Green Building Elements

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Photo Credit: cmhc.ca
Adaptive reuse is the use of an existing structure for a new purpose; in short, it is recycling for buildings. Rather than demolishing an old structure to clear a site, the existing structure is rehabilitated and used for a new purpose.

Koo's Corner is a project in Vancouver that took an old automotive repair shop and turned it into six urban loft residences. The existing garage building was turned into two of the lofts, and another four units were built to fit the neighborhood context. Building in an existing neighborhood helps to increase urban density (which makes for more efficient use of existing city services) and makes use of available property rather than buldozing undeveloped land for construction.

Photo Credit: cmha.caApproximately 80% of the construction waste was recycled or re-used. Interiors included reclaimed Douglas fir for flooring and cabinetry, low VOC interior finishes, and energy-efficient and water-saving appliances. Site landscaping was done with drought-tolerant plants and no irrigation systems were installed. One of the new loft units has an attached solar hot-water system attached and the roofs of the new lofts are pitched at a "solar-ready" angle, making the possibility of future solar upgrades even easier.

Koo's Garage - before renovation: Photo Credit:cmhc.caThe site had some brownfield contamination from its previous incarnation as an automotive repair facility which was cleaned up as part of the development process. (Brownfield cleanup added to the cost and scheduling issues for the project, but the developer still produced a profitable building). But, by undertaking new development, the project helped contribute to the cleanup of the property.

The units are moderate in size (the largest is under 1200 square feet), which also helps with resource conservation. Simply building smaller units allows more efficient living and use of materials. The project is one of several Vancouver area projects being touted for its ecological orientation and benefits. "In an eco-dense city, planners say, citizens will live closer together on less land, drive fewer cars, consume fewer resources and produce less waste." With the location of the project and the reuse of the existing structure, as well as the materials used in building these lofts, Koo's Corner is an excellent example of good, green construction.

At the time this project was built (completed in 2002), there was no LEED standard for low rise homes, but the team estimated the building would have qualified for LEED certified status.

A Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation case study offers more description and analysis of the project.

Photo Credit: Bonded LogicThere are many, many different options available for insulating a building. Whether for new construction or for an addition, there are many manufacturers and different products which all are meant to accomplish essentially the same thing: controlling the temperature inside the building. Without getting into alternate construction methods, consider some options for insulation in standard frame construction.

Insulation is generally material inserted in the spaces between framing (wall studs). It's purpose is to slow down the process of heat transfer. Creating a lot of little airspaces between the fibers of the insulating material, and using a material that is, itself, a poor conductor of heat makes a wall that retains heat, rather than allowing it to be lost to the outside.

Fiberglas insulation has been the standard in construction. It is sized to fit between framing members spaced 16" or 24" apart (the two most common industry standards). Fiberglas is inert, but stray fibers can be an skin irritant and installers need to wear dust masks to avoid breathing in the fibers. For a do-it-yourselfer, fiberglas is readily available at big box stores and is moderately priced. Forcing the insulation into a space compresses the material and makes it less efficient. Properly installed insulation spreads out to fully fill the space, but without being compressed on itself unnecessarily. Supplemental attic insulation can be as easy as buying unfaced (no kraft paper attached) rolls and unrolling them in the attic.

UltraTouch is manufactured from 85% post-industrial fiber - much of it being blue jean material, giving the insulation its distinctive color. Unlike fiberglas, it does not itch, does not contain any chemical irritants. The fibers are treated with fire retardants to make it safe for use in construction. Like standard fiberglas, it comes in construction standard sizes. For the do-it-yourselfer, the added cost of a cotton insulation may be worth it because of the ease with which it can be installed.

Spray-applied cellulose insulation is another good product. It is made from shredded newspaper and, like UltraTouch, has fire-retardants added to prevent it from being a hazard in construction. In application, the material is simply sprayed onto the walls before the interior gyp board is installed. Any excess material can simply be scraped off and put right back into the spraying machine. Spray applied insulation also fills the wall cavity more completely than batts do, making it better able to fill all the corners and crevices more effectively. Because of the machinery involved in its application, spray applied insulation generally makes sense for larger projects, and may not be cost effective for small additions and renovations.

In any case, having the proper amount of insulation is an important part of a project. Local information is important to consider, as well. And this is far from an exhaustive list of what is available. But, these are probably the top three options that many people will consider.

Photo Credit: Heat-Kit.com
Heating your house with firewood is completely retro. I mean, cutting up trees and burning them, that’s just so old fashioned and inefficient, and not green at all.

Right?

What do you mean, wood burning can be green?

In fact, masonry heaters (which are also sometimes called “Finnish heaters” or “Russian heaters”) can be a green source for heating a home. While a traditional fireplace may be only 10% efficient (which is to say not!), a masonry heater can be 90% efficient. A well insulated house (even in a cold, Canadian location) can be heated on a single cord of wood per season. In a sense, a masonry heater is to a traditional fireplace what a compact fluorescent (or, even better, and LED light) is to an incandescent bulb.

The key, as is the case with passive solar heating, is thermal mass. When heating is taking place, you want to capture and store as much of that energy as you can, so that you can use it throughout the day. The masonry heater does this with a large structure containing a series of baffles, all of which gets heated up from a fast, hot-buring fire. By using a series of baffles in the structure, the heater ensures that most of the heat goes into the stone of the heater itself, rather than shooting up the chimney to be wasted, as is the case with a traditional fireplace.

Once heated, the thermal mass of the heater slowly radiates heat into the surrounding space over the course of a day. Because the heat radiates from the thermal mass in a straight line, spaces in direct line of sight to the heater are going to be better served than small closed-off rooms away from the heater. A masonry heater is not likely to be something that can easily be added to an existing home. The design of the entire house needs to be considered in order to get the best use from a masonry heater.

The carbon impact with this kind of wood burning is actually fairly benign. Firewood contains recently sequestered carbon, carbon removed from the atmosphere during the life of the tree. This carbon is re-released to the atmosphere when the wood is burned, where it can be reclaimed by other trees and plants. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, have had their carbon sequestered for millions of years. By burning fast and hot, the masonry heater produces less of the soot, creosote and other by-products that are formed when a fire smolders and burns slowly. This makes it less polluting as well as more efficient.

A masonry heater doesn’t make sense for every location (nor does any other technology). It would make no sense to have one in a city where the firewood needed to be trucked in from a distant source. But for a location where firewood is a readily available local resource, it can be worth considering. And with a masonry heater, burning wood can be a green heating method.

Sources:
Alternative-Heating-Info
Green Mountain Soapstone
Heat Kit
Tulikivi

Do you feel like no one else in your community is interested in a greener lifestyle? Are you interested in meeting other like-minded, green-oriented people in your area? There are opportunities to make new connections and meet others in your community who are similarly inclined towards green living.

Green Drinks is an international program for people from NGOs, academia, government and business. "These events are very simple and unstructured, but many people have found employment, made friends, developed new ideas, done deals and had moments of serendipity. It's a force for the good and we'd like to help it spread to other cities."

There are now almost 200 cities with Green Drinks programs available (and San Francisco and Seattle each have two). You can check the organization's website and see if there is one near you, or find out about starting a group in your area.

The o2 network is an "international network for sustainable design." While not as socially oriented as Green Drinks, it also seeks to bring together green designers and other green-oriented people to share ideas.

Both organizations are very loosely structured. There is no set agenda or formalized program for Green Drinks. It is a very local, ad-hoc kind of get together, so programs will vary widely, both from chapter to chapter, as well as from one meeting to another in the same chapter.

My own local Green Drinks group (which meets on the third Wednesday of the month) combines both Green Drinks and o2 meetings.

2020 W Rice-Elevation: Photo Credit: Chicagoland Avenues Green building isn't a style, it's an approach. While there may be common features that appear in many green homes and buildings, there is not a single style that all green buildings follow. Instead of just talking about the pieces of green buildings, it is also important to take a look at completed projects, to get a sense of what green buildings can look like. The examples we show here are never going to be more than a tiny fraction of the green buildings being constructed all over the globe. But hopefully these will provide some inspiration for considering green building, and give a sense of the breadth of possibility available while building green.

2020 W. Rice Street in Chicago is an award-winning project by Wolbrink Architects. It is the first EnergyStar rated multifamily building in Chicago, and was awarded a Mayor's GreenWorks award for Green Buildings Market Transformation.

The building follows a typical Chicago form: the 3-flat. The three units are called Garden Unit (the lowest level, half below-grade), Bay Unit (a half flight above grade), and Penthouse Unit (the top two floors).

An article from the GreenBean blog outlines the many green features of this building:

"The project includes many of the typical features expected on a small green development: compact fluorescent lighting, low-VOC paints, recycled-content carpet, sustainably harvested flooring, locally manufactured materials, etc. The outdoor patio has permeable pavers and the garage has a green roof. It's also nice how the building design respects the neighboring buildings, with a two-story gabled front elevation (matching the neighbors) and the more modern third floor set back a bit - this is atypical in speculative development that often seeks to maximize floor area."

Additionally, the building has high efficiency heating systems, and as can be seen in the photographs, each of the units (even the bottom floor Garden Unit) have lots of daylight. The architect has said that energy efficiency is the primary reason for doing green building. But indoor air quality (by using low- or zero-VOC paints and glues) was also an aspect of this project. Many of the materials were also locally sourced, rather than relying on materials with greater shipping impacts coming from distant suppliers.

One of the constant concerns in green building is how to ensure that the building gets built green. Wolbrink not only designed the building, but also managed the construction, thereby ensuring that the building was built with the green measures they intended.

A portfolio of pictures of the building is on the architect's website.

As a followup to this project, the firm is now working on "Phase II" nearby at 2012-14 W. Rice Street, which will be an additional 5 condos, and is to be built as part of the LEED for Homes pilot program.via: GreenBean and Chicagoland Avenues

Photo Credit: zenera
Icicles on the eaves and snow on the roof are more than just an ornament of wintertime. They can also be instructive signs that you can use to get a sense of the way your house is using energy and a way to tell whether or not there are problems that you should address to improve your energy efficiency and perhaps even to preserve your roof structure.

With the recent snow that much of the midwest and northeast US has had in the past week, now can be a good time to take a look at your roof to see how well your house is doing in terms of energy performance. An article from Home Energy Magazine gives a good set of guidelines about reading the snow on your roof to see how well your attic insulation is working.

Don't just look at your roof once, and decide everything is okay, though. With freshly fallen snow, it's likely that everyone has a good blanket of snow on the roof. Photo Credit: Don Hynek, HomeEnergy.orgWhat will be telling is how quickly it melts over the next few days, and the patterns that show up. Local comparisons can also be informative. In addition to looking at your own roof, look at the neighboring houses and see what the snow patterns on them are showing. If your roof has more snow on it than your neighbor's does, it is likely that you have a better insulated attic. But if everyone else's house has a nice cap of snow on it, and your house is a display for roof shingles, then you need to get up in that attic and get some additional insulation up there.

Extensive icicles can also be a sign that your attic is insufficiently insulated and you are wasting heat. Even more, icicles can be an indicator of ice dams forming on the roof, which can cause damage to the roof and exterior walls of the house. "An ice dam is a ridge of ice that forms at the edge of a roof and prevents melting snow from draining off the roof. Because the water has no place to go, it backs up behind this ridge of ice and can leak into the home. These leaks can damage walls, ceilings, insulation and other areas."

Factors like the orientation (a south facing roof will clear faster than one that is oriented to the north), weather (a bright, sunny day can melt off the snow, especially from south facing roofs), and local environment (surrounding trees, local wind, etc.) can all contribute to how the snow sits on the roof. This is not a foolproof method, and these other factors can influence what you see.

If you are getting energy aware, this can be an easy first step in figuring out how well your house is performing. If you want to go a bit further, the US Department of Energy has a Do It Yourself Home Energy Audit that offers a few more ways for examining your home and finding other steps you can take to further improve your home energy efficiency.

Links:
HomeEnergy.org
USDOE Home Energy Audit

Photo credit: Brines.org
There is a huge variety of food available throughout the year in grocery stores in the US. In most places, this is due to several factors: far distant farms situated in temperate climate regions; varieties of plants that have been bred to produce food that will ripen slowly and be hardy enough to withstand the rigors of packaging and shipping; and a transportation infrastructure that brings them to our stores. Unless you live in a southern state, much of the produce in your local stores right now is being shipped from far away.

All that shipping has an associated cost (financial cost as well as energy use and carbon release). Locally grown food has many adherents. There are hundreds of farms operating as community supported agriculture (CSA), where people buy memberships in the farm and receive a share of produce (usually on a weekly basis). CSA farms are wonderful for getting food locally, but they are usually tied to the local growing season, meaning that they don't have produce during the winter. But other options can allow even more extension of the growing season.

Even in cold-weather climates, for example, it is possible to grow some vegetables year round. In my area, a local farmer operates a zero-energy greenhouse with which he grows a range of cold-tolerant greens ("various lettuce, spinach, arugula, claytonia, mache, carrots, leeks, cress, tatsoi, pac choi, mizuna, and kale to name a few") throughout the winter. These are sold at the local farmers' market on weekends. (Interestingly, on cold winter days at the market, he often keeps the greens in an insulated cooler - not to keep them cool, but rather to keep them warm and prevent them from freezing.) The Brines Farm hoop house uses a frame covered with greenhouse film to create an enclosure to admit sunlight and retain heat in order to maintain a suitable growing environment. The project is well documented, and they have also produced a pamphlet with instructions for individuals who are interested in setting up similar enclosures for themselves. The pamphlet says a 12' x 12' greenhouse can be built for $200 or so.

A more unusual possibility has researchers have looked at the possibilities for a compost heated greenhouse. Composting gives off heat as the organic material is broken down. However, composting also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. While plants require carbon dioxide for growth, in one test case, the CO2 created from composting was 6 times as much as the plants in the greenhouse required, and other by-products were also many times more than what was needed for a balanced system.

Supporting and choosing locally produced food reduces the carbon footprint for the food we do eat. For the DIY-inclined, building a hoop house is an easy project that makes it possible to have an extended growing season and be able to have locally produced food of their own.

Links:
LocalHarvest list of CSAs
Brines Farm
Hoop House instructions (PDF)
Compost Heated Greenhouse

One of the biggest concerns about changing to a green lifestyle is, of course, financial. How much does it cost to switch to a green lifestyle?

There is a perception that all of this must be very expensive, and that only altruists and tree-huggers can afford to live this kind of lifestyle. But a green lifestyle needs to be sustainable in all ways.

Something that is more expensive than its alternative will usually cost less in the long run. This is what makes evaluation of green products and green building materials so difficult. But looking at the life-cycle cost (the cost not just of purchasing the item, but also its operation and maintenance over its useful life) can show that the overall cost of the green option is usually lower.

Going green doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition, and it doesn't have to be expensive. A recent article notes "Eco-Friendly Home Projects Can Be Cheap, and Also Stylish." While it is possible to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a green remodeling project, some influential steps, can be undertaken for only a few dollars. We've mentioned a couple of different checklists that can be used to start a green lifestyle and evaluate what steps you can take.

There's been a lot of talk about compact fluorescent light bulbs recently. It isn't just you should use these because they will reduce carbon emissions (though that is one of the reasons to use them). It's unlikely to expect that people will switch over for this reason alone. Altruism is a good thing, but most people switch over because the compact fluorescents also use less electricity. So a bulb that uses 14 watts rather than 60 watts is using only one-quarter the energy, and that translates into financial savings, as well as being better environmentally. And, because the compact fluorescent bulb lasts longer than an incandescent, there is less waste going into landfills, as well.

A lot of these steps can pay back their cost in a short period of time. Adding insulation to the house, installing and using a programmable thermostat, using EnergyStar appliances, are all good steps. If there is an energy benefit to choosing a green product, look at how quickly it will pay for itself. If $1000 of attic insulation will save $150/month in heating (and you have 4 heating months a year), then it will pay for itself in less than two years. Unless you expect to be out of that home in less time than that, it just makes financial sense to do the improvement, and gain the savings through lowered energy cost and lower energy use.

Links:

USGBC - 16 Ways to Green Your Home
Global Green USA - Top 20 No- or Low-Cost Green Building Strategies

Heliotube: Photo source: Practical InstrumentsSilicon solar cells are a pretty established technology. The panels have become more or less standardized to a regular form factor so that installers can use the same mounting hardware regardless of whose panels are being used. Big corporations like Wal-Mart and Google are readying large installations of panels that will produce enough electricity to rival a small power plant. Manufacturers are developing the technology, and new models of solar panels regularly outperform their older cousins by squeezing out a few more watts per square foot.

The silicon portion is still the most expensive portion of the photovoltaic (PV) solar panel, however. So a new solar panel that uses 88% less PV material than traditional panels could help cut the cost of going solar.

"Silicon solar cells are the most expensive part of today's solar panels. Heliotube substitutes much of the costly photovoltaic material with inexpensive optics to focus the equivalent light onto small solar cells."

The new Heliotube panels introduced by Practical Instruments use sun-tracking reflective troughs to concentrate sunlight onto the PV material. Large scale solar concentrators have been developed for industrial and commercial power generation uses, but the Heliotube panels are sized to fit in standard solar panel arrays (60" x 42"), so they can be installed like typical solar cells.

There is more hardware associated with these panels (in order to do the solar tracking) and a small amount of power is lost to operate the solar tracking. Because there are moving parts, these panels will necessarily be more susceptible to breakdown than typical flat panels. But with cost and material savings, these panels could help make it more affordable for small installations to go solar.

via: cocolico and treehugger

Co-generation is a systems approach for producing poth power and heat. Combined heat-and-power (CHP) plants produce electrical power, and use the heat from that production to also provide heat to local buildings (often through underground steam or hot-water piping systems). These systems have been most often found at hospitals and universities, where a large number of buildings can be efficiently served by a combined facility such as this. But new systems are bringing this same technology into the home.

Micro-CHP units are new to the US, with the first installations just beginning in the northeast. The technology for these units is not brand new, however. There are more than 30,000 homes with these units installed in Japan, where the gas utilities have been promoting them. In Britain, 80,000 under-counter micro-CHP systems are on their way and will be installed in the coming years.

Household micro-CHP systems use a natural gas powered electrical generator to produce electricity. The heat produced from that part of the system is used either to create hot air (as with a traditional forced-air furnace system) or to create hot water (for radiator or radiant floor heated homes). Because the heat is being productively used, rather than going up the chimney of a distant power plant, and because the electricity is being locally produced, rather than being subjected to the losses inherent in power transmission, the micro-CHP is "triple the efficiency of power delivered over the grid."

Micro-CHP systems are most likely to be used in states that offer net metering to their customers, since they will likely produce more electricity than the household needs while they are cycled on.

Having your own power plant in your basement also means that, with the right connections to properly operate the system, blackouts are no longer a concern. Micro-CHP systems are not inexpensive, however. They can be as much as double the cost of a comparable high-end furnace. But, with the electrical savings, they can pay for themselves within a few years at present rates.