Home Green Homes

In this conversation, Hoa shares her journey of finding and living in a cohousing community, Corvidae Co-op, highlighting the importance of community, sustainability, and the unique living experience it offers. The discussion delves into the motivations behind choosing cohousing, the features of the community, and the dynamics of living closely with neighbors — from shared kitchens and community dinners to the resale process and the emotional work that healthy community living requires.

Takeaways

Most home tours happen on move-in day, when everything's shiny and nobody's tested anything yet. This one is different — Bill Spohn and his wife built a net-zero, airtight, modular "Pretty Good House" outside Pittsburgh, and they've lived in it for six years.

So what actually happened? A factory installation mistake led to a rotted subfloor and — yes — mushrooms growing under the shower. Two windows still won't seal in winter (there's blue painter's tape involved). The AC failed once from a bad install, not a bad heat pump. And yet Bill says he's more pleased with the house now th...

David Gottfried — often called the godfather of the green building movement — co-founded the U.S. Green Building Council in 1993 and the World Green Building Council in 1998. He's the author of four books, including his newest, Regen360, and he joins the show to talk about something more personal than LEED scorecards: what it actually took to green his own homes, and what he wishes more buyers, sellers, and flippers understood.

We talk about the 1930s Craftsman kit home in Berkeley he renovated into one of the highest-scoring LEED Platinum homes in the world — the rainwater-fed toilet that ran dry mi...

Sustainability alone won't protect your home from Mother Nature. In this episode, Izumi Tanaka talks with Albert Slap — environmental attorney turned founder of RiskFootprint.com — about why resilience and sustainability are two sides of the same coin. Albert breaks down why FEMA flood maps miss huge amounts of real flood risk (120,000 homes flooded outside the FEMA zone during Hurricane Harvey), why he pays $5,000/year just for hurricane wind coverage on his own home, and how a $5,000 roof-to-wall tie-down saved him from a $30,000 re-roof — and actually lowered his risk. We also get into wildfire vegetation management, the 34+ natural hazards RiskFootprint evalua...

What does it actually look like to flip a house the green way — and make the numbers work?

In this episode, Izumi sits down with Mary Love, a North Carolina-based green realtor, building scientist, and project manager who has been doing eco-conscious real estate investment long before "green homes" was a mainstream term. Mary shares hard-won lessons from decades of rehabbing and renting energy-efficient properties — from wrangling reluctant HVAC contractors to educating appraisers on the value of sustainable upgrades.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Are homes really built to last… or just built to sell?

In this eye-opening episode, Izumi sits down with documentary filmmaker George Siegal, creator of Built to Last: Buyer Beware, to uncover the uncomfortable truth about how most homes are actually built—and why so many fail when disaster strikes.

From hurricanes in Florida to wildfires in California, George shares heartbreaking stories of homeowners who lost everything—and the common patterns behind those losses. The biggest takeaway? Most homes are built to the minimum code, not for long-term resilience.

If you...

In this episode of Home Green Homes, Izumi Tanaka talks with Nick Grimm — a father, homeowner, and sustainability professional who is gradually transforming his 1953 Los Angeles home into a healthier and more energy-efficient space.

Nick didn’t begin with a master sustainability plan. Like many homeowners, his journey started with basic maintenance: replacing appliances when they broke and making upgrades when necessary. But as he learned more about sustainability, each decision became an opportunity to choose better options.

So far, Nick and his family have:

If you're a homeowner wondering whether it’s time to replace gas appliances with electric alternatives — this episode is for you.

In Episode 102 of Home Green Homes, Izumi chats with Akanksha Mathur, General Manager for Southern California at Elephant Energy, to discuss what it really takes to electrify your home.

From heat pumps and induction cooking to rebates, incentives, and indoor air quality — we break down the electrification process step-by-step.

Elephant Energy is a Certified B-Corp focused on making the switch from gas to electric simple, seamless, and cl...

What does it really take to build homes that are beautiful, efficient, resilient, and responsible?

In this special 100th episode of Home Green Homes, Izumi Tanaka welcomes Steve Glenn, founder and CEO of Plant Prefab, for an in-depth conversation that weaves together architecture, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and climate action.

Steve traces his path from an early love of architecture to founding LivingHomes and later Plant Prefab—companies created to challenge the waste, inefficiency, and environmental impact of conventional construction. He explains what truly sets Plant Prefab apart: customized architectural design, a purpose-built factory capable of both pa...

“So when I think about a future that is solving climate, I think about raising our quality of life. I think about more inclusive cities with wonderful parks, and it's a fantastic mass transportation that's really considered a luxury good because whether you're the wealthiest person in that city or the poorest, you all want to be on the same subway or the same bus because it's simply the best way to get around and everyone enjoys these types of amenities.There are examples of that all over the world.  We try and bring those to light. And that is...

“We’re always inspired by nature and using nature as a starting point. So we can use the most advanced technology whether it’s robotics or parametric design using algorithms, AI.  Regardless of the technologies our goal is to create something that’s beautiful and it’s just works as far as the simplicity.  And there’s kind of a synergy in the work we do.  So we’re hoping to use this advanced technology beautiful forms in the nature and having everything work together really well.”  - Joseph Sarfian

Joseph Sarafian and Ron Culver, are the founding partners of...

“I think there's a whole new awareness right now after these fires in LA, at least for people who live in California of like, just actually how toxic our whole houses are.  So, you know, the answer for some might be, “oh, I was going to buy a new couch and I'm going to buy a couch that's cotton instead of like plastic,” you know, just smaller things.  And, yeah, the more people that could be building a whole house out of natural materials right now, that's amazing.”  - Sasha Rabin

Sasha Rabin has a long history with natural...

“The secret is cost shifting.  That’s the secret. So we shift the cost from expensive mechanical systems into the quality of the building shell, of the building envelope.  We have what we call a super-insulated building envelope.  We have triple-glazed windows. We have insulated frames.  They get installed in a certain fashion.  And we basically take… we beef up the building envelope.  it’s super-insulated that means insulation is cheap.  Insulation is the cheapest building material on the planet.  It’s much less expensive than batts.  That’s really the issue.” - Joaquin Kar

Joaquin Karcher is a founder/owner/prin...

Healthy home supports your health, in my opinion, from the air we’re breathing, the materials around you, it's designed to promote your health and it prioritizes air quality, has items that are made from non-toxic materials, and it actively reduces toxins, you can actively reduce toxins when you have practices that support a healthy home. So all that is also going to be good for the environment typically. - Karen Bloom

Karen started her career as a consumer protection attorney, fighting against companies that failed to warn consumers about the dangers of chemicals in their products. Sh...

"The fact of the matter is your heating  your home and cooling your home and heating your water are the two biggest loads to your electric bill. They cost the most in in your home.  So this is an opportunity to yes decarbonize and do right for the environment and our grid but also for energy usage.  And the products are there.  There's more and more coming for sure. " - Anita Singha

The much anticipated rebate part of the Inflation Reduction Act, HEEHRA, Home Energy Efficiency Rebate program launched in California in November, 2024.  Anita Singha, the Senior Market...

We are focused on incentives for home upgrade projects.  We’re focused right now on residential space.  If anyone is listening or you might have applied for a rebate program in the past, like an appliance rebate program through a government agency or utility, it oftentimes can be quite challenging.  So we provide an end to end solution to make it very easy for folks to pre-qualify projects for all available incentives as well as then to claim the funds. And you can think of us as kind of a TurboTax for electrification rebates.  - Aimee Bailey, Rock Rabbit

...

If you’re thinking about starting an Eco-Village, you wanna know, essentially you want to know what are the issues with soil, with air, with water, in your bio-region, in the ecological region that you live in; what are the relationships that you have with your elected officials that have the power over the area where you want to make this happen; who are your neighbors, and what kind of relationships you have with those neighbors whether they’re rural, farm neighbors, or whether they’re urban neighbors on your block. - Lois Arkin

Lois Arkin shares...

“And what we did was, ‘let’s combine the performance of heat pump, off the shelf heat pump, heat pump water heater, with thermal storage with really really smart controls, and you can reap the benefit of that heat pump by shifting the load to the middle of the day and giving you a heat and hot water whenever you need it.”  - Jane Melia

Jane Melia, Co-founder and CEO of Harvest, the smart thermal battery system explains the genesis of Harvest.  She discusses the limitations of traditional heat pump systems and how Harvest combines a heat pump with...

“During Covid I started to think more about the products I was using and plastics.  I’d always used refilled bottles for water and I’d reuse plastic bags at the grocery store.  Then I heard the statistics that 2.5 billion tons of trash are in the landfill just from hand and body lotion alone and hand and body wash… “ - Libby Bourne   

Libby Bourne is the store manager for a sustainable store Sun Moon Rain in Santa Monica, offering refillable cleaning and personal care products. The store aims to eliminate single-use plastic and toxins through education.

Libby outline...

"We’re not sacrificing anything aesthetic.  We’re not sacrificing anything ergonomic by being mindful.  We’re just pausing and thinking about it and making a good decision instead of rushing through to check everything off the list.  It’s not going to be apparent in the final end result that you did everything in a very sustainable mindful way.  It looks the same.  It functions the same.  It’s just going to last, and it didn’t hurt anyone in the process.  And if it’s ripped out, it’s not going to hurt the earth for getting ripped out." - Ali Davi...

“You as a consumer, I as a consumer have enormous power to make the transformation that we want to see.  But one of the transformations as a consumer is selecting the right products because the competitor who is not doing the right packaging or the right product is going to see that they’re losing clients to the competitors that are doing more sustainable product, produce and materials, so he’s gonna change. He’s only going to change because us as consumers are driving the change by purchasing the right or the best materials available for us.”  - Denise Braun...

"For me, mantra in my sort of day-to-day climate work is go for the gigatons. And while as a homeowner, a single homeowner, you can't do that, you can look at your biggest spend. So what are the most gigantic energy sinks in your home? Two-thirds of home energy use is from heating and hot water." - Trent Wolbe

Trent Wolbe is currently a VP of marketing for a start-up called, Harvest, but I invited him to be my guest because of his fascinating history and passionate dedication to help this environmental crisis we...

"For some folks, they become really motivated by the climate crisis. They start to understand that in their family, maybe their single largest source of climate pollution, and it's a big one, is sitting in their closet just heating their water and heating their house, right? So that's some folks are motivated by that, and they want to start finding out what they can do. Other folks maybe don't care about climate at all, but they've got high utility bills, and they want to understand how electrifying their home can actually reduce their utility bills.  This is a common m...

“…what can we do in terms of water and energy? Something that's super decentralized that doesn't make people compromise. And we started to look at where water is used most within the residential home and 50% of that water use stems from the bathroom. It's quite alarming when you start looking at how much we actually use in terms of water.” - Alisha McFetridge

A typical 10-minute shower uses 25 gallons, whereas Rainstick Shower uses under 5 gallons, saving both water and the energy required to heat excess water. Its point-of-use cleaning further reduces costs and environmental impacts. Alisha McFetridge, Co-fou...

“I feel that we have this moral imperative from a business standpoint to preserve our markets. And so, as Realtors, we are advisors.  So we explain to our developers, we explain to our buyers, we explain to our sellers how to transact in a way that is most profitable for them.

how the Code of Ethics really demands that we understand the products we sell and that we do a better job of representing these products.”  - Wayne Beals

Wayne Beals is a managing broker at Beals Group of Exit Strategies and a fellow Green Realto...

"The new thinking is around circularity. The idea of circularity is the circulation of materials at their highest value for the longest period of time.  And when you design with circular systems in mind, you are thinking about the end at the beginning, meaning what's going to happen to this product that we're making? What's going to happen to this house that we're designing at the end of life? Can any of these things be reused again? Can they be made into something else? Can you take and use... send the furniture back to the manufacturer and they'll repair i...

"I think that we will continue to see high performance sustainability at the forefront of innovation. I think it's going to be a slow transition depending on where you are in the world and where you are in the U.S.  So I think we're going to see different rates of adoption. I think all of it is going to become faster as we realize the impacts of climate change. And the same holds true with the other element you mentioned, which is resiliency.  So as the climate continues to warm, storms are going to be more severe. Floods ar...

“Building science for these principles and tools to measure and test homes and treat them as an interconnected thing so that all the systems work together and you can achieve better results by looking at the house as a system.” - Dan Thomsen

Dan Thompson, the owner and founder of Building Doctors, shares his journey from flipping homes to becoming an energy auditor and contractor. He was inspired to enter the green industry after attending a GoGreen Expo and hearing a talk by an environmentalist, leading him to start his own company called Building Doct...

There’s been plenty of studies over the years ranging anywhere from half of a percent to 15 percent in value for certifications.  And part of it has to do with the areas, so obviously when you get into areas like parts of Texas and California, Florida, Virginia, we saw value increases partiallybecause I think you have more educated and interested population who cares, and so they bring that value. -Brett Little

Brett is the education manager for this non-profit organization, GreenHome Institute, which provides rich sources of educational information and services to empower people to...

My model is if you look at the cost of owning a house holistically, is a high performance home better? In most cases I can tell you with all confidence it is.  But a lot of people look at first cost, and they say, “wait a minute, this house costs 10,000 bucks more than house B over here, which is code built.”  And they’re missing the big picture.  My point is that I don’t wanna be the right person in the room, but I wanna be the one who has the most information so people can make the right decis...

"Is my home going to last longer? Is home gonna be more beneficial for me in some ways?  Is it gonna be easier to maintain? Am I gonna have lower energy bills and water bils?  Is it just gonna be cooler?  Is it gonna be like really interesting and fun to have some that also happens to be environmentally friendly?  Knowing that information as soon as possible in your home search is more beneficial for you than too far down the line when you doing a home inspection or energy audit." - Kari Klaus

Kari Klaus, the foun...

So I make electricity from the sun. With that electricity, I make water out of air.  With that water, it goes to the pressure tank.  That pressure tank would then take it to the water heater. The water heater is a heat pump water heater, which we use the electricity from the sun to heat the water heater. The bi-product of water heater is the air conditioning.  That’s the only air conditioning we would use, which we pipe the air conditioning out of the water heater into the house.  Then you take a shower, and that shower water goes o...

In the beginning, just because a lot of people, like I said before, a lot of people, they don't know, or they have not conscious of what's going on in the world, and how they can save money and electricity, gas, or the more healthy.

A lot of people aren’t sure. So I was a little hesitant in the beginning.  I said, how we're going to market this property and to get the price that we want. Because of course, to do those changes, we add more and more budgets, more money for budgets. Now we hav...

“I think there’s definitely certain Feng Shui principles and concepts that can and should be used through our architecture. At the same time, it can also be very logical because Feng Shui is based on the natural world, the interactions with the natural world, the operation of the natural world and the flow of energies.”

El Larson is a wellness real estate agent and Wellness Design Consultant.  She combines a wide range of expertise in what makes a home healthy and sustainable incorporating principles such as Feng Shui, biophilic design, land resilience and material health.  El discusse...

"Literally if you gave me two words to describe you what I’m doing, I would say “eco-flipping.”  That is actually what I’d say to you.  But there’s a huge difference in what it means because third party certification means adherence to certain standards and have to be not only done but defend it and understood.  So the buyer of this home is going to know exactly what is behind all of their walls, what the sources of their materials are, and the processes that went into all of it."

In this part, Steve Matloff discu...

"I want to inspire others who are doing this work but based on a different set of priorities, who understand that this priority of sustainability, of efficiencies of resources and processes, of reduction of wastes of all sorts including the carbon is valued. And you should be incorporating those priorities into your project."

Steve Matloff is a “sustainable real estate RE-developer,” CEO and founder of Tradicient, which is a business name that combines the two words, “tradition” and “efficient.”   Steve believes that the majority of our built environment was designed and developed for a different wor...

"From the environmental aspect, composing has so many benefits. When you compost your food instead of throw way in the landfill, it gets proper aeration and it has oxygen to properly decompose so it doesn't release harmful greenhouse gasses like methane into the environment. So it's helping kind of the global warming movement on one aspect. And then from another lens, I'm taking AP environmental science right now and my teacher was talking about how one of the main reasons that they're requiring compost in California is because they're running out of landfill space.  And so landfill space is o...

"You know, I thought, I know about your podcast and I'm really thinking about what I can contribute in. It's really quite numerous. And so as I said, very little hereditary and so most of it is  environmental. So one thing I want to say, it's tangential to your question, but I don't want it to be lost.  It is family history and non-hereditary  because we also share environments, share homes, maybe sometimes workplaces, and so it's not always that there's a gene."

-Melanie Palomares

I have had episodes to talk about wha...

“Part of that is to be able to honestly and clearly articulate the difference between cost, especially the upfront cost and long term value, obviously the fiscal value of something that works as your monthly output is less for that.  And that money can go towards small add to your mortgage.  But there’s also these amazing soft cost value that people don’t know.  You can’t quite grasp until you’re in. The air quality is amazing. They’re very quiet homes.  You don’t have any drafts on the big windows, and you have great light and things like th...

"I’m a big believer that if a product or space is human friendly, then by definition, it’s environmentally friendly.  I don’t think the same is true in the opposite direction.  There are plenty of products that are eco-friendly but still very very dangerous for humans.  There’s also plenty of examples of things that are 100% natural that are dangerous for humans." - Andy Pace

When I first learned about what we call, “green homes,” the aspect I was most interested in was the “health” factor of what a green home is to provide.  As I learned more about...