Home Green Homes
by Izumi Tanaka
This channel explores affordable, resilient, and sustainable homes through conversations with green building professionals, architects, designers, homeowners, developers, and real estate professionals. Topics include green building, energy-efficient homes, electrification, climate-resilient housing, and future-ready real estate. The podcast is for homeowners, buyers, and realtors interested in sustainable real estate, as well as builders and designers working at the intersection of affordability, resilience, and climate-conscious living. Episodes highlight real-world projects, practical strategies, and lived experiences that make sustainable and eco-friendly homes more accessible and achievable. Whether you’re a homeowner planning a renovation, a green real estate professional, or simply curious about sustainable housing and regenerative design, this channel offers grounded conversations about how we build, buy, and live in homes that are
Episodes
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108. "Is This a Commune?" - A Life Inside a Sustainable Co-Housing Community with Hoa Pantastico
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...
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107. Mushrooms in Net-Zero Home with Bill Spohn
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...
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106. Wealth=Health On Planet Earth - David Gottfried on Building Homes That Matter
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...
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105. Beyond the FEMA Map with Albert Slap
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...
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104. Eco-Flip Playbook: Real Talk with Mary Love
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…
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103. Built to Last. Or Fail? with George Siegel
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...
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102. A Father's Journey for Green Home with Nick Grimm
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...
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101. Electrifying Made Easy with Elephant Energy: Akanksha Mathur
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...
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100. Prefab for a Changing Climate: A Conversation with Plant Prefab Founder Steve Glenn
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,...
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3.37 Creating Super Cool Future with Josh Dorfman
“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…
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3.36 Nature Inspired Robotic Design
“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...
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3.35 Why Earthen Buildings with Sasha Rabin
“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...
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3.34 Resilient and Affordable Zero Energy Homes with Joaquin Karcher
“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...
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3.33 Creating Toxin Free Homes with Karen Bloom
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...
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3.32 Navigating the Electrification Rebates with Anita Singha
"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....
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3.31 Let's Go Electric with Incentives with Aimee Bailey
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....
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3.30 Living in Harmony at Eco-Village with Lois Arkin
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…
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3.29 Getting Comfy with the World's Smartest Heater with Jane Melia
“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...
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3.28 Reducing Plastic Waste One Product At A Time with Libby Bourne
“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…
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3.27 Live Natural with Ali Davin
"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...
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3.26 How To Reduce Waste in Daily Life with Denise Braun
“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...
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3.25 How I Built My Sustainable ADU with Trent Wolbe
"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."…
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3.24 How To Quit Carbon with Cooper Marcus
"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...
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Love to Shower with RainStick with Alisha McFetridge
“…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...
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3.22 Selling Sustainable Homes with Wayne Beals
“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…
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3.21 Think Circular: Practical Tips to Design Sustainably with Kathryn Soter
"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…
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3.20 Back to Basics: Sustainable Construction Innovation with Todd Usher
"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...
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3.19 Doctoring Our Homes with Dan Thomsen
“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…
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3.18 Home Certifications with Brett Little
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...
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3.17 Reward for Purchasing Green Homes with Kerry Langley
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...
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3.16 Market Place for Green Homes with Kari Klaus
"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...
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3.15 Regenerative Retrofit with Ryan McEvoy
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...
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3.14 Eco-Flip Debrief with Jenny Acosta
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...
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3.13 Ancient Traditions in Wellness Real Estate with El Larson
“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…
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3.12 Creating a Field of "Eco-Flip" with Steve Matloff - Part 2
"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…
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3.11 Creating a Field of Eco-Flips with Steve Matloff - Part 1
"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...
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3.10 Let's Compost with Cordelia O'Rouke and Glenn Arnade, Grades of Green
"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…
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3.9 Preventing Cancer at Home with Melanie Palomares
"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...
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3.8 Changing the Perception of Green Homes with Alter Eco
“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...
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3.7 Human Health vs Environmental Health with Andy Pace
"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…
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3.6 Go Solar with Confidence with Carol Cole-Lewis
“So it is one of the most effective things you can do as a homeowner to make a difference to the world with respect to climate is by going solar. So please do not delay because our planet can, well, our planet will be fine, we'll just be dead. We need to make a difference if we want to make this...
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3.5 Quiet House for Hypersensitive People with Mike Bender
“I think especially when you get to the point of EHS, that everybody takes responsibility for their own energy, and that’s part of the healing. Just as important it is to put that metal shielding around those wires as it is to be very mindful of how we’re using our energy, and how we’re treating...
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3.4 Inflation Reduction Act with Cynthia Adams
“A couple of things to know about tax credit. So there’s efficiency tax credit and renewable tax credit. Efficiency tax credits are the ones that were expanded this year. It used to be set at $500 whereas now you can take up to $3,200 in the tax year in which you make the installations. On the...
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3.3 Constructing Green with Karen Benner
“If I’m speaking to a builder, your home owner, your client is going to be more comfortable, they’re going to be happier; they’re going to be healthier; and they’re going to love living in this home compared to any other home that is less than, and that is something that I think isn’t top of mind...
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3.2 Waste Free Lifestyle with Amanda Cavallo
"I went down the rabbit hall of, “O.K. how can every choice I make as a consumer be made with an idea of thinking about where does this come from, what are actually the ingredients, and materials that are being used; and what happens at the end of life of this product?” Basically, my mission…
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3.1 Lowtility with Don Worthington
“When you purchase a home, it’s more than just principal and interest. You’re never going to own a home and not utilities, not have power payment, not have gas payment, and not have water payment. So we said, O.K., let’s talk about PITI plus utilities and then what’s that total payment, then how...
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2.29 Sustainable Site with Brandon Carlson
Definition of sustainable site is it promotes land development and management practices with our future in mind. So sustainable sites generate less waste, minimize impact on the landscape, and use less energy, water and natural resources. Brandon is a Sr. Applications Engineer for one of an...
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2.28 Native Plants for Lazy Gardners with Greg Travis
I think we understand more and more that life webs that we’re all in makes human beings happier and healthier, that there’s things to do to acknowledge those life webs and do what we can do to help it. Greg Travis is an old friend of mine, who has become an amateur expert on native plants...
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BONUS: Oakfield Nest: A Story of Eco-Chaplaincy with Adam Sgrenci
[This episode is from a short video about Adam's project. Best to watch on HomeGreenHomes YouTube channel.] Adam, a long-time construction professional, and his family were experiencing health issues when they found their “property” in Redwood City, California. What they wanted was a place where...
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2.27 Wellness Homes and Habitats with Diego Torrelio
“I’m a firm believer that the soil health is human health. If we start with the land first, it will reap the fruits of our labor and it’s highly reciprocal.” Diego Torrelio is a Founder and CEO of Circlefoot. Circlefoot is the leading wellness landscaping and construction company based in San…
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About this show
This channel explores affordable, resilient, and sustainable homes through conversations with green building professionals, architects, designers, homeowners, developers, and real estate professionals.
Topics include green building, energy-efficient homes, electrification, climate-resilient housing, and future-ready real estate.
The podcast is for homeowners, buyers, and realtors interested in sustainable real estate, as well as builders and designers working at the intersection of affordability, resilience, and climate-conscious living.
Episodes highlight real-world projects, practical strategies, and lived experiences that make sustainable and eco-friendly homes more accessible and achievable.
Whether you’re a homeowner planning a renovation, a green real estate professional, or simply curious about sustainable housing and regenerative design, this channel offers grounded conversations about how we build, buy, and live in homes that are
Hosted by
Izumi Tanaka