Green Building Elements

Did you know that if you install a Biomass Stove – wood, pellets, etc. that you can nab a  30% tax credit ($1,500  max) up until 2010? Who knows that homeowners can get a 30% tax break for installing Solar Hot Water Heating until  2016? Maybe the new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) which was signed into law by President Obama in February 2009 isn’t as complicated as the IRS tax code but does anyone really want to delve into the 400 pages of legislation to figure all the ins and outs about how to qualify for the green tax credits available to homeowners?

In a Cliff’s Notes version of the myriad incentives, rebates, and tax incentives GREENandSAVE has created a Federal Tax Incentive Decoder and condensed the material to 11 bite sized pages. Best of all, this resource does not cost a dime and can be downloaded at: http://www.greenandsave.com/homecheckup/free_federal_tax_incentive_decoder

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If every building had a white roof, we would be able to cool the surrounding areas. That is the reasoning behind a California law about to go into effect next month requiring light reflective roofs on all new buildings. It is already the law for new flat roofs here.

Here, architect Richard Meier and his partner Michael Palladino have apparently created a design to go one further. It’s entirely white; roofs, walls, and interiors.

So this luxury design of a cool  and airy Southern California beach house is glamorous and climate friendly.

Well, no. The McMansion-sized size of the thing at  4,280-sq.-ft is not so planet friendly; because it takes more energy to heat and cool a larger space. But this house would be well suited for a ground heat exchange to passively heat and cool itself with 55 degree air cooled from 10  feet under the ground.

As architects in California get closer to 2020, they will need to think more about passive cooling and heating and zero energy houses, as that will be the law by 2020. All new building must be zero energy by then.

Incorporate solar roofing on the white roof, and this could be a zero energy house.

The blue of a solar roof would visually extend right out to the ocean. (And conceal that horrible mess of  mechanical contraptions on that roof.) White elastomeric cool roof paint under the solar panels would help cool the modules making them more efficient on hot days.

But are architects thinking about these things?

With 2020 almost upon us:  “The beams at the roof, located above the horizontal framing, express the structural rhythm and layering of components,” explains the architect. “This cadence is repeated with the joinery of the painted aluminum exterior wall panels and modular windows. The mass of the exterior plaster walls are juxtaposed to the transparent glazed facades, creating a mosaic of layered materials.”

Blah, blah, blah.

Via Digs Digs
Images: Scott Frances/Esto

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.

• » See also: Discounted Home Energy Audits in San Francisco Bay Area with 1BOG.org
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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:

• Vented or porous exterior cladding
• Air cavity (a few inches of depth is sufficient)
• Drainage layer on support wall
• Rigid, water-resistant, airtight, support wall

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

Earthen plasters provide a beautiful, soft, and an organic finishing touch to your home, whether they be a straw bale house, cob building, wood cabin, or even plain old sheetrock walls. A simple natural plaster can be mixed from ingredients straight from the earth, including sand, clay, and fibers such as straw, cattail fluff, or even cow manure.

It’s a simple process and a creative one, too: you can let your imagination shine through earthen plaster with its vast sculptability and its variety of application.

Read on to learn more about making and applying earthen plasters!

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At some point in the useful life of most houses, the roof needs to be replaced. An EPA report prepared in the late 1990s calculated that almost 4 million homes per year have their asphalt roofs replaced, leading to the generation of 6.4 million tons of asphalt roofing waste. (Table A-8) Because of this, roofing materials are one of the larger contributors to landfill construction debris. And most of the materials used in making shingles (the prevalent form of roofing used in North America) are not readily recycled into other useful forms, leading to a stream of materials filling up the landfills.

Roofs are subject to extremes of temperature, receiving the full exposure of the sun as well as suffering from the extremes of cold. No other part of the average home sees a wider cycle of temperatures. Precipitation and wind also provide a constant eroding force that wears at the roof and gradually contributes to breaking it down. Because of this exposure to the elements, roofs are typically elements that need to be replaced several times over the life of a building.

Are there greener options than a basic shingle replacement?

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