GreenGeezer

Lifecycle Building Challenge Seeks to Shape the Future of Green Building

This is the second year of the Lifecycle Building Challenge, which awards prizes for innovative projects, designs, or ideas that reduce or conserve construction and demolition materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.   Local building materials use and designing for adaptability and disassembly are rewarded. It has categories for professionals, students, and a "people's choice" category, and is awarded to both buildings and building materials.  Haworth won the "People's Choice" category in 2007 for its successful "unbuilding" of its corporate headquarters, during which a whopping 75% of the materials were donated, re-installed, or recycled.  Shown here is the Bioshelter Leaf Project:

"This structure is a prototype for a studio, office, cabin, greenhouse, workshop, garden shed and Bioshelter. It may be disassembled and re-built at another location or dismantled for recovery of components. There exists a full size prototype with an opaque, insulated roof."

Entry guidelines can be found here.

Denmark Certifies Its First Passive House

TreeHugger reports that Denmark has just certified its first "Passive House", designed by Danish architect  Olav Langenkamp. The Passivhaus methodology originated in Germany, where thousands have been built, and features the following, according to the Passivhaus Institute:

• Compact form and good insulation
• Southern orientation and shade considerations
• Energy-efficient window glazing and frames (triple-pane)
• Very tight building envelope
• Passive preheating of the air through heat exchange
• Highly efficient (80% or more) heat recovery from exhaust air
  using an air-to-air heat exchanger
• Hot water supply using regenerative energy
  sources: Solar collectors or heat pumps provide energy for hot water.
• Energy-saving household appliances: Low energy refrigerators, stoves, freezers, lamps, washers, dryers, etc. are indispensable in a passive house.

The resulting structure requires very little additional heat on the coldest day of the year, typically a "spritz" of natural gas or a small bit of electricity.  All of this is modeled using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP). The Passive House Institute of the U.S. (PHIUS) is working, under the leadership of Professor Katrin Klingenberg, to build awareness of this design among U.S. green building enthusiasts.  The Smith House, below, was built in Urbana, Illinois by E-colab, to demonstrate this building method. 

Dream Green Homes Provides Green Home Designs & Plans

Green Dream Homes  is a companion site to Green Home Building, and both sites offer great background information on the typology of sustainable homes.   If you are looking for green home designs and plans, however, start with Green Dream Homes, where you'll find plans for:

• Conventional, Rounded, Earth-Sheltered, and Organic homes
• Earth, Wood, Straw, Stone, Manufactured, and Lightweight Concrete materials
• Residential, Studio, Greenhouse, Garage, Doghouse, and Cold Storage functional plans

Whether just dreaming, or starting to actually plan your green home, you'll find plenty of information here, mostly leaning toward the unconventional.

Image Credit:  Ecological Architecture P.C.

Water: The New "Liquid Gold"

It hasn't escaped the attention of oil man T. Boone Pickens and his company, Mesa Water, that water is the new "liquid gold".  He is buying up the water rights for land above the immense Ogallala Aquifer, and plans to sell the water back to San Antonio, among other cities.   So, even though we live a long way from Texas, we thought maybe it was time to start paying attention to water conservation and how buildings can use the  rain that falls on them.  We rushed online to join the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (ARCSA) and plan to attend its rainwater harvesting workshop to be held in Salem, Indiana on July 14th.  We'll report back on our findings. Here's information from Chicago Rain Barrel.                            Image Credit: Chicago Rain Barrel.com

Changing Gears Bicycle Tour to Document Sustainability

Just found out about a cross-country sustainability bicycle tour underway called Changing Gears.  Melissa Henige and Andy Davis will document their trip online, as a movie, and as a book.   They will be looking for ways that people in the U.S. are incorporating sustainability into their lives, and interviewing interesting people as they go.  From their home in Bloomington, Indiana  they will travel all the way to California.  Check out their blog here.

Photo Credit: Andy Davis

"Green Homes for Sale" Pick of the Week

This beautiful straw-bale and solar home in Tennessee uses passive solar design elements in the large, shaded, wraparound porch and large overhangs to provide cooling shade.  The floor is laid on six inches of styrofoam insulation, so you can walk around in your bare feet all year long.

"The straw walls are approximately 2 ft thick which gives it the super insulated R-VALUE of R-55. The ceiling is insulated with fiberglass to a depth of 3 ft for an R-VALUE of R-100. This is what is known as a super insulated home and is extremely energy efficient. All windows are vinyl double pane argon gas filled to protect from ultra-violet damage and have low E tinting for energy efficiency."  The house is located near Nashville, on a hill in the woods.

Solar Verde Plans Zero Energy Homes in Chicago

Solar Verde, a development planned for South Chicago, IL will build Zero Energy Homes that will reduce energy costs for homeowners by 60-100%.  The partners in this enterprise include PureEnergy Alternatives, a company in Northbrook, Illinois.   Looking at the renderings, it is clear that the project plans to use thin-film technology in the form of solar roof shingles:

"These shingles contain solar cells; each cell will produce electric power when exposed to sunlight. These cells are manufactured in a high-tech process similar to that which is used to make computer chips. Solar shingles have no moving parts, are very reliable, and have a long life." (from the website)

The combination of solar roof shingles and super-insulated walls will create homes that are not energy consumers but energy generators.

Agro-Housing Wins Sustainable Housing Prize

Agro-Housing, designed by Knafo Klimor Architects, and winner of the 2nd International Architecture Competition for Sustainable Housing, has been designed to meet the needs of the rapidly urbanizing cities of China.   Graywater is recycled for watering plants, which are planted along the side of the building in vertical arrays.

"The concept of Agro-Housing is a new urban and social vision that will address problems of chaotic urbanization by creating a new order in the city and more specifically, in the housing environment.  Agro-Housing is a program that combines a high-rise apartment complex with a vertical greenhouse within the same building."  (from Rossi Organic Light Sculptures.)  More information at the Living Steel website.

Vision of the Future? Gated Communities in India Pay to Waste Water

An article in today's New York Times by Somini Sengupta provides a grim view of where we might end up in the United States, if we don't begin to manage our water resources for the common good.  Because the Indian government has not acted to provide water for its citizens or to require sensible water usage, those with enough money are setting up their homes in gated enclaves where they are allowed to use as much water and other resources as they wish, while outside the walls, the poor struggle in slums without running water and electricity.

"These enclaves have emerged on the outskirts of prospering, overburdened cities, from this frontier town next to the capital to the edges of seam-splitting Bangalore. They allow their residents to buy their way out of the hardships that afflict vast multitudes in this country of more than one billion. And they reflect the desires of India’s small but growing ranks of wealthy professionals, giving them Western amenities along with Indian indulgences: an army of maids and chauffeurs live in a vast shantytown across the street."

Image Credit: Ruth Fremson, New York Times

Folding Greenhouse Saves Space for Urban Gardeners

This folding greenhouse by Daniel Schipper , a Dutch designer is a creative solution for space-challenged urban gardeners.  Via Treehugger.  The Dutch are so creative about energy and water management and making do with small spaces: think windmills and canals.