the earthquake there was -- and the fires -- many of those records were destroyed in the system and city. the entire ownership was gone. nobody had any records of who owned what. it was all people saying, this lots always been in my family so the board of supervisors after the earthquake and fire created a function to allow

ownership to continue. it was could a, makanearny, which claims ownership as a traditional right over a certain parcel and those are fascinating and historic documents when you come across them. >> so, learning history go to the assessor office in city hall or a title company and have them search for all the documents recorded against your property and if you're city hall you look at adjourning propertys so see if they have east meants or ease meants. if on page 29 you see a notice of special restrictions under the planning code and we would ask you record it and it would be on file that assessors

recording office and you can look it up and print this off and you would be surprised and who has the rights to drill on your backyard or exit across your front yard there are many, easements. >> i would like to add when the as see sore is taxing you on what's physically out there and not what's legally out there, many people come to us and say i have this apartment and this room in the basement -- they get the history of their building from our records management department and say say, there is nothing in the building department that says build this but i'm being taxed on it and again, that's more money for the city because it's more square foot age and they tax you on what's physically out there. >> on page 22 of the hand-out

you have is a certificate of final completion and occupancy. when a buildings put up we currently have and for many years up to -- when to the 50s maybe? >> in 1945 they issued those but unfortunately for every job that was ever done site may say reroofing and give you a,cfc, but it does not say one family or two family, just describes the job and in the 1950s it was five years later that it said only for conditions in the building code. >> so if you -- this document is the key document for us to determine what is the legal use and occupancy of your building so we will always, if there's an issue we will go to the

certificate of final completion and occupancy. that's you know, three story building and that's legally what you have according to our records. if you want to show us a mistakes has been made you bring that documentation forward. this is the key government document. someone mentioned the 3r report. it's a collection of records and not an original source. it's a collection saying yes there was a permit issued on such and such date. it's not the original. just a reference to the originals. if someone says my, 3r says two units but it's three, the 3r report is not the controlling document. it's simply an information compilation. here's a report on page 316.

>> again, the 3r report is made up from the dob meants from the micro film so theoretically they should both match. >> but there are many things were where their are questions if their good. >> is there anything that's good? >> what is this complete compilation. there is no single source of documents and that's message i'm trying give. >> i don't think that you should be or make a blanket statement that people are saying 3 r's are not good but their limited utility. their intended to tell a buyer of a piece of property what the building department thinks it knows at any given time.

that has substance and value. it isn't positive about the actual character of the building you need to go to source document. however if there is a conflict between what exists in the record and the 3r, that's something city agencies and repeal bodies will examine when you present that information. >> yes, sir.? >> you mentioned the certificate of completion and occupancy and the key document. how do we obtain those? >> that is one of the records you can request when you go to the micro film and say give us all certificates of final completion. >> but again not every building has a certificate of final completion and occupancy. one is because we have ns

certificates before a certain time. you may say and we take that's a gospel. >> how do we find out how the building was constructed and you have multiple sources that conflict. how do you come to the truth? >> there are source s we'll talk about. the water department jeremy, right? >> spring valley water company. >> this on page 8 item two describes what these records are and if you go to the water department offices down across unite had had nations plaza on 1155 market street they will bring out the original document and their very efficient and quick and it takes a few

minutes. they are all written on pencil on onion skin. you can find out how many horse troughs were approved and things like that which is often very useful in determining when there are multiple buildings on a residential lot it will help determine if the secondary building has a history of habitant occupancy or what occupancy it was. >> once again you can get those at what? >> 1155 market street. the manager of the water department that time gathers staff while the city was burning and some people were hauling buckets of water and somewhere hauling records out. if your researching a building that's pre 06. that's probably some of the

best sources of information about your building that you will be able to find. you will be able to find who applies for the connection. sometimes it was the owner or the builder and the date it was connected and those go back to -- i've seen some from the late 18 60's. under the address. also the public library, 6th floor history room on micro film, the roll stuff, a copy of the ledgers by street. so if you're looking on 17th street, they'll have the water department will have put in by year, every person on 17th street that came in. so, it's not by address but by street and year.

a little odd but across reference. >> so after the original document there will often be taped and stapled additional service records from various points in time when changes were made and you'll see those on item 41 and 42 and 40 are all these things. in this case they all say the same thing but it gets much more interesting when we're trying to get a chronological stockpile of how a building came to be. this is not saying again, it was a legal change but at,x time in the past, water department official acknowledged a new service hook up for that property, thus many city agencies will honor that's an accepting that's an a date when new water service was

provided to a unit or something like that. >> other than the water department what other sources do we have for original information. >> sometimes the sand win map's. 80's to 96 you can bracket those. so it will show up on the 1899 but not the 1896 map you can narrow it down there if it existed on 1886 map and you don't know how much older than that it is and you can't find a water connection record, there's little hope. but sometimes you will be able to find. there's an 1869u sds,ge

odectic, service map representation that's somewhat accurate, not where lots are provided but there's a little black dot and the whole thing is about 24 inches by 30 inches and covers the whole city. so it's not fine grained but you can say there was blob there in 1869. >> do they have this many the history room? >> yes. if you do a web search you can find it on-line. there's one source where you can actually like zoom in and there's another,us coast map from the 1850s but i would think pretty much any building from the 1850s is already kind of done. >> this gentleman has a

question? >> are they consistent block numbers from year to year and agency to agency. >> they have changes. when the original city was layed out by the city surveyor it was called the 50 bar survey. when it was expanded to market. so up until the teens the city kept those as separate surveys and theres the different surveys in the outside lands which is sort of the western part of the city. >> the uninhabitable part of san francisco. >> they were different surveys and blocks in those. mission block 38 and then in the 19 teens or 20s everything was consolidated into the big block and lot list.

so mission block 32 became block 3927 or something like that. >> this is a good time to put a plug in on the san francisco public library history room. on page 38 you will find a document how to research your san francisco building. they have lots of references to other agencies but quite frankly the san francisco history room in the san francisco library is a fantastic resource and people there are extraordinarily knowledgeable. and page 14 talks about when the photo collection is open. you have to wear white gloves and can look at a couple at a time and they will often have photos of your block or neighborhood or the ones that are fascinating and part of your collection as well.

>> my experience with that resource has been really excellent over the years. they really take a lot of pride in the collection and get excited when somebody wants to use it. i encourage you to use these people as a resource. the street photographs are not the only resource for photographs that are really invaluable. they have a lot of news related photograph ss that are indexed sometimes by dris strict or street but never by address but that does not mean you won't see the address your after. san francisco heritage located in the,li z, 200 franklin street, 441 -- 3000. they have original print

version of the sand born map from 1830s. building files and files on architects that practices in san francisco and major contractors that worked in san francisco their biographies and certain indexes that are not available else where. so i would suggest contacting them. >> and joining. it's a nonprofit organization that preserves san francisco heritage. >> okay i want to flip through some of these other materials we brought along to show you. not the building codes. here today, fantastic book you want to tell us about it. >> here today, is the end

results of years worth of research done by the junior league of san francisco. a book published in the late 1960's and there's an enormous volume of research. architecture, social that went into the making and not every building researchs in the making of this book is published. there are background files that san francisco library history room, the planning department has an index but the library has on their web page the index you can download some you can go by the street and check to see if the number of your buildings listed and they will have a research file on that building. >> -- just to mention i have in, my here today, copy the

resolution of boardrd of supervisors adopted this as an official list of resources in that time. so if you have your property lists or even in the back where there's a listing of olive street all of the shingles are a later addition it maintain as purity of line. especially is the blind window on the side. if your buildings listed in one of these your a qualified historical resource and you may use the space historical building code which provided alternatives to the other building code requirements and this is a great resource for us to approve the most important resources in the city. >> if that window needs to be repairs whoa to you. >> i get a lot of requests to

use the state historic building code. it's called the san francisco golden age postcards and we had a copy of this and i suddenly realized a lot of people came in and they're not listed but i have this wonderful old photograph from wherever it might be. 1930s and i can use this to help document that it's appropriate to use the state historic cold or code and it's showing every aspect. old cable cars and when they were taken out officer vice and put out on the beach to make little houses and all over the city. great book. i'll pass that around. did you want to mention anything about it. >> i was going to touch upon the block book one last time. the library if you look on page

9 of the research guide they've got the block books from 1960, 94, 06, 07', 09' and 10. there was long thought to be along ellipse from the early part of the 20th century but i recently like two years ago found out the assessors office has the 19, 14 all the way through 1974 block books if you find your block and lot you can find out who owned that building up to the 50s i believe. at least through 1946 because we have a copy of the 46 so you can find out who lived there and if you go to the asses ri

quarters office and they don't know what your talking about if you're looking straight ahead, there's a balcony that goes around the upper level and on the far left side there's a column that comes down from the call connie and it's at the base of that column that you can direct the researcher to go to get these micro films. >> talk about secrets of city government. that's great. >> i guess that's what i had to say. there's a little secret document out there. >> in terms of working with these agencies and little places where all this information lies, just as i was talking about how excited people are at the public library history room to help you you will find there's agencies not there to help you research your home as you might

find. the assessor is thinking their job is to asses your home for taxation so your interest is not their concern necessarily. we talked about the property card each property has. this building card. most clerks when you approach them and ask for that they will send you to a computer monitor so to see what they have on-line. stand firm. you want to see the source document. they'll do it if you push them to do it. >> okay. couple more resources here. >> when you find out the people that used to live in your building, you can then go to the san francisco directories and their available that public libraries and they have many many years worth of these and you can find out that

lawrence fox was married to betty who was a stockbroker and presided at 42 pacific avenue. you can find out if the owner was also occupying the building they owned so you can start to build a biography of the people that lived in your house through these city directors. >> i wanted to mention the building department has miscallaneous records of all sorts and let me just, a lon the length of letting you into the inner city secrets of records being kept. this is the unreenforced masonry building survey. we have people here on the third -- second floor that do upgrade work and we surveyed all the buildings and there's photographs and descriptions and some of it made it to the

building department of records and we have soils reports. maybe very valuable if there's a voils report of your neighborhood. i bought my house and thought it was in ma great location. but the earthquake turns out shook our neighborhood really badly. the soils reports would have shown me that and will show you that and we have maybe tens of thousands by block and lot number here on the second floor that building department. on the six floor is the housing inspection division. they have their own separate records, what they call street files for buildings three or more units and sometimes fewer occasionally if their stuck away in there they have

inspection records of all the multi-family buildings in san francisco and they're suppose to go out and look at them once every five years unfortunately, they recently cleaned the files out and we lost a lot of the day-to-day records of people. we have the summary documents but there's still quite a few. here's the secret. you look that files up there and you open it up and there's all these records and a lot of stuff you don't know sm gone, but inside the file is a pocket and inside the pock seat microfiche so, then you can request copies. how do they do that. >> there's a viewer to see, you can stick them in and see what documents are on that and if you need copies someone from housing will escort you to the

micro film counter and wait your turn to get whatever prints you need. >> those are very valuable records and your goal should be to put together that complete binder. let's see. what other information. oh, the 76 survey files upstairs. >> we have the original files and we also, i guess there are two secret things i can share. lawrence held up the binder for the unreenforced masonry building. if your buildings on there and you think it's quite snappy, we have the negatives. we also have the negatives from the 1976 survey and if you make an appointment with me and my number is up there, i can make arrangements to have enlargements of these made for

you. then, the 76 survey itself was a windshield survey that the planning department worked on with some graduate students that looked at what they felt in their served jury pool to be the representative top ten percent of the top stylist architecture so they gave us photograph and some information of the outside of the building from 1976 often thousand buildings in every part of the city. >> how do you know if yours is on that list. >> the planning department has a list of all the surveys any given property may not have background information on.

you can call the planning information counter and ask that it be looked up and you can come in and -- >> -- okay. planning information counter. 583877. best to call early in the morning and be patient. we're currently under staffed. i would call at 8 o'clock. 8 a.m. and 30 minutes after. if you call at thirty to 5 preponderance you might not get anyone. >> we're almost done. another couple of minutes. but i want to point out one of the easiest references lying around the counter. we have one on the first floor of this building and one on the six floor and the floor next

door. the san francisco realty directory. if you look at this you can find by address, on or broad rick street, the construction or type, single family dwelling, zoning code, value, block and lot. last sales date. walk up and all this information is right there so you don't even need to go to the library for that. >> that's information from the tax assessor so it should be the same information as the tax assessor. >> it's a good simple starting point. jeremy, what's that magnifying

glass for that you have in your pocket. >> just because it has that sherlock holmes thing. so much of what i do involves looking through directories and all of these map's for changes that have been made and tracking when those things were done and there are other sources in text that can be very difficult to get through but have really wonderful pieces of information. the voters rolls. the pulp directories tell you things about the fabric of the city. i had an interesting case to establish a legal dwelling unit that had to pre date a certain date with a ceiling height and it turns out a person resided at this address that was a bartender and a regular sterd

socialist. the owner of the building that lived there owned the bar and he was the current chairman of the socialist party of the city. with that city planning was willing to acknowledge the bartender lived in his bosses unit in the basement of his house. there you have it. >> amazing. we will stick around and answer questions after but we have to stop right now because the time is up and i want to thank jeremy, paul, and moses and alan and thank you all for coming and we'll see you next month. thanks.

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>> well, welcome to the imaf building inspection. this is our brown bag monthly talk on the third thursday, which we do every third thursday. today we're talking about green buildings and a green buildings for your home. i'm lawrence cornfield. i have laura en engle with me. laura works closely with the department of building inspection know to develop green building plans and to talk about green building stuff. and so of course, the first thing we have to say is laura what on earth do you mean when you say green building? what is a green building? >> a green building can mean a lot of different things. for a home, a lot of people say, i'm not a whole new building so what does that mean?

we'll talk about materials that are energy conserving or water conserving. it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. >> in our handout and you shall have copies and if anybody needs copies any of the materials we have today you can call the information person in our agency, emily green, 558-6005. she'll mail or fax you copies. in our handout we tried to put a one sentence summary of our topic. our overall green building goal is to maintain a comfortable living in our home maintain resources, improving indoor environmental quality. this is not a holier than thou type talk. i'm not saying i always use unbleached paper in my house. we're not trying to say you have to live up to somebody else's

expectations or standards. this is simply an attempt to help you understand what the current thinking about green building is, and how you might choose to incorporate some of those things in your house. one of the big -- the big issues we're all confronting is energy. why are we confronting energy as a topic for green buildings? >> why? because it's a resource that is running scarce oon us. and because in san francisco we've got a big issue with the bayview hunters point plant. we're trying to promote energy efficiency and conservation. two different things. >> what is the difference? >> energy efficiency and energyconservation would be to turn off lights and be efficient, or to use more

efficient appliances in your home. if you buy a new refrigerator that is more energy efficient, it doesn't take as much energy to run that appliance. >> lighting and lighting controls, if you have the obvious issues with regard to lighting, how much light do you need? the building code sets minimum standards for lighting in residential occupants. but you can -- occupancies. you can use the regular, the standard amount, what you do is you get a bulb that says standard. you're not messing around. this is a standard. they could say regular but they choose to say regular. this is the ace hardware, 75-watt bulb. relatively short expec expect e.

>> picking this out, they have cool light, or cool white, warm white, and i think it was day light. and so the compact fluorescents i think the industry realized the original light was really ugly. people didn't want to incorporate it into their home because everybody looked blue. now they have a better product. these you don't have to change for about ten years. they're really energy efficient. >> eight times longer life compared with the thousand-hour bulb, this one doesn't say how many hours it is on it, i don't think, does it? no. but the one thing that you often have problems with these, is you cannot use these with dimmers

unless they're specifically approved to use with dimmers. okay. less energy, longer life, save the planet, less maintenance. you're not as likely to fall off the ladder. >> yes. >> less than $5. >> i feel like we're on "the price is right." >> you bee win that one. >> a surprise for the day. >> right. now, here i said you can't use some of these things with dimmers, many lights you can use with dimmers. here's a dimmer. people say i don't want to put dimmers in. this one cost five bucks. it's a really yucky dimmer but -- junky dimmer. but it's rated. do you save power when you dim? >> it reduces the amount of

energy that the light is using. >> so there you go. suppresses radio frequency interference. it used to be that dimmers, you'd hear buzzes when you dimmed them down. but these have radio suppressors. >> you'll find everything is about $5. makes it easy for us. i think that that was only about three or $4. >> really, really cheap. >> really inexpensive. >> what do we want to say about lighting? there's a new energy code. the 2005 california energy code. and if you were building a new building, or if you are building a new addition, or a residential remodel, as james is doing, he's going to be required to meet, depending on whether you've got your permit before or after august 1st of this year, 2005, you might have to meet the new california energy code, which requires very sensitive lighting controls. it requires that you have

occupancy sensors or other types of reduced lighting controls in many rooms. and i'm not sure what the rooms are. do we have somebody here from mechanical section? what you're going to see over the next few years is a tremendous tightening up of energy controls. where you basically can't leave lights on. if they don't see movement within a specific period of time, lights will go off. somebody has already filed a complaint with the department to say, this is discriminatory for people with disabilities. we'll deal with that. the new energy code, california is way hea ahead of the country. we have a whole staff that does energy code compliance. the new energy code by the way has to be under special inspection. after the project is done, somebody comes, not a city but a special outside inspector who

comes and checks the energy stuff. so it's really, really tightening up, amazing. lighting and controls. any questions or comments on lighting? how about these fluorescent lights in the office? terrible, huh? >> thayer not necessarily terrible -- they're not necessarily terribly, but pacific gas and electric has a lighting lab and they offer to do lighting examinations as well. >> pacific gas and electric has the energy center. >> yes, pacific energy center down on howard street between 4th and 5th. and they have all kinds of free classes. >> fantastic place. pacific energy center. >> how are they to the landfills now? >> good question. the question was, how safe are they to throw the new compact florfluorescents? >> there is going to be a new rule that is going to be preventing these lights from

going into the landfill. there is a woman in the department of environment deals with residential toxicity. you can call the toxic reduction program at the department of environment and they'll be able to provide you some information as to what's happening with the rules and disposal of the lamps. >> hooting and -- heating and cooling, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. heating and cooling, san francisco is of course the world's finest environment so most people don't have to heat or cool their homes. it's perfect here,alities perfect. cooling load is not a problem, climate zone 3. most people don't have cooling. the only place necessary their homes, commercially, yes, heating or cools -- cooled. this building could be in topeka or anyplace, minnesota, it is designed as a separate entity. it's got a huge heating or

cooling, no matter what happens, it can maintain temperature. doesn't need that in san francisco. we're developing standards, operable buildings, get away from this standard mon monolithc concept. most people don't heat or cool tear homes, except for those particularly hot or cold days. how many in san francisco has -- nobody in this room. when you you get really cold, the code says you've got to use it. >> how many times do you use it? a couple times a year? >> you get those cold or heat systems. i would just put on a jacket, right? >> you're an exception. >> if you're using heating, you know, and cooling, most fans

have filters and replacing the filters every now and then are a good idea. but as we're saying so few people use it, you hardly need to consider it. but definitely look at, because the more this thing gets filled up, especially if you're doing a remodel in your house, the dust and junk gets collected, you may be reducing the air flow. that would be the purpose of it. >> efficiency. >> efficiency. we can pass that around. i don't know how you dispose of it but yes, okay. so heating. in other climate zones where you have real serious heating and cooling loads, commercial buildings, people like to make the buildings very tight, so you don't have heat leakage or you're not losing air and you make the windows reflective. we in san francisco i strongly encourage people to have as much fresh air and infiltration as they possibly can. it's an indoor air quality

issue. people say i have mold and mildew all over my closets, there's mold and mildew all over my bathroom. what can i do? the answer is obvious to me, open the windows, open the door, and leave them open. now, people say, i get cold. before you go in the bathroom, to take a shower, close the window, so it's not open during -- and then as soon as you're done open the window and leave it open. now, people say well, i'm worried somebody is going to come in through the bedroom window. and so here's what we have. we have these little window locks that you put on the side of the window, so you can only open the window, six or seven inches. leave your windows open. indoor air quality means getting rid of the extra moisture in

your house so mold and mildew doesn't have a chan chance to g. this is a real critical thing. what do you think? >> less than $5. i think that natural ventilation is really important and it also provides a healther environment for you. it is a fresher air and cleaner air. we have a question here in the back. but i'm a big fan of natural ventilation myself. >> a lot of people are concerned, i'm going to get cold. how do you deal with it? >> put on a sweater. >> put on a sweater. that's what i do, too. >> has anyone invented one of these types of things that will operate with the new plastic framed windows? >> a lot of these new so-called plastic windows are -- >> they're vinyl. >> are wood covered by some kind of vinyl. it's a pretty low-grade wood, it is a vinyl that has got a

limited life expectancy. i can screw into the wood, whatever it's made out of. they work with that. electric resistance heat. is a terribly inefficient way to heat a building. basically what you're doing is short circuiting the electricity in your house to create a wire that heats up. and that's what this thing does. very, very inefficient, extremely expensive to operate. the heater cost $18 or something. it's cheap to put it in whereas if you put in a gas furnace it's going to be expensive. this is part of our electrical load problem in san francisco. what we have is a peak load and we have a hard time meeting the demand at the time of peak load.

the demand is between 4:00 and 7:00. energy guys say, it's because people go home and turn on their electric items, including electric resistance heaters. what do you -- >> i think they're not very good. the guy came into the department of environment, he swas explaininwaswasexplaining his h. he says it's gold and drafty and we've got a bump of these heaters around because it's so closed. we talked about opening your curtains, getting natural day light, heat from the day, he had insulation problems also, it was very drafty in his house. so he needed to put down some carpets and fix some of his elaboration. i haven't had him call back

again. >> there is a moderately new product called a direct vent wall furnace. doesn't require a flue or chimney. all you need is a wall that's open to a yard or a court with the right distance from the next property, and you can actually take the fresh air in, heats it up, and well, let's see, it brings the fresh air in, uses that for combustion air, to burn in the fire box, and then it exhausts it through the same opening in the wall. >> let's say you just want to heat the bedroom, not the whole house, what's the more economical? >> what do you think? >> i don't know if i know the true answer to that. >> i can't imagine one of these things is the answer. i think the answer is to first of all go back to when your house was built, and find out what was the intended heat

source. because all houses are required to have been built with heat that meets the minimum standard. and few of them were built with electric heat. so what i often find is, people say there's an old gas furnace but it doesn't work, especially in these old victorians. replacing or repairing them is probably is economical solution. these things, you know, it's creditablelincrementally, over , putting in a new or replacement gas furnace is expensive up front, over the life cycle cost it will be tremendously more efficient. >> what about window covers? >> curtains? curtains are good. >> what is the best type to keep the room warm? >> anything that will block out the breeze. because in san francisco, a lot of the windows are -- single pane and very breezy.

if the breeze is what's bother being you, it's heavy enough to block the breeze. the products that you can look af at that are more natural products that are better for the indoor environmental quality. so i have a quick question. when you said warming the bedroom is it because feet are freezing cold? >> everything, especially feet. >> a little hot water bottle that can you fill up and stick at the bottom of your bed and then your feet aren't freezing cold and it will help warm you up. you aren't using all the energy with your fan and you don't have electricity on your body all night. we'll put that back in the energy category then. >> there seem done recently a plethora of oil-filled heaters. are they any better? >> i think it is still electric

resistance heating under a different name. >> don't they add an feafkt danger iaffect ofdanger? >> they are relative safe. that is just a prettier looking and it doesn't -- one of the issues with this is it's either on or it's off. you're getting a lot of heat or you're not. the oil filled electric resistance heaters sort of coast. this gentleman here. >> i'm now facing designing an addition over a garage, second unit. and i'm looking at radiant floor heating versus these direct-vent wall furnace heating. i wondered if you could give me feedback on life cycle, cost, efficiency, anything like that. >> it's heated water and it actually provides a better source of heat just because it's not blowing on you and it's a preferable source of heat just

in that aspect. i don't know like cycle cost. >> maybe michael can shed light on that. >> there is two efficiencies for gas boilers. if you have if highest efficiency boiler, you can save money. today's zoned control forced air systems use a computer controlled technology that allows one central furnace to heat individual rooms in the house and to make them all comfortable and to do so efficiently. because it senses the heat demand for each room and generates just enough heat in the furnace to heat that one room. so with the computer-controlled zone heating system, you get the best of both worl worlds. you get a forced air system that can you lollize from roo -- locm room to room. >> batteries, more or energy. batteries. what do we say about batteries? >> recycled batteries. >> look at this.

oh, my god! >> this is just from your department? >> this is just from this floor. >> just from this floor. can you see this, oh, heavy. >> here is all of our batteries. hundreds and hundreds. so the city has a policema prakf recycling batteries. >> whole foods, they just started. >> what you want to do in your home if you wish is to have a limb bucket, and peak sure, now these -- little bucket, now make sure, these things leak all kinds of horrible chemicals. make sure it's within a plastic bag or something inside this. take it to the hardware store. >> there is a couple of places around the city that are dropoff places for household hazardous waste. we put the number up on the board. we'll have information about battery drop-off zones as well.

>> why don't you talk about this as an alternative while i go wash my hands. excuse me. >> this is the emergency radio. all these just gadgets. you've probably seen a couple of different types o types of emery radios. if we have a problem, there's probably not going to be electricity. and batteries, it's always up to you to replace your batteries. this is one that winds up and it lasts for a couple of hours so you'll be able to have all the information, the emergency information that you need. can you all see this? and you get these? these are available at hardware store, l. l. bean has them, for $20. this was how much, lawrence? >> less than 30. the sharper image. >> as well. >> two short wave channels.

solar electric, there's lots to say. department of the energy, has detailed informs about solar electric. basically get an overthe counterpermit to put a solar electric system on your home. so we're doing our best to make it happen. i know the mayor -- it's a high point on mayor newsom's agenda for solar electric but it's expensive, right? >> it is expensive but there are rebates that are available. there are state and national rebates, with the new energy act there is new rebates that are available. but we do have a whole section in our department that deals solely with renewable energy. >> who do we call? >> 355-3700. our main number. >> so solar, too.

solar and pretty much anything. >> pretty much everything. >> and there are people there that can talk about the special program that can match up the special program with the consumers to help facilitate that. let's see we've got a microphone here. >> i live in pacifica although i live in san francisco. i put solar panels, 16 peanls a yeapanels ayear ago. with the rebates it cost me $13,000 to install. it was like $80 to $100 a month in electrical bills that i had before. so it's a ten- or 12-or 15-year pay back. so figure it out, it will last, the last 15 years are going to be totally free. >> solar electric water heat, other parts of the country we see solar heatin heating everywe

some here we see it infrequently. it was based on the financial -- the rebate issue, and incentives, federal and state incentives. and they went away, so solar water heating went away for the most part. i've hardly seen any solar water heating since then. >> old hot water heaters are a loss problem because they have stand-by heat loss. right there sitting there oozing heat all day all night. and so the way -- ways you can resolve the heating problem is buying a new one which has int grat insulation, make sure -- integral insulation. five feet of the cold intake and all the hot water pipes coming out of it should be insulated. typical insulation, probably $5

too. most homes are not ibs lated, water heater, few other things, attic. >> this one here is if you're using recycled content is important, this is a blue jeans and treated with borate keeping the bugs out and it is fire-resistant. a cellulose product is recycled newspaper, some people helping with the waste stream actually you know make a closed loop, something like this could be very important to them. >> and speaking of the borate in other products that keep the bugs out -- >> good transition. >> the ground up newspaper they used for insulation is borate in it. they mix some kind of organic

borate product to ceem the bugs from nesting in it. home pest management is a serious problem. in my life, in my home, the ants which i consider my friends are not considered friendly by other people who live in my house. so we have to deal with ants. and the ants are -- there are a couple of ways to deal with ants and other little bugs, right? and the way that i first tried to deal with them is to spry these horrible chemicals around the house which basically meant that i couldn't go home for a day or two until i opened up the windows. and in fact didn't get rid of the ants. my wife found orange guard. this is a whole series of natural products that is basically an extract of orange peel. and this just gets -- those ants are gone, you know? you spray it, let it sit there, wipe it up, whatever it says, they go, that's it. there is a whole bunch, there's one that is based on lemons, and

so on. >> with those kinds of products you want to make sure that you're not introducing big serious chemicals into your home. and look at different design strategies that you're going to use if you are remodeling your home. also introducing chemicals, products that are less toxic. really important. >> so this was about $5. >> just about. [laughter] >> for that bottle actually. that spray stuff, someone was just before the meeting today was talking about, you want to give them the microphone? was talking about water quality issues related to pesticides. >> it was an article on npr this morning actually. they said the largest source of toxic chemicals in the streams these days is ant poison believe it or not. because people go around and they have the outside of their house sprayed, the whole foundation, a lot of people pest control people who are spraying a lot of toxic chemicals and it rains and all that stuff washes into the creek.

actually according to npr this morning, the largest source of toxic chemicals in the streets. >> these are available at almost every market. it get it at calla. we got this at rainbow. you don't have to go to a fancy natural food healthy store. it is pretty much mainstream now. other issues about pest management? other things to say? >> integrated pest management is a form of trying not to use chemicals. mouse traps oar perfect imampl e of not using chemicals. >> the enforcer. >> two disposable traps, effective snap action. another example a guy we work with actually he was able to find somebody who has a goat down on the peninsula, braws braut the goat up to -- brought the goat up to eat all the stuff

in his backyard. all the prickles or whatever, cleared out the whole backyard instead of having to burn it or -- >> thistles. did they eat the goat then? >> no, they gave the goat back. we have an integrated pest management program at the department also. how in a bigger scale to manage the hills. >> over the laguna honda reservoir, remember the recently there was a big thing where they did a rent-a-goat thing. >> it is a new business. >> this is one of our favorite slogans. the roach motel, roaches check in, but they don't check out. and this says, "gacialte "guarao work, no pesticides." i haven't opened it up, to look, but it is a sticky thing where the roaches can't get off. >> the roach motel and the

snap-traps and the sticky traps for the mice are all extremely inhumane. these are creatures that feel things. when they're starving to death or whatever, they feel things. they're available almost any hardware store, small traps, you can donate it to somebody's empty field. not to where somebody's living. >> thank you, that was good. >> mold and mildew. we talked about that already. cleaning materials, i have a canary that lives in my kitchen. when we got the canary about a year ago, we had the lady that comes and cleans once a week was using the stuff and i realize the canary is extremely sensitive to environmental chemicals so we changed the kind of stuff we were using because

of our concern for the the canary. i realized i was pretty sensitive to it too. i didn't realize it until she changed it. this smells better, feels better. there are these kind of cleaning supplies and materials which are -- >> that one that lawrence is holding doesn't have phosphates or chlorine i think it is in it. both of which are hazardous. lef me read it quickly. if every household in the u.s. replaced just one bowle bolt of5 ounce petroleum based liquid, we could save how many barrels of oil? this is the only product that doesn't have the petroleum based feature bit this is vegetable based. >> i suppose all of you know that the phosphates in the dishwashing cleaners tend to make your glasses kind of foggy.

so make sure you avoid using any dishwasher stuff with phosphates in them. and here, by the way is mr. clean, which is antibacterial as well. which is a serious problem because we're increasing the resistance of many of these microorganisms. and in fact some recent study i read said it doesn't really do anything anyway, it's just a market tool. gentleman here has a question. >> for years we've been using simple green. is that as dpreen as i -- greent purports to be? >> i've heard pros and cons of it. i don't know as far as the toxicity scale. three have a whole list of chemicals that they recommend. >> here you go. give them a ring. talk about the simple green.

355-3700. cleaning materials, fragrances, we put it on there because we're both sensitive to environmental fragrances. sometimes if you come into this room, somebody has cleaned the white board with one much these office cleaners, basically i can't be in this room for an hour or two. some people are very sensitive to this stuff. >> basically petroleum. anything ending in e-n-e some toluene, benzene. >> sometimes i have to wash things in my office and i wait until friday afternoon, everybody is going to be out of the office, i'll clean it and hurry out. i probably shouldn't do it that way. >> another odor thing is that oftentimes people when they paint or put in new carmen carpi think some of us have grown up in this world, it is in new

car-new sneaker smell. there is smells you're breathing in which is the petroleum. many different building products that are available that have reduced chemicals or no clems. this is an example of whool carpet, are petroleum based. they're synthetic carpet. so the smell that you smell is not that good. >> but the wool ones, those are -- >> those are good. they're good. >> and can you buy them at most carpet places? >> you can, yeah. there's actually, you bring up a good question about where we can buy things. there's a database that's available to everybody, it's on the web and it's a materials database and we've populated it with san francisco-specific data. it will tell you where you can buy it and if you can't find it in san francisco, it will tell you different areas in the bay area where you can find it.

>> so here it is www.builditgreen.org. or you can call laura. here's her number. >> and there are a couple of fliers in the back that have information mr. build it green, also. -- about build i it green. >> noise is an environmental quality issue. noise, we have this broind hum in our lives that i'm always working hard to reduce. can you hear it and it's developing. >> and i think the one thing with noise with green building, one of the design strategies that we're seeing is that to have more open spaces, there aren't the walls, you're loud to bring the -- allowed to bring the natural day light in. you need to mitigate that with carpet or furniture, be sensitive to the fact that by removing some of the materials in your home you may cause

another problem. >> okay. we're going to move along real fast because we're going to run out of time here. but there's an air quality issue and we're very lucky, we live right here ton coast and we get onshore breezes almost all this time, except this week which we have an off-shore condition for the week. we have fresh air from the pacific ocean. so the best thing can you do for yourself, that i can do for myself is open the windows all the time and get the fresh air. >> i live downtown and surrounded by traffic and over my windows and a lot of that pollution is coming in. so in this case, it's not necessarily good. >> air filters. i don't know how you filter air indoors. >> you can get those hepa filters. >> you'd have to close your windows. >> you'd have to close your windows, yeah. >> that's a problem. you need to actually direct outside air in, probably filter

it in some way. soettes a serieso it's a serz s. >> that's always the answer. >> ventilation in the different materials we've been passing around is the volatile organic compounds, those are related to asthma and allergies in kids. we're seeing decreases in those rates reducing these amounts of chemicals in the home providing flush out constant new air that's coming in. so that's really important and provides for a healthier family home. >> quickly showers and sinks and ploins, all thes appliances. , a low-flow shower head across the street at discount builders. >> this is a cool one.

>> here is the one that i particularly liked, this one was about $5, maybe $7. it has a little shutoff valve, you can shut it off and maintain the mix, you know, while you're soapg up and then just flip the thing down and it turns it down again. this is a really nice low-flow shower, what does it show? flow rate two gallons per minute at 60 psi with a nonremovable flow restrictor. once somebody removes i. >> we've got somebody laughing. i have a feeling he's removed a few of those before. >> can you buy a flow restrictor without having to replace your whole shower head. unscrew your shower head and put a flow restrictor in, about a dollar's worth. or for your faucet, can you get an ear aerator.

this is a screw-on flow restrictor. if that's a particular problem. here is another shower head. what's this one. >?>> short of the same thing. low-flow. >> good. where are we? shower fixtures, appliances? appliances. energy star appliances. sit a federal standard -- >> energy star? it's a federal program through epa. >> so when you buy new appliances, they're readied, they say energy star what does it mean? >> that they've been rated by the energy star program that they're better than a conventional ones that hasn't been rated. >> there is nothing that says have you to buy it but we encourage it. >> old appliances by the way are an enormous source of energy waste. these huge old refrigerators, when you go to an old restaurant or kitchen, enormous energy

waste. >> especially when the sealant goes out around the door. >> the commercial ranges, they're not intended to be sealed. you're intended to heat the whole damn things up to 450 degrees and leave it that way all day long. that's the way their designed. water, we're also going to talk about storm water. storm water is a particular problem because we have a combined sanitary and storm water system where we use the same pipes to take both weighs water and sewage and your roof water or your drainage. and the codes, until about six months ago required that all storm water be directed into the sewer. but we changed the plumbing code that says you can now take your roof water and you can divert it into your yard or your private area and not have to take it to the sewer, as long as you can show us that not going to have that water go on to your neighbor's property in some way and not making a problem. we made a big change in that to

encourage that, we can see over the next couple of years, what i hope to see is people will start to use it and so we'll have models of how to do it. once we get good models, we'll advertise how to do it. we're not telling people yet how to do it. we'll talk a little bit about materials here, and construction materials can be -- this gentleman made a really good point earlier when he said okay, we're going to use compact fluorescents, but you have to dispose of them. there are tradeoffs. pressure treated lumber has been a particular problem, pressure treated lumber used to be an arsenic, primarily an arsenic based treatment and it turned out to be a health hazard especially for little kids. last year in january the pressure treated lumber industry got together and decided they were going to make an environmentally friendlier

pressure treated system, more copper, no arsenic. now we see buildings using a more environmentally friendly pressure treating. unfortunately, it is tremendously corrosive to the fasteners. we've solved that problem, now we've got to figure out how to solve the corrosion problems. there is tradeoffs in all these things. >> absolutely. >> construction materials, i urge caution. i urge caution in using new materials, things like unusual flooring, oh, this is going to save everybody. you know, i've seen so many new products where they come through here and they build a building or a deck out of some new product and ten years later i'm approving the permit to replace it. because it didn't work, there was some side effect they forgot to consider. this stuff is really slippery when it rains. >> that's not the track stuff.

>> there is unanticipated consequences with these materials. if you want to be a lead innovator, try it. but we are cautious about approving new construction materials. just the other side of the coin, right? >> we also try to encourage it because we need to get the data, we need to see the duration of the product to -- demonstration of the product. cork is a sustainable material, rapidly renewing material. this is linoleum, linseed oil. don't use vinyl, vinyl is one of the worst things that can you incorporate into your home. >> why, why vinyl? >> because it is very, very toxic. we were at a conference and the vinyl industry was there and somebody talked about it burning. some guy says when it burns, it

smells very, very bad. you've got three breaths, about two to get out of where you are. he didn't think it was that funny when people said that but that was it. >> this is marmoliu plferks. this is called donkey island. >> richlight, paper product, great for countertop surfaces. and this is another brand called paper stone, another countertop product. again, it's paper. so recycled content. and let's see upholstery, we'll pass around these different types of upholstery. recycled content for countertops, flooring, wals, showers. -d walls, organic co cotton, onf the worst agricultural frowkts

as far as pesticides. >> what about ra rayon? >> recycled glass in concrete, really great for counters. aluminum foil, recycled content aluminum foil. look at products. you've got choices. industry has caingd. it is not for us to go through all of these different things but for you to be aware that industry has changed significantly in the last five years. >> you can buy recycled aluminum foil. the energy costs of making aluminum are extremely high so this is great stuff. let's move just for a second over to the -- instead of like using paper towels, in our house we use washable old ratty towels, they're really kind of gross but we wash them. and you know-d. >> they're really gross? >> it's good. you're not throwing it away. okay. i want to talk about food for a second. just before we get too far. we're talking about locally locy

produced stuff and we actually have some local organic satsumas, people call manneddary oranges. and these were from winters in california. >> local. >> local sustainable stuff, you're supporting the local economy. help yourself, take a couple. take some home. take them to your friends. take a few of these. you can eat them here. there you go. >> as well as many other products is buying local is very helpful because you're not having to ship materials and use up the fossil fuels to get them here. it supports our local economy in california is big with agriculture. that's a big thing. >> we're going to do something really disgusting. >> he is going to do something very disgusting. >> i asked curt to bring me up a trash can from down by the

entrance to the building downstairs. and i'm going to go through and see -- >> not the restroom. >> thank you. what we have here is the compostable. the mixed recycle which includes paper and glass and cans and plastics. >> a bottle has a neck that is smaller than the base. and in addition to that, 2, 4, 5 tubs and cups. like a yogurt container or margarine tubs. >> how about aluminum foil? >> perfectly recyclable in the mixed recyclable. >> isn't this disgusting.

how about this? >> that wouldn't be acceptable. >> how about the paper? and the napkin? >> can go into the organics. >> that is styrofoam, has to go to the garbage at this point. >> and then the -- okay, this is great. so a napkin in here? we can compost the paper too? >> compostable paper. >> how about the plastic bag? >> unitly back in the garbage or safeway. >> we're trying to go to paper bags instead of plastic bags. we try and use paper bags, as far as we can. here is another one. so paper bags, this had food, this is a doughnut in it. it can go in here, if it didn't have a doughnut in it but if it

is food contaminated it can go in here. and the bag itself we're going to reuse but if we were going to get rid of it we'd put it in here. coffee cub, how about the lid? >> the lid would have to go in the trash. the coffee cup is paper and can go into the composting. the paper sleeve can go into the composting as well. >> should that go into the recycling since it hasn't been contaminated? >> it is in the gray area. but if it's food related and it is food related, i would put it in the compost. >> i would put that in the paper, because then it can be made into more paper which is higher and better. the cup goes into the green because it has kind of a little wax lining in there, so that will break down when you compost it but it's not recyclable paper-wise. >> so i think we should also note both of of you are from norcal waste? right? >> right. >> so people know. >> this is marginal.

i'll put it over here. here is some paper. it's got wax on it though. >> that is fine for the compost. >> because there's wax on it, again if you were to make that into new paper and try and write on it you can't write on the wax. that's why it's not recyclable paper. >> how about this is all paper, this is all paper, somebody's receipt. subtendered, $90. wonder what it was. blue, i'll speed it up a little bit. we're catching on a little bit. piece of something. somebody else's coffee cub. sleeve, we'll say for today, we'll put it there. and the fact that we have coffee in here, does that matter -- >> it's going to leak but other than that it's okay. >> it did, it ripped right there. >> have i a question, are the tops of coffee cups, the plastic, ever going to be

recyclable? >> ever's a long time. technically they are recyclable. a big enough pile of anything is acceptable. but at this time, we cannot accept it in san francisco's recycling program. >> here we have building permits. >> they have food on them. food stains. >> those are deferbl definitely contaminated. it couldn't have been good coffee. >> old blueprints, are they recyclable or garbage? >> there is a lot of coffee going on here. >> wonder why they're not finishing it. they're called up for their permit and they lose it. >> blueprint is, the ink is problematic, the texture is

problematic. for traditional recycling programs. that's problematic. >> are blueprints recyclable? technically, no. sleeve in the recycling cup over here. i think we're getting down to the bottom of this thing. somebody's cd walt, $-- wallet, $6:.99 from ross. we check everything in the building department. what about these gross gloves now? >> reuse them. >> oh, come on! >> there we go. okay. >> thank you. >> thank you all for indulging me. so here, and i'll take that and

take it home and put it in my big, green bin, scrub it out. just a few more things before we finish up. just some of hour little things. here we have some milk paint. what the hell -- products paint, furniture floor wall et cetera, the old fashioned milk paint company. this is a green product. no vocs no solvents. here is paper, unbleached paper towels. these cost more than the regular ones. but you know in many cases, until the pressures of the market drive this stuff down, you're juts going to have to accept the fact, just instead of boig buying from your local market, you're going to pay more to live in a healther lifestyle if you choose to do so. >> right now until the price come down. >> elmer's glue, $1.99.

this is good stuff. >> flour and water, not really but essentially. these are materials, upholstery and window coverings. >> this is bulk, this is apple cider vinegar from the rainbow tippy store, and it fell over and it broke its lid. i'm trying not not to spill it too much. this is an example of how you can buy stuff in bulk and you can use the container over and over and you don't have to pay for the inordinate amount of packaging. this is an example. this is purity organic, a local san francisco firm brought to you by pacific organic produce in san francisco. we're trying to buy organic but it's in a plastic bottle. >> again, there's tradeoffs. >> we have organic sweetened condensed milk. in my house i try to buy that milk that has hormones and other

stuff in that thing. organic sweetened condensed. locally made mints. >> they're organic, fair trade, made locally. so this is probably the products winner today. they are zebra mints and quite tasty. >> we're going to open it up and pass it around. she said start over there so we will. we try and please our audience. okay, i know how to open them. i think i've got it. i figured it out. okay, here. i'm going to take them over here. here, laura, just for being such a good guest today. >> delicious. >> there you go. oh, good. she's giving me the recycling. this is food contaminated waste. it goes in the green -- those things are so good. green bin.

okay, so. >> sorry, we've got our mouth full. >> here is calendula soap. no petroleum products. new year's resolutions from the department of environment nor coming new year's, b buy producs with little or no packaging, buy usable products such as nondisposable cameras, utensils and so on. fill your recycling containers. bring your own mug when you're buying coffee so you don't have to throw all those things away. and reduce your amount of junk mail by calling somebody and say, stop sending me junk mail. so here are your new year's resolutions. thank you all. [applause]