Green Building Elements

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…

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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

The deep Butterfly Roof

The traditional gabled roof that we are all familiar with was engineered to slough off snowfall. But in an uncertain post peak oil future of possible energy shortages and water shortages, more and more houses are showing up with roof-shapes engineered to harvest their own rainwater, and support solar power generation.

This creates a butterfly roof, the opposite of the traditional gable. The very post peak oil Kangaroo House in increasingly drought ridden Australia has the same distinctive roof shape, for the same reasons: it acts as a huge funnel for rainwater, which can then be harvested.

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VisionDivision has a very innovative entry in the Design for the Children competition to design a sustainable and culturally responsible pediatric clinic in the hostile environment of the desert of East Africa. Here is what inspired their design:

Says VisionDivision; “When we saw this competition, we felt urged to create a proposal:

Insufficient water is one of the most severe problems in rural Africa. For many families it is extremely time consuming to collect and can easily start conflicts between…
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Even in a Greencentric city like Berkeley, locals and Bay Area visitors would be Green with envy when they see the just opened David Brower Center. It feels healthy just to walk through the Green down-to-the-bones building which combines advanced technology along with simple recycled materials.

When entering for their housewarming party we had a difficult time not noticing the soaring concrete walls which made us think more dot com than gallery. The fact that in creating a building with an oh- so-feathery carbon footprint (when compared to most structures) Principal Architect, Daniel Solomon included up to 70 percent slag in those walls. Read the rest of this entry »

How would you design your ultimate green home? My green home is one that incorporates Earth, Wind, and Fire!

Think of what technology might make possible in the next few decades and how we can use it to build homes that have a positive impact on the environment.

The growing awareness of the fact that buildings are responsible for 39% of our energy consumption, helps explain why green building and energy efficiency at home is one of the most pervasive trends in the construction industry — even as the economy struggles and home-building is at its lowest level in a generation.

Lets take a journey through our imagination and envision the green homes of tomorrow.

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If it works for one San Fran hotel then it must work for another. No, we’re not talking about more upscale mini bar items but Greening a hotel. In this case, the Orchard Garden Hotel’s (which garnered LEED-NC certification) sister property the Orchard Hotel just nabbed LEED-EB certification.

The Orchard represents San Francisco’s only hotel to earn this honor, the Orchard Hotel is the second hotel in California and fourth hotel in the world with this certification. The inspiration from these green hotels comes from its 85-year-old owner, Mrs. S.C. Huang, who has pushed her environmental agenda and created more environmentally safe and sustainable hotels after the untimely cancer-related deaths of three family members. Read the rest of this entry »

Building with reclaimed building materials is a great way to reduce the environmental footprint of a building. LEED and GreenPoints both award points for use of reclaimed materials. However, some reclaimed materials can be radioactive.

Fly ash is the material left over from burning coal. A waste product with little other use, it is sometimes added to concrete or bricks. However, if the original coal contained radioactive isotopes, those isotopes will be greatly concentrated in the ash.

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We recently tested several new homes for formaldehyde in the air. The newest home, advertised as a “green” home, had 300 ppb of formaldehyde. Children in homes with only 30 ppb can have decreased lung function. Between 60 ppb and 120 ppb, children are more likely to have asthma and chronic bronchitis. At 100 ppb, most adults experience eye, nose, and throat irritation.

Of homes that were less than 2 years old, every home we tested had at least 100 ppb of formaldehyde. The newer homes had 200 - 300 ppb.

The 300 ppb concentration we found in the newest home is equal to the 15-minute Short Term Exposure Limit (STEL) for occupational exposures. A worker in that home should wear a respirator to remain inside the building for more than 15 minutes. An employer that exposes workers to 300 ppb of formaldehyde should have a Hazard Communication Program to inform workers about chemical hazards and ways to avoid illness.

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Last fall, Cathy Woods removed her Jupurana Bordeaux granite counters because they were radioactive.  She did not want uranium ore in her kitchen, and she did not want to breathe the radon gas emitted by the granite.

The showroom that sold Cathy her granite had a new shipment of Jupurana Bordeaux around the same time.  That stone was more radioactive than the granite they sold Cathy. However, sales staff told customers their granite was no more radioactive than soil or water.

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