Green Building Elements

Above, creative architecture student Magnus Larsson shares his incredible idea to help settlers along the harsh Sahara desert. His proposed process of re-structuring sand is a building material process already researched for helping strengthen earthquake prone land with sustainable bacteria that turns shifting sand into a solid mass.

Looks like Larsson is creating sandcastles out of desert land. Brilliant! His Holcim Foundation winning proposal could very well transform life in that region as the Sahara green wall shelterbelt is planted across the African continent. The possibilities are endless as the quality of life will improve for so many along the Sahara. 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are many concerns about how we can prevent global warming. In every industry, whether it be transportation, agriculture, or the construction industry, there are questions about how to prevent global warming.

By building better designed, more energy-efficient, and natural homes, global warming will become less of a threat. One of the most basic necessities lacking in conventional homes is sufficient insulation.

Proper insulation will greatly reduce the need for constant home heating and cooling (and in turn, fossil fuels), as insulation will help maintain the temperature of a space. Straw bales stand out for their excellent insulative value, and for the fact that they are a totally natural and biodegradable material with minimal embodied energy.

Within the realm of natural building, many individuals choose straw bale house construction for these reasons.

Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to home insulation and energy efficiency, a bale of straw may seem like something only the Amish do, but in fact, straw bale insulation has turned out to be an excellent green building element.

In the class of unusual home building elements, is straw really a far fetched concept for insulation? Don’t worry, the big bad wolf is not going to blow this energy efficient home over. Straw bale homes are ultra sturdy, surprisingly fire resistant, and excellent at controlling the temperature in your home.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Fast becoming staples of the green building industry are pre-assembled structural insulated panels, or SIPs, which replace conventional framing and offer greater energy efficiency, reduced lumber usage, and quicker construction.  SIPs are polystyrene foam sandwiched between oriented strand boards that provide structural framing, insulation, and exterior sheathing in one piece.  They can be used as floors, walls, and roofs and provide much greater energy efficiency than insulation in stud walls with an R-value improvement of 15% to 40%.  The oriented strand boards are made from wood of fast growing trees and emit very low levels of urea-formaldehyde.  The polystyrene foam can also consist of recycled content. Read the rest of this entry »

Follow Philly’s Postgreen as they attempt to build a modern green home for $100,000.

Just over a year ago, Philadelphia developer Postgreen undertook an ambitious project, to build a modern green home for $100,000.  Not only are they seeking to shatter the myth that green homes are unaffordable, but they are documenting every step on their site, 100KHouse.com.  Located in the New Kensington area of Philadelphia, the house will be a roughly 1,000 square foot two bedroom one and a half bath modern style home – and will not be a prefab; rather it is being built from the ground up according to LEED for Homes guidelines using such affordable energy saving materials as SIPs (structurally insulated panels.)

Documenting the progress of the 100K House are Postgreen President Chad Ludeman and PR Director Nic Darling.  Both are convinced that affordable green building is not only possible, but necessary to bring about true environmental change.  Their blog posts are not limited to the progress of the 100K House; they write about a range of interesting green topics. Read the rest of this entry »

A shift in locale (from San Francisco to San Jose) did nothing to change the energy and the recent West Coast Green. As we any conference we tried to see as much new buildings materials, spy as much green washing and attend as many seminars as possible without suffering from green overload.

After scoring the main trade floor, we hit the Lawrence Group designed and SG Blocks built, Harbinger House, which impressed us more than last years version (despite the fact of its inside location) with its innovative use of shipping containers. Because we export hardly anything anymore, shipping companies have find new uses for these 8,000-pound containers, so rather than ship them back empty they sold them and here they built a 1700 sq. ft two-story house.

The simple yet functional interior fit right to our liking with Vetrazzo countertops, and bathroom vanities, and the Verve lighting control system. The Agilewaves caught everyone’s interest with their web-based Resource Monitor, that monitors electric, gas and water usage in real-time, while automatically calculating carbon footprint. To be honest, we did catch one showerhead that appeared to not be low flow but if it is we want one for our shower.

For the seminars, the always engaging and entertaining Hunter Lovins along with William Hayward led our favorite seminar as they covered The Business Case for Building the Green Way with humor and aplomb. While most everyone continues to question the price of green building, Hunter runs the other way to show the ultimate cost of NON-green building. If you don’t believe us then check out her presentation which she assures us will be uploaded on her website any day now.

Who wouldn’t appreciate Hunter’s humor while the conference center room’s ineffective and noisy HVAC system blasted out wafts of noise cool air? We do.