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It's Easy Being Green

May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jon Chappell

MAKE YOUR PERSONAL STUDIO ECO-FRIENDLY AND COST-EFFICIENT, TOO

Light Me Up

In your studio, as in any work environment, you need adequate lighting. Many people still prefer the quality of incandescent bulbs to the lower-energy and longer-lasting CFL types. But if you must use incandescent bulbs, you can economize by turning them off when you aren't using them and by employing dimmers.

Modern microprocessor-based dimmers, such as the Lutron Maestro series, are far better than the older rheostat models. Today's dimmers vary brightness by turning the lights on and off up to 120 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to detect. This method uses less energy than the rheostat models, but it still isn't 100 percent efficient. In other words, if you run a 60W bulb at half strength, you aren't using just 30W; you're using more. But using dimmers is still a good way to save energy, and dimmers have the ability to vary the mood in a room, which is often important for establishing an environment conducive to creativity. So if you have to use incandescent bulbs, try to keep them under dimmer control and consider letting CFLs do their part in illuminating restrooms, closets, hallways, and outdoor areas.

Improving your daily energy-using impulses and employing these gadgets will help you cut down your energy costs in significant, if incremental, ways. But you never really escape the clutches of the utility company, which sells you the juice from the wall, unless you go off of Big Power's grid altogether. That isn't a practical route for many people, but it's doable for some. The precedent is there: for instance, last fall Thomas Dolby disclosed to EM his plans to record an entire album completely off the grid, using solar and wind power.

Soak Up the Sun

Does solar power make sense for your home studio? It may, depending on your location. Paul Scott, an adviser and consultant on solar energy, is a cofounder of Plug In America and was featured in the documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car? He explains some of the conditions you have to meet: “You've got to have the sunlight falling on your property,” he stresses. “Most people put the panels on the roof, but you could also have a ground-mount system, if you have property in the country [see Fig. 3]. The amount of sunlight might vary, too, even if you have direct exposure. For example, in Oregon you have really long, dry summer days with a lot of light, but the winter is terrible. Southern California is great because days are not that much shorter in the winter, and we have sunlight year-round. So each area will generate more or less energy depending on those factors.”

Scott also cautions that it doesn't make sense to do a small system (say, for just the studio), especially if the studio is part of the house or detached but on the same meter. “A company in the business of installing solar panels won't do a system that small,” said Scott, after I told him the dimensions of some typical home studios. “The fixed costs — the expenses that are the same whether it's a big system or a small system — work out better for a big system, because you can divide those costs into smaller parts, which results in less money per kilowatt. Practically speaking, you need to go with at least a 2 kW system,” he says. Let's look at the math to see how you would calculate your solar-energy needs, assuming that your roof or property has lots of unobstructed exposure to sunlight.

“A single kilowatt of solar power will generate approximately 150 kWh of energy in a given month,” says Scott. “A typical house uses roughly 1,000 kWh a month. So take that 1,000 and divide it by 150, which will tell you how big of a system you need — about a 6.5 kW system, in this case, to supply the entire house. If you didn't have room for a 6.5, then you'd bid for a 4 or a 3 or a 2.5 or whatever you could fit up there. And that would generate a portion, which would at least zero out the studio. And in round terms, that's how it's done. But if you don't have the sun and the orientation, then you're a nonstarter.”

So solar power may not be for everybody (like apartment dwellers and those in cloudy, northern climes), but you can still do your part to support solar power, even if you live in a middle-floor apartment in downtown Manhattan. One way is to buy green energy from your utility company. Even if the actual power you get is from a coal plant (as it is in much of the East), by paying a little extra, you can buy power from solar and wind farms, ensuring that at least some of that makes it to the grid. So while you may not be using the sun to run your DAW, by purchasing green energy from your utility company, you make sure that it meets some of the total demand through clean, renewable sources.

Ground-Up Green

All of the approaches I've explored so far have been for modifying an existing studio. But not only has Dallas-based studio designer Bob Suffolk of Suffolk Studio Design made a career of studio design, but he and partner Michelle Quazi also are early adopters of eco-friendly materials specifically designed to make recording studios. Suffolk recently designed and — with the help of Quazi and their personal staff — built an award-winning space called Vole Music Studios, which was created with the environment in mind from its inception.

“Most of the wood we used for framing the interior was recycled,” explains Suffolk. “We used Fibrex mineral wall, a rock-based fiber, between the wood for insulation [see Fig. 4]. We stay away from anything fiberglass, like R-11 or R-13. We then put Sheetrock over that, and then a layer of Auralex SheetBlock Plus, a dense vinyl-based material which is ⅛-inch thick and shielded, then another layer of Sheetrock. This allows us to keep the walls thinner than just building layers of Sheetrock and paper and fiberglass.

“The Auralex Elite wall system is then applied, [composed] of 1-inch S-Core, a recycled condensed cotton material, and finished with Interfaced fabric, a recycled material. It's all about knowing the transmission points and isolation points and sealing. The custom-made acoustic ceiling clouds were made from recycled materials as well [see Fig. 5].” Suffolk recommended bamboo for the floors because it's one of the world's fastest-growing woods and is therefore sustainable. And that was four years ago, when bamboo was just becoming popular (see Fig. 6).

The attention to green processes didn't stop at the walls and the floor. “The new studio furniture and cabinetry that we make are from pressed wheat and sunflower seeds, with no formaldehyde,” says Suffolk. “The material is more expensive than something like particleboard or MDF [medium-density fiberboard], but that contains formaldehyde and toxic glues. We strive to use all of our materials from Environ Biocomposites to make our studio furniture and consoles. It's an incredibly good material to work with — more expensive than plywood, yes, but we're using wheat straw and sunflower hulls, which will all go into a compost and break down organically. And it's beautiful looking when finished with a water-based varnish.”

Suffolk offers this advice regarding a ground-up build of a home studio: “When building a home studio, there's a whole bunch of different materials you have to consider. And it is a little bit more expensive than going the traditional route, but in the long run it's worth it.” He also says that it isn't just the selection of materials, but how you work with them. “We have a rule when we work — whether it's with our staff or with a freelance crew — and that is that anything over a foot does not get thrown away. We'll use it again. We always save all our building materials right to the very end, so that if we need additional materials, we're not buying a small piece from the company, which would require additional shipping.”

Go Green and Save

While some eco-friendly materials and energy plans may cost more, it is money well spent. And you can offset those costs by reducing your consumption, which is the most immediate threat to the planet. As Paul Scott says, “Make a conscious effort, and you will get into habits that will save you money just by thinking about it. And it's stuff that won't affect your lifestyle at all. It's a matter of flipping a switch.” This relationship of economy and ecology equates to a simple and elegant axiom: if you're saving money, you're helping the environment. It's a win-win situation.

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Jon Chappell is the author of The Recording Guitarist — A Guide for Home and Studio (Hal Leonard, 1999) and Build Your Own PC Recording Studio (McGraw-Hill, 2003).

Get More Info

The following are valuable online resources (including links to the manufacturers and organizations mentioned in this article) for helping you become more aware of environmental issues and green products.

Energy and the Environment
energy.gov

epa.gov

pluginamerica.org

solarcity.com

treehugger.com

trinifar.wordpress.com

Green Gear for the Home Studio
auralex.com

environbiocomposites.com

lutron.com

p3international.com

smartstrip.net

suffolkstudiodesign.com

Watts Up

Saving wasted energy in your home studio is perhaps the best way to reduce your consumption. Even if you save only 3W an hour, which you can easily do by employing a smart power strip, it can make a difference. Consider this sobering bit of math, inspired from a discussion on Treehugger.com, which shows that such a savings is not an insignificant amount when scaled up to the level of the current U.S. population.

Given:

3W of saved energy per hour.

105,480,101 U.S. households (according to the 2000 U.S. census).

Taking into account the above conditions, the saved-energy math works out as follows:

3 watts × 24 hours = 72 Wh or 0.072 kWh per day;

0.072 kWh × 365 days per year = 26.28 kWh per year, per strip;

26.28 kWh × 100,000,000 homes = 2,628,000,000 kWh saved by the United States per year;

2,628,000,000 × $0.104 per kWh (national average 2006*) = $273,312,000.

That's $273,312,000 worth of energy saved.

So if every household in the country saved 3W an hour, it would amount to not only a monetary savings to consumers, but also a reduction in how much energy the utility companies have to produce to meet demand. And less energy production means less impact on the environment.

Going green means thinking globally and in scalable terms. It means factoring everything you do in yearly terms and by the U.S. population or its total number of households (and the math is fairly easy here: 100 million). Then you take measures, recalculate, and consider the difference you made by changing your habits. Doing the math allows you to see what the impact would be if everyone followed your example.

*Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (eia.doe.gov).