How lessons-learned from a state-of-the-art net-zero project can help us all reduce our impact
Now that everyone is finally talking about green buildings, the question becomes “Where do we need to go from here?”
The answer? Net-zero.
That’s what a panel of experts told an audience assembled last month at Rocky Mountain Institute’s symposium in San Francisco, RMI2009. Read the rest of this entry »
New York City plans to train one thousand superintendents on green buildings this year. City managers of commercial and high-rise residential buildings now have the chance reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city on a sky high level.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg took part in the program, “One Year, One Thousand Green Supers” which was also approved by the U.S. Green Building Council and the Building Performance Institute. It’s also made possible by the Thomas Shortman Training Fund. This is part of NYC’s huge goal to reduce their building-generated carbon footprint. Read the rest of this entry »
This simple and sustainable design for the tropics is by Foster + Partners. Like their new design for Heathrow Airport it uses an undulating design for the roof.
Read the rest of this entry »
“Our homes embrace the principles of eco-friendliness and cost-effectiveness, without sacrificing beauty. We can ensure that each dwelling achieves a gold or platinum LEED rating, depending on the particular finishes, building systems, and site design an owner chooses.” ~ Michelle Kaufmann Designs
Each Glidehouse home is solar ready with other renewable energy system options possible such as geothermal, wind generator or hybrid systems. Designed for clean, simple living. The Glidehouse is built in a factory, using the most modern and environmentally friendly building methods and materials.
Some eco features of the Glidehouse include:
It’s a pleasure to finally begin writing here at Green Options! This time around, I’d like to focus on green building ambitions in the corporate world. I’ve been hearing a lot about Wal-Mart, Intel, etc. But have you heard about what Leviton just did with their headquarters? Read the rest of this entry »
AJC Architects have thought ahead to a hotter Utah in the sensible ideas incorporated into their Wetland Discovery Point educational building that helps educate Utah schoolchildren about nature.
These are the green ideas in order of importance to sustainable design:
In addition there are the usual elements that garner so many LEED points:
…and indeed, this building has gained LEED Platinum certification, the third to do so in Utah.
It’s a good example of the self-sufficient new design vernacular in sustainable design – including net zero solar power and the new butterfly roofs for rainwater harvesting for a water constrained future.
Because Utah, in the American Southwest, is an arid land and will be increasingly drought-prone as our hotter future heats up the region.
Via Jetson Green
In the United States today, 21% of all carbon emissions come from our homes. Even more startling is that, on average, 40% of all energy consumed in our homes is wasted, but is still paid for every month. Simply bled off into the atmosphere, we lose our heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Inefficient buildings not only harm our atmosphere because of all the energy required to run them, but also take a hefty chunk of change from us. Happily, there is something to be done about it. Enter One Block Off the Grid and their new model of collective bargaining for discounted home performance retrofits and big-ticket green home improvements.
One Block Off the Grid is the nation’s largest and fastest growing community purchasing group for residential solar, and was founded to cause the tipping point in its adoption. Grouping people together to make bulk purchases has lowered the upfront cost, as well as streamlined the oftentimes-complicated process of solar installation. This bulk-purchasing model is widely applicable, and in the process of engaging people on the topic of solar, it became clear that the power of community-based bulk purchasing could and should be applied to other services as well. Home performance retrofitting, sometimes referred to as weatherization, was an obvious choice.
1BOG has partnered with its first non-PV integrator to offer Bay Area residents a steep discount on home performance retrofits. Home performance retrofitting can help eliminate wasted energy, and make your home a more comfortable place to live. Leaky windows and ducts mean that temperature control is more difficult than it needs to be. Home performance retrofits solve this. Mold and dampness make air quality indoors three to five times worse than air quality outdoors. Home performance retrofits solve this.
By partnering with Sustainable Spaces, the Bay Area’s leading provider of these services, 1BOG is able to offer a 15% discount on all retrofitting work done. Sure, home performance retrofitting isn’t free, but when you take into consideration that you can begin saving up to 40% on your energy bills (gas and electric), the value of this service becomes clear. Regardless of age, location, shading, etc., chances are your home, your family, and your wallet can all benefit from a home performance retrofit through 1BOG and Sustainable Spaces.
For more information, visit 1BOG at: http://1bog.org/home-energy-efficiency-from-1bog/
Given the climate change coming to most regions of the US, this new roof idea is a great passive cooling solution worth looking at even if you don’t live in the desert regions… now.
Because, by century’s end; you might.
“Summer temperatures in Florida could rise by 10.5F, with the heat effect multiplied by decreased rainfall under the higher emissions scenario. There would be increased hurricane intensity and rising sea levels leads to loss of wetlands and coastal areas.”
“When you’re out in the desert, shade is gold. It’s the most valuable asset you have, so to make more shade was [the] strategy,” says Lloyd Russell of this house he designed to withstand both the scorching heat and the cold of the desert for a client in Southern California.
Russell’s very low carbon way to cool a home is another example of how creatively some architects are thinking out of the box and in the process creating an entirely new design vernacular – architecture for zero energy use in a carbon-constrained, hotter, wilder new world.
At the other end of the design spectrum from the energysucking gizmology that now pervades our lives; simple tech is quietly bringing back simplicity and sustainability as a worthwhile goal for industrial design. Here’s a good example; a low tech kitchen appliance that would go well beyond a simple energy star rating for efficiency.
This practical and simple energy efficient dish washer/dish storage unit by design students Schwartz and Steiner at the Bauaus Universität Weimar is a great example of the simple tech that the world needs now.
It is a reduction of a machine to its essentials, orientated to user-needs. This dish washer builds on the movements that we already make…
U of Kansas grad students have just completed their chic Buffalo House at Springfield in Kansas City, designed with a very elegant approach to sustainability.
We are seeing more climate conscious design in architecture: In this case; the rain screen.
A skin over the house is designed to manage and harvest occasional heavy precipitation, to provide protection from premature decay from moisture intrusion.
I like the way the rain-screen is carried up over the roof and mounted flush with the photovoltaic solar panels on the roof for a sleek look while also protecting the building.
Like a skin over the building; this Cumuru wood cladding is designed to shed rain water separately from the structure of the building. Rain screens deter rainwater intrusion into walls – by shedding most of the rain and by incorporating storage to reuse the rainwater – which you can see below the doors here.
There’s 8 other sustainable features, as well.
Rather than attacking the symptoms of moisture intrusion, rain screens tackle the source-the forces that drive water into the building shell. By neutralizing these forces, rain screens can withstand extreme environments. They appear to be effective in any climate and handle any weather condition short of a disaster.
All rain screens include the following elements:
Integral gutters and downspouts are hidden behind the rain-screen. These then carry rainwater for storage in underground tanks.
The home also features passive solar heating through large expanses of south facing glass. These windows are protected from the summer sun with fixed sun louvers made of steel and Cumaru wood.
So as not to trap too much heat, low South-facing operable windows work in tandem with skylight vents in the north-facing roof-top pull hot air out of the top of the building for a thermal chimney effect.
For maximizing filtered daylighting, a three-level steel frame with milky glass inside encloses the staircase for spatial separation but spreading daylight between the rooms of the house.
The sustainable features are:
1. Enough rooftop photovoltaic solar panels for a net zero electricity supply (90-100%) for an average home.
2. One on-site 1.2 KW Windspire wind turbine that could produce about 20% of the energy an average home (550 kWh a month) assuming wind speed of at least 12 miles-per-hour year round.
3. Geothermal heat exchange between the house and the below-ground 55 degree temperatures year round, providing a constant starting point for both heating and cooling.
4. Epoxy coated gyp-crete floors for interior thermal mass to prolong passive heating and cooling
5. Passive solar design: low South-facing windows with sunlight access to thermal mass in the floor.
6. Heat-chimney effect created with roof ventilation in North skylights for expelling hot air
7. The framing wood was recycled from an ammunition plant.
8. Recycled materials in interior finishes such as the composite recycled paper countertops.
and of course
9. The rainwater reclamation using a wooden slat skin to keep water off the building and stored in underground tanks. Cumaru is one of the hardest woods on the planet and can be harvested sustainably.
But it comes from South America, so there is quite a carbon footprint getting it to Kansas City.
Images: Robert McLaughlin
Via Jetson Green
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At Green Building Elements, home owners and LEED accredited professional alike can learn about advances in green and renewable building materials, current projects in sustainable architecture and progressive urban planning, and local guidelines for creating green structures in different regions of the U.S.
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