Office with a View

While an office with a view comes with a hefty premium in Seattle these days, I have found some great spots to setup shop at local parks and along strips of waterfront parking where I am not robbing others of two parking spaces or paying an hourly rate. As a consultant with a home office, I often find that I will have hours of downtime between meetings. This typically results in trying to find a quiet corner in a coffee shop and buying enough snacks and drinks to not feel like I am loitering all afternoon.

Today was one such day and while the weather called for a 90% chance of rain, I decided to turn my 6 hours of downtime today into a productive day and adventure to Seattle's Magnuson Park. Plus, I avoided putting an extra 30 miles on my vehicle and saved at least an hour of commute time by not heading back to my office in between meetings. Productive, lower carbon, happy camper kind of a day!

What Makes This Project "Green"?

With Earth Day just a month away, and the International Living Future Institute's 2015 "unConference"  (where I happen to be presenting) just a week away, it seems prudent to talk about what really makes this project green.

Green has become synonymous with marketing and I am definitely a pawn in that game. While I
am comfortable admitting that, my fear is that people will think that the use of the term was just that...a marketing concept. Quite the contrary, and I am going to spend the next 5 weeks, right through Earth Month, sharing the thinking behind this project with the hopes of inspiring and motivating all of you to consider some new or enhanced lifestyle choices...because in the end how green we are really comes down to the choices we make in life.

The ultimate goal of this project is to provide my family and friends with a higher quality of life while producing the smallest environmental impact possible (vs. the status quo) and doing this in an economically feasible way for a family of four on a relatively tight budget. As a professional who makes a living as a self proclaimed Sustainability Coach in one of the greener cities in the country, Seattle, I claim to know a thing or two about what makes something truly sustainable. I am also an avid "polar fleecer" who has survived some crazy adventures in wild places and more recently weathered the great recession by innovating personally and professionally and came back stronger and more prepared for the future, so I also claim to know a thing or two about resilience. 

While I gained tons of motivation for this project from the Tiny House and Teardrop Trailer movement, it was truly the inspiration of the  International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and the Bullitt Foundation project to design and build the greenest office building in the world based on the Living Building Challenge (LBC) standards. The Bullitt Center is not only uber green, but incorporates cutting edge technology, has bountiful natural light (even in grey Seattle) and is a gorgeous piece of architecture. To frame my thinking on the Green Trailer Project, I am going to walk you through my thinking in the context of the LBC Petals - Place, Water, Energy, Health & Happiness, Materials, Equity, Beauty and I hope you will join me by sharing and tagging me on facebook, twitter (@CoreyWeathers) or Pinterest or just leave a comment with your thoughts in return!

Spring Arrived Early in the NW!

Wow! 68 degrees and sunny the first week in March? That was the reality this weekend and we just had to get out of town for the weekend!

I put the girls to work early Saturday morning packing their bags and decking out the trailer with its new address to share our story with all of the admirers we see along the way. Shoot me a comment if you saw us on the road this weekend heading from Redmond to Vantage, WA!

The road in is a bit rocky so we took it slow and our little cabin on wheels hung on just fine, we actually faired much better than the Prius who tried to camp nearby!

We settled into a sweet and cozy campsite near the Feathers climbing area  around lots of other climbers who made good company and stopped by frequently to admire our home away from home.

Two of our best friends joined us for the weekend, one is a green building guru and we came up with a new idea for the solar system. Rather than mount the panels on hinges on the roof, we are going to build a stand that attaches to an upright on the trailer frame and pivots to track the sun. As you can see above I positioned one of the panels at an angle to track the sun and we were able to improve the efficiency of the panels by 30-50%...I was even pulling about 80 (out of 200 potential watts) at 9:00 in the morning after the sun first came over the ridge.

Best part of the weekend was sharing all of our comforts with friends. More than once our friends remarked how amazing it was to have a kitchen, sink, toilet, power and a warm place for breakfast early on a frost covered morning in the desert!