Green Building Elements

Sometimes being green means taking on the “less is more” philosophy. Such would be the case with the Cavallo Lodge over in Sausalito. For the recently opened lodge, about half of the current lodge rooms they converted from the previous officers quarters, military barracks and the like. But don’t think of this place like Full Metal Jacket but rather Organic Cotton Robe.

We visited there a few months ago for the Going Green conference but we didn’t get a chance to survey the property much. This time, we got to stay over and even check out the spa. (Life is tough) The lodge, waiting for LEED Silver certification, offers new rooms and the classic ones. Even though the new ones offer radiant heating and the hot water comes via tankless water heaters, which reduce the energy consumed by those dinosaur era traditional water heaters. They installed photo-voltaic panels on 12 of the 14 new buildings’ south-facing, standing seam metal roofs which produce about 75 percent of the electricity necessary to run the buildings.

We cozied up in one of the existing building rooms which offer more charm (like the tine roof ceilings and the detailed antique radiator). By reusing the existing buildings, they already considered their carbon footprint. We can only be impressed by the fact that the brains and money behind the lodge used nearly 100% of the building shells and retained or repurposed roughly 75% of the building cores. We applaud these efforts as they not only extend the life cycle of existing building stock, conserve resources, and reduce waste but it also retains cultural and historical resources.

Although we couldn’t see the insulation we knew that they used blue jean insulation in the contemporary lodging and a portion in the Healing Arts Center. Speaking of the Spa, they constructed the floors and ceilings from rapidly renewable materials such as bamboo, wool or cork. Besides green building attributes they offer creativity by repurposing plastic dry cleaning bags (that come off site) for spa guests to take home their wet bathing suits.

Almost no other plastic can be seen on property and the staff couldn’t be nicer (as well as pretty well informed about the green aspects. Now if they could only get rid of the few incandescent bulbs (in the spa and the lodge) then we would be that much more pleased.

Photo by Kodiak Greenwood

As Bugs Bunny used to say “What’s up Doc?” In the newly opened chiropractic office the reply would be “green”, as in green building. Yes, green building continues its march into the homes and offices across America and some doctors realize that sustainable interiors means healthy patients (or at least healthier). Take for instance, the new Executive Express Chiropractic designed by Martinkovic Milford Architects and built by Peacock Construction. A small place to be sure but the designers make good use of space to mention the healthy additions.

When we entered, we couldn’t help but notice the curved leather wall. We even stuck our grills right against the wall to smell the leather. Yep, it smells like leather. It actually is. But the green minded architects didn’t lose their minds, they used EcoDomo, which uses real leather scraps from shoes, and other leather manufacturing facilities, then grind it into shreds. They use water and other natural binding ingredients (mostly natural rubber and acacia wood bark) then eventually deliver them with a sticky peel-off back that requires no off-gassing adhesives.

We never claimed to be interior decorators but we can appreciate the Maya Romanoff paper wall covering that smartens up the treatment area. The covering looks even smarter when considering that it comes by way of stamping rayon fibers on wet wood pulp, which produce an attractive wall covering that displays both texture and depth.  The wall covering comes from rapidly renewable materials, particularly Mulberry, and is 100% biodegradable.

The designers added several other green elements including:  Benjamin Moore Eco-Spec paint, the treatment room dividers come from the 3-form “full circle” line that uses a form of fair trade for the families in Nepal who helped raise the silkworms to create the striking panels, and even the artwork and mirror framing employs FSC certified wood.

One thing kind of bugs us. The marble countertops and shelves come from EuroStone which create these products from and combo of 90% recycled marble chips and a polyester resin as binding agent. Excluding the resin as a natural element, it’s walking a pretty thin line to claim that using marble chips from quarries would be considered green. If they didn’t mine the resource in the first place then no chips would exist.

Who’s next in the waiting room?

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

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.

Up here in the Bay Area where people are crazy about their wine and their green building, Gonzalez winery decided to combine both. No, the Monterey County based isn’t the first local winery to go solar but when this 170,000 square foot system gets up and running it will represent the largest solar installation at a winery.

The 1.2 megawatt solar system, built by Pacific Power Management, will provide about 50 percent of the winery’s total energy and putting those numbers into environmental benefits will be equal to planting 2500 acres of trees o put another way taking 2,083 cars off the road.

Even though we applaud the massive move toward solar we’d like to see more wineries move toward other sustainable aspects and not just energy related ones. We don’t expect all wineries to start creating organic wines, however several wineries have moved to biodynamic practices or even grow organic grapes. Some wineries continue the sustainable movement with social justice practices such as maintaining a fairly paid, year round labor force instead of hiring lower paid seasonal workers.

We’re all for the tipping a few glasses of solar produced wine but that’s only the first step in bringing a winery to the next level.

This post, like the masses of crowds, makes its way inside the just opened Academy of Sciences Museum. And why not as the Museum just became the largest LEED Platinum building in the world as well as the world’s most sustainable museum building. Take that Louvre.

As a Green building, the designers highlighted the new qualities but the also the previously used materials. What could be more famous then the seahorse railing and the colorful original tiles that surround the old favorite alligator swamp exhibit? Both the unique decorations are back. Okay, we’ll get to the bigger stuff.

One of the biggest challenges for this building was to optimize the natural light from the 200 some odd roof skylights to reach the living rainforest and coral reef. Unfortunately no LEED for Aquariums exists so the designers had balance radical ideas with practicality because they could take a chance that the wildlife wouldn’t survive.

The new aquariums displays contain twice as much water as the original, however they use less potable water because of filtration and recycling systems that purify water piped in from the Pacific Ocean. They purify the nitrate wastes using natural systems, ensuring that aquarium water can be recycled and reused. We also liked that they used 50% recycled content for the aquarium’s concrete.

Of course, everything can’t be perfectly green in a building. We cornered Water Planet designer Tom Hennes who (together with Urban A&O) designed the exhibit’s innovative wall treatments, about things that he would have liked to changed in regard to making the aquariums more green he said,  “It’s hard to live without fiberglass.”

Even with the fiberglass we’re happy to be living with the fishes in this extraordinary green icon.

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.

It sounds like a war effort or some great new candy bar, but it has been ten years in the making. Yes, the Academy of Sciences museum finally opens in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. We’re totally jazzed to have this Green building icon finally opening up, with some of the old exhibits, the completely updated planetarium and the sustainably based dining options by Charles Phan and Loretta Keller. While most of the advance crowd marveled at the Africa Hall, the various fish aquariums, even the albino crocodile, we turned our attention to the building itself. Yes, a LEED Platinum structure that supposedly marks the largest LEED Platinum building in the U.S. With a building so large, we decided to get cute (or maybe efficient) and do an outside and inside post. And because humans spend 90 percent of their lives indoors, we’ll start outside for a change. Well, actually upside.

Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane no it’s a living roof. Not just a Green roof with scattered plants but one covered with 1.7 million native plants. Architect Renzo Piano designed the roof as an homage to the hills of SF. Even more creative is how the plants keep from slip sliding off the hills. Rana Creek worked with Piano to use 50,000 porous, biodegradable trays (called a BioTray®), that they made from tree sap and coconut husks as containers for the vegetation to keep the little green guys in place.

In addition to the natural habitat created by the roof, the roof reduces the Urban Heat Island effect and reduces the building’s temperature by an average of 10 degrees versus a nasty old standard roof. Additionally, the roof’s cistern system will captures 90-98 percent rainwater, with 3.5 million gallons of rainwater per year expected to be absorbed by the roof.

With all the time we spent outside the museum it’s a wonder we didn’t get sunburned. But of course we used sustainably concocted sunscreen. Next museum post, we’ll take a green look at the interior.

Sprawl is a constant issue at the outside periphery of every city in the country. Although matters have abated temporarily in the midst of the housing and mortgage crunch, new construction continues to decimate the countryside at further distances away from the city centers. However, the state of California is weighing a measure in the state legislature that might help curtail the growth of exurban sprawl developments.

The extension of suburbs further and further out from the core of businesses and services not only consumes acres of land, with its attendant loss of woods, fields, wetlands, farmland, and animal habitat, but it also requires miles of pavement, and the attendant infrastructure (sewers, phone and power lines, etc.) to support the new development. Residents of these displaced communities are forced to rely on cars for more and more of their access to various services and amenities, and very often travel greater distances to work as well as other destinations. This increases both the consumption of fuel resources and the pollution caused from the extra travel. Read the rest of this entry »

The air is going to get a little bit cleaner come January, 2009 - and that has nothing to do with a new presidential administration.  The California Air Resources Board’s dramatic Air Toxic Control Measure known as “the CARB rule” will go into effect January 1 and will, among other things, mandate a reduction in formaldehyde levels in composite wood products like particle board, hardwood plywood, and medium density fiberboard.  Manufacturers of composite wood products have less than four months to adapt to the new requirements or they will be unable to manufacture or sell their products in California.

Formaldehyde came into the public consciousness this past Winter as trailers used for Hurricane Katrina victims were found to contain dangerous levels - click here for those findings.  Urea-formaldehyde is a volatile organic compound that has been linked to health issues ranging from persistent eye and skin irritation to asthma to, in extremely high levels, cancer.  It has been practically banned in Europe, Japan, and Canada.  The United States Green Building Council awards LEED credits for buildings that have eliminated added urea-formaldehyde.  The inclusion of the word “added” is due to the fact that small levels of formaldehyde occur naturally in wood.  Urea-formaldehyde is used in composite wood as a drying agent for glues and adhesives, significantly speeding up the manufacturing process of the composite wood.  For this reason, non-formaldehyde composite woods will come at a higher price.  Add in the increased demand due to the CARB rule and the current limited supply of formaldehyde-free composite wood and we could see increased prices across the board for composite wood products like furniture, cabinets, moldings and millwork, doors, and many other products.  Read the rest of this entry »