Green Building Elements

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Editor’s note: Today, we’re pleased to start a content partnership with GreenBuildingTalk, “the place to share, ask, and learn about green building products and methods.” The site’s forums are both active and informative, and they’ve now started blogging. Today’s post on solar hot water was originally published on May 5, 2008.

Each week, the Chicago Architecture Foundation and Chicago Green Technology Center graciously host “lunch time seminars,” inviting some of the leading industry professionals to discuss building issues they are involved with. On 5/1/08, they hosted Joe Gordon’s “Solar Hot Water and Heating- Is It Right for You?” presentation. The seminar provided the audience with information on how solar thermal works, how much space you’ll need, incentives, and how to determine cost benefits. Mr. Gordon also discussed how the cost of solar hot water and heating will likely keep increasing, due to the high cost of copper that is used in these systems.

Joe Gordon has worked for Solar Service, Inc. for over four years and has fielded thousands of inquires from developers, architects, owners and institutions about whether solar hot water and heating would work for them. Visit Solar Service’s gallery to see unique ways panels can be installed.

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The iconoclastic owner of the San Jose tract home featured in this article takes exception to the notion that green is expensive.  Green, to him, is rooted in conservation of all resources, not the least of them being money.

Frank Schiavo’s compact, tract-built, three-bedroom ranch-style home in a modest San Jose neighborhood demonstrates that remodeling to create a cutting-edge green home is neither difficult nor expensive. Heated with sunlight and cooled by night air, his home is comfortable, quiet and tasteful, filled with light and local art. With only modest investments in a sun room, extra insulation, new windows, a very small array of rooftop photovoltaic and solar hot water panels, his electricity bill for the coldest, cloudiest months of the year averages a few dollars a month. His gas bill is even more modest.

What’s most impressive about Schiavo’s house isn’t that it’s so comfortable and practical for him to own, it’s that it demonstrates that lofty resource conservation goals can be achieved on a modest remodeling budget.

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Editor’s note: Thinking about a kitchen remodel? This week, Low Impact Living takes a look at every element of kitchen use, and how you can both make the space more efficient, more livable, and more earth-friendly. This post was originally published on September 7, 2007.

You may not know it, but your kitchen is one of the biggest resource hogs in your house. You use electricity and natural gas for your appliances. You use water in your sink and dish washer. Your fridge is stocked with foods grown and transported from all over the world that require chemicals, water and fuel to be produced and transported. And then there’s the non-recyclable packaging that goes straight to a landfill.

Here is a list of things you can do in your kitchen to lower your environmental impact, and also to live in a healthier home. We have recommendations for appliances, products and new behaviors.

Any chance you are planning a kitchen remodel? We also have great recommendations for you– wonderful new materials for countertops,cabinets and floors, leads on top-rated green architects and interior designers, and more. Just scroll down if you’re focused on a remodel.

Get Green in the Kitchen

1. Use energy-saving appliances. You can greatly reduce your power and water usage and your greenhouse gas production by using Energy Star appliances. Energy Star appliances can save as much as 50% of your energy and water use, and can cut your carbon footprint by 1000+ pounds, compared to standard appliances. Click here to see Energy Star models.

2. Use compact fluorescent lighting. Compact fluorescent lights use 1/4 the energy and last up to 10 times as long as standard bulbs. And they come in versions that are dimmable, recessed-ready, and daylight spectrum–any version of light type you can think of. Each high-use bulb you replace will save up to $10 and 100 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, and they last for many years. Click here to see our wide range of CF lighting options.

3. Recycle and Re-use. Can you rinse that ziplock and use it again? Can you reuse the containers you got from take-out? And don’t get plastic bags every time you go to the store for groceries– take durable reusable sacks with you. Click here for reusable grocery bags..

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Author’s note: The following article on home heating is the second in an eight-part series.

What is Heat Exactly?
If we’re going to talk about better ways to heat a home, we’d better have some idea of what heat is. What you experience as heat is just the energization of the molecules in your body. Heat is the energy that gives those molecules kinetic (vibratory) energy.

Obviously, your body produces its own heat through the metabolic process (burning calories); the important thing is that your environment neither inundates you with excess energy (when it’s too warm), or draws too much energy away from you (when it’s too cold). This begs the question, how does your environment give or take energy from you? Read the rest of this entry »

Author’s note: the following article on home heating is the first in an eight-part series. The series specifically targets climate found in the San Francisco Bay Area, but has applicability elsewhere.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heating and cooling amounts to 46% of all energy consumed by our homes. Water heating uses another 14%. In coastal California, where extreme heat is rare and winters are mild, a properly sited, well designed passive solar home can generate its own heat and hot water, and do without air conditioning.

Historically, few homes are so well sited or built. Since our area has more heating days than cooling days, most homeowners need a heating system. What few know is that many indoor air quality problems can be by-products of forced air heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems installed in their homes. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: As part of our new content partnership with Low Impact Living, we’ll be bringing you tips and tricks from their massive and growing archive of products and projects that can help you save energy, water and money around the house. Today, LIL blogger Jason Pelletier takes a look at tankless hot water heaters. This post was originally published on Monday, April 28, 2008.

Tankless hot water heaters are becoming a must-have appliance in homes these days. They purport to offer many benefits - instant and endless hot water, less wasted space, and a smaller carbon footprint as well. They can even be used to power radiant underfloor heating that is a luxury found in many green homes.

But are they truly the best option? What can you expect from one, and what do you have to worry about with installation? Finally, are there other options available that offer the same benefits without some of the challenges? We’ll try to cover most of that in this piece.

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When the Internet extended its wiry tentacles to the small town that I grew up in, I had no idea what it was. I pictured it being a room full of wires and lights, like a super computer android version of a phone operator.

As I matured, I realized it wasn’t that at all, but a more mystic existence of floating pockets of digital information in constant flux, existing in digital clouds that were suspended just above the atmosphere.

Of course, neither of those images is or was correct. But as it turns out, I was closer to the target with my first guess. Massive server rooms take up space and energy all over the world, storing the information and websites we web junkies feed on for survival. Luckily, they are starting to go green.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a technology real estate company, has taken a bold step into the green world by renovating a 90-year-old printing facility in Chicago. They have turned the plant into the world’s first LEED gold-certified data center. Not only is this a paradigm shift for future data centers—it may change the way LEED building companies approach renovations.

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Buildings, according to calculations done by Architecture 2030, are responsible for nearly half of the total energy consumption in the United States. And 76 percent of the electricity generated in this country goes to the Building Sector. So while there are a range of steps that need to be taken in moving toward a more sustainable lifestyle, Buildings, and the energy they consume, need to be at the forefront of any considerations when moving toward greater sustainability.

Saving energy in buildings is both one of the easiest things that can be done, as well as one of the hardest. The principles for creating a building that needs less energy and operates more efficiently are well known. Most building technology is fairly basic and easy for even non-experts to understand. This makes it simple. We don’t have to wait for expensive, high tech solutions (though they can contribute greatly and will provide new flexibility and compelling possibilities for building better buildings in the future). Heavily insulated buildings can be easily constructed with readily available and well known technology. Adding more insulation to walls is easy, though there is a cost. Consumers and building owners need to become more aware of the long term costs of operating a building, and give consideration to more than just the initial construction costs. And overcoming economic considerations and taking a long-term view is the hard part.

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Aerogel is almost a product out of science fiction.

Nicknamed “frozen smoke,” aerogel is extremely lightweight material, with a density only 3 times that of air. Only a small fraction of a volume of aerogel is the material itself. Most of the volume is filled with air. This makes aerogel an excellent insulator. (Aerogel provides nearly 40 times the insulation of fiberglass insulation.)

Aerogel can withstand great pressures and is also an excellent sound insulator. Aerogels can also be used to absorb airborne pollutants and have been used to clean up oil spills. NASA also used a section of aerogel as part of its Stardust probe to collect samples of material from the tail of a comet.

Aerogel is available for some high-performance applications, but due to its high cost, it has not been widely used. However, new research from a Malaysian scientist offers the potential to drastically reduce the cost of producing aerogel, and could lead to new possibilities for its use as a building and insulation material.
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The Meyer Company of St. Louis, Missouri, is quietly undertaking a green building experiment called Patrician Place, the results of which could have far reaching implications in the field of green building. In partnership with the St. Louis County Office of Community Development and Architect; Garen Miller, Inc., The Meyer Company is building ten homes under three different green building programs, gauging the energy efficiency of each. After a year of testing the energy efficiency of the homes of Patrician Place, an affordable housing development for lower income families, St. Louis County will have a benchmark for future housing projects. Read the rest of this entry »