Green Building Elements

Do you dread getting your December electric bill?  Holiday lights and decorations can be a drain on your wallet, as well as the environment.  However, new technology can help you save money and lower your carbon footprint.

LED holiday lights:

• Are safer (they don’t heat up like normal incandescent lights)
• Use less electricity (40 watts for a 100 light incandescent strand, versus approximately 8 watts for a similar LED strand)
• Last longer (average expected life is 25,000 hours)
• Can be strung together in larger amounts (up to 25-75 strands in one long string, versus 3-5 for incandescents)

Sounds great, huh?  But, as I discovered, there may be some hidden issues with LEDs.

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Cash, that most basic element of our economy, can be in abysmally short supply for new young families scraping by on marginal jobs.

Sustainable housebuilding may not be foremost in their minds.

But one young couple in Wales managing on an annual income of just $10,000 went ahead and built their own cheap home anyway, sustainably, mostly out of materials from “a rubbish pile somewhere.”
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American Honda Motor Company presented its new Micro-sized Combined Heat and Power (MCHP) Deluxe co-generation unit at Greenbuild 2008 in Boston, Massachusets.  The unit has been around for a while (in Japan since 2003, and here in the US since 2007).  The system provides home heating or water heating along with power generation in one package.  It also includes a generator to provide power during an outage.

When installed in combination with a furnace system such as ECR International’s “freewatt,” homeowners can expect to save between $500 and $1,000 per year on their power bills.  This is achieved through the power-generating capabilities of the MCHP, plus the fact that the “freewatt” system provides additional electricity as a by-product of its heating process.

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Building Design and Construction recently published a white paper on the effects of green building on climate change.  Included in the paper were 22 specific action items that building designers can put into action today to address climate change.

Here are a few of them:

1. Write out your firm’s position and actions on climate change and include this in RFPs and all your marketing information.

2. Quantify and document the emissions that have been mitigated by your company.

3. Use the many resources available on the internet for energy savings and emissions reduction ideas.

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New York City goes green by launching a 100% wind and solar powered billboard this Holiday Season.

As alternative energy continues to be the hot topic in our flailing economy, New York City sets an environmental example by launching Times Square’s first 100 percent eco-powered billboard.

The billboard powered entirely by wind and sun, is the first such sign in New York City. It will be erected by Ricoh Company, Ltd., a Japanese company that strives to be outstanding in all areas of the environment, society, and the economy. Their first eco-signage project dates back to April 2003 in Osaka, Japan.

Powered By Wind Turbines and Solar Panels

The electricity for the billboard will be produced entirely by solar and wind power and stored in 16 batteries. No electricity will be purchased from local power companies.

Sixteen wind turbines and 65 solar panels will produce an average of 98 kwh of electricity per day (93 kwh from wind power and 5kwh from solar). To put the savings into perspective: the same amount of electricity required by an ordinary sign would result in as much as 18 tons of carbon dioxide per year. The batteries can hold four days worth of supply. However if there is insufficient wind or solar power, the sign may not light up, an eventuality that Ricoh readily accepts. Read the rest of this entry »

If you live in dangerous drought conditions, wildfires are a worry.

So imagine a campsite dwelling designed so that you can easily just close it up entirely, completely concealed inside a fireproof sheath, whenever you are away. It is perfect for sites like this isolated area of drought-ridden Australia.

When closed, this prefab is completely sheathed in copper. This protects the 10 x10 foot building from brush fire. And not just fire:

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When mention of an “earthen floor” is made, one might imagine a dusty, drab dirt floor. Earthen floors are far from this, however; instead they are very elegant, durable, inexpensive, and ecologically sustainable solutions to a typical floor installation. They are varied in construction, but the idea and ingredients are essentially the same across the board. Earthen (or adobe) floors are poured or compacted combinations of sand, clay, straw, and sometimes crushed rock, with pleasantly smooth surfaces resistant to wear and tear, and capable of storing heat from the sun.

There is no one way to construct an earthen floor. They are a natural option for straw bale or cob buildings, but they can even be installed on concrete slabs or preexisting wood floors, as along as the framework is strong enough to support the heavy weight of many buckets full of earthen material.

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Leave it to the State Compensation Insurance Fund, the quasi-public workers’ compensation insurer based in San Francisco, to bring more green building to the Bay Area. Okay, we’re stretching it a little to call Vacaville the Bay Area but what’s a few miles for a true green building.

The fact that the $77 million green campus that consists of three 85,000-square-foot buildings diverted more than 20 percent of the building materials from the nasty old landfills. Much of those materials included concrete and cork and rubber flooring. Not only did the architect HOK and Milpitas-based Devon Construction reduce waste by using recycled building materials, but State Fund diverted a whopping 75 percent of construction waste away from landfills to recycling vendors.

This campus which expects to receive LEED Silver certification early next year, hit a big on the energy savings front with solar panel system, energy-efficient light fixtures, lamps, heating and cooling systems and other electrical equipment; and in the high-tech world they added “server virtualization” technology that reduces the number of servers needed to support the facility. The Green IT people must love that.

We (and probably most of the 750 workers) applaud the use of various low-emitting materials such as adhesives, paints and carpets. They also significantly reduced the building’s water footprint by incorporating low-flow toilets, waterless urinals, and an irrigation system using non-potable water.

We say that that is $77 million dollars well spent.

Photo credit: Steve Proehl

Cascade Engineering has just launched its SWIFT Wind Turbine in the United States and Canada. Quieter than a whisper, SWIFT provides businesses and homeowners in windy environments an effective solution to lower energy bills and reduce carbon emissions.

Built on unique, patented technology, the SWIFT Wind generates electricity by harnessing the power of the wind providing a clean energy source for domestic, community and industrial use. Optimally sited, this turbine will produce approximately 2000 kWh of electricity per year. One of the quietest wind systems available, it generates less than 35 decibels of noise at all wind speeds Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wanted to know exactly how much electricity and water you were using in your home or office right now?  With Advanced Telemetry’s new EcoView system, you can learn that and much more.

The EcoView system provides information on a home’s or small office’s energy and water consumption rates, trends, identifies energy drains, and tracks goals.  The system is completely wireless and has a keypad display or can be viewed on a home computer.  With the information provided by this system, home and small business owners can better track energy use and take measures to reduce it.  Read the rest of this entry »