Green Building Elements

Instead of usual colors that we associate with wine such as white or dark red, our color paradigm might shift to say Gold. With the CADE Winery just about to open, this solar powered and organically farmed winery, hopes to garner LEED Gold status and if so, would be the first Estate Gold LEED certified winery in the Napa Valley.

When visiting a winery, people’s olfactory system normally goes into overdrive but instead of inhaling the aromas of vanilla, rosemary, oak and sage here we took deep breaths of the air. As in indoor air quality. No stuffy AC here as the building relies on natural ventilation. While others admire the wines, we admired the other green aspects. CADE will utilize 100% solar power and organic farming methods which both sound tasty to us.

From top to bottom, we got our buzz from the other building features like the concrete composed that contains a generous amount (30 percent) of fly ash, steel made up of 98 percent recycled material, FSC glass and wood, as well as blue jeans for insulation and its own concrete mass for cooling.

The Green aspects just don’t stop at the building. It’s too bad that we didn’t bike or drive our electric car (we did carpool) because the winery offers a plug-in base for hybrid electric cars; and bicycle racks. Even better, they offer a shower (hopefully with low flow showerhead) so cyclists can clean up before tasting or event.

One the eating side, they will have a full-time chef on site who will focus on organic, sustainable cuisine grown on site. We haven’t had the chance to sample some of the sustainable cuisine but we’ll report back when we do.

We, like many people, wondered about the name. The winery name CADE derives from a Shakespearean term used for an oak cask or barrel, — comprises more than 60 acres, 23 of which were planted as vineyards in 2003. Of the remaining land, 28 acres will be protected in a land trust to ensure that they will always remain open space.  Now there should be a big “Cheers” to that fact.

With the economy in turmoil, a real estate prices dropping, green communities and green building will become more important. It’s easy to see how broken our current community model is in terms of the urban sprawl; the average American commute continues to grow longer. Between 1969 and 2001, the number of vehicle miles traveled for commuting jumped from 4,180 to 5,720.

The Sierra Club notes that today’s average American driver spends what amounts to 55 eight hour workdays behind the wheel every year. Gas won’t stay at the current level so we need to look at developing more sustainable communities.

San Francisco area architect Michelle Kaufmann & Kelly Melia-Teevan came up with a top 10 (sorry Letterman) EcoPrinciples for Communities.

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It’s not hard to design a suitably cold and moldy home for the family you hate. First, orient your mansion East/West. Make it narrow. This minimizes any chance that sunshine might pierce your Southern flank.

Then pick the stingiest windows you can find and instruct your architect to use them sparingly. Avoid any use of windows on the Southern elevation. One, at the most.

That will keep the sun out.

Sunshine warms homes for free. That’s socialism. Real men use fossil fuel for the daunting task of warming up a frigid family. There’s no free lunch. Tough sh*t.

And when the fossil fuels run out? It will never happen. Real men will dig more up from under somebody.

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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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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Mostly when we talk about LEED certified buildings we think about office buildings or government centers but here we scope out another first. The Advanced Data Center building in Sac-town already became the first data center to be pre-certified LEED Platinum. Surprised? You bet. Most people think that these data centers with all of the computers are huge energy hogs, and they’re right. That’s why the firm had to work extra hard to create efficient cooling systems. They designed a cooling system called an “air-side economizer” that reduces energy use through careful airflow, and water-flow design and to utilize outside air because the temperature and humidity reamin in the correct range for 75% of the year.

Besides being so cool with the air side efficiency, we like their H2O technology savings effort. They utilize recycled (grey) water from a local municipal water system and captured roof rainwater for landscaping, restrooms and cooling tower backup. They even went so far as to install low- and even better no-water fixtures in restrooms.

Someone was either thinking about LEED points, just doing the right thing or perhaps tax breaks but the fact that the ADC built the location on a brownfield in the former McClellan Air Force Base shows some real foresight and green thinking. It didn’t even scare them that the site contains polluted groundwater 350 feet below the building.

Perhaps the military should take a clue from companies such as ADC when considering how to use (or abuse) the land that they seem to be protecting.

It’s a Bright New Day for Home Solar

Hidden in the fine print of the massive Wall Street Bailout bill that was signed into law last week was a tax credit extension that had alternative energy companies, especially makers of home solar systems, dancing with joy. Instead of losing the federal tax credit at the end of the year, which seemed likely until Wall Street forced Congress to stay in session longer, consumers who install photovoltaic systems will now receive far greater tax savings than they currently enjoy. To put it bluntly, the federal government is willing to pay 30% of your cost to go solar. For a description of the roller-coaster ride that these tax credits have taken over the last few months, read my post from last week, Senate Bailout Plan Could be Boon for Alternative Energies, Home Solar.

Now that the bill has become law, it’s time to reassess the overall costs and return on investment for a home photovoltaic system. Because of their up-front expense, Photovoltaic systems are often viewed as a luxury for the wealthy. And with the down economy it is possible that even these impressive tax credits won’t cause a spike in the purchase of photovoltaic systems. Convincing someone to invest tens of thousands of dollars in something that may take a decade to pay itself off is a hard sell. Let the hard sell begin: Read the rest of this entry »

Across the arctic and subarctic, many native tribes still occupy their traditional lands — but most do so in decidedly non-traditional ways. Western products of every description have been adopted by northern peoples, but one of the products that is least suited to the northern climate has also become one of the most widespread: wood frame housing.

All of the materials necessary to build a wood frame house must be shipped into subarctic regions. Once built, a house in the far north must be able to withstand frequent high winds, and be extremely well insulted. Often, the fuel necessary to heat the home must also be shipped in. With fuel costs spiraling ever upward, the worsening of an already severe housing shortage is causing subarctic communities to explore alternative housing forms. Read the rest of this entry »

The AIA and dwell Magazine have announced the winners for their “How Green Are You?” contest. (For background on the contest, see “The AIA and Dwell Magazine Team Up to Spread the Word about Sustainability,”  published on Green Building Elements last April.)

The contest recognized affordable home designs that achieve sustainability in creative ways.  Juror Robert M. Rogers, FAIA, of Roger Marvel Architects states in a press release on the AIA website, “We were especially intrigued with projects that executed beautiful design ideas and were inherently green by concept. From small ideas for the kitchen, to a way of life, the winners embodied these principles.” Read the rest of this entry »

Usually when we are talking about plumbing fixtures for green building we are dealing with something that conserves water. But some plumbing devices can contribute to energy savings, as well.

When you are in the shower, the hot water from the shower strikes your body and transfers some heat before it falls away. But most of the heat in that water simply goes down the drain. Reportedly, 80 to 90 percent of the energy used to heat water for the shower is lost down the drain.

A drain water heat recovery unit (DWHR) transfers heat from water running down the drain to cold water going to the water heater. This preheats the water so that the heater is starting with warmer water, and thus needs less energy. A DWHR unit can save as much as 25-30% of the energy used for water heating, and payback periods range from 3 to 7 years, depending on use patterns.
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