GreenGeezer

Mixed-Use, Affordable, Sustainable Housing in Calgary, CA

The latest issue of Eco-Structure magazine features Vento Residences, designed by Busby Perkins + Will.  Calgary, Alberta demolished its general hospital and decided to create a green, pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented urban community where the hospital used to be.  The community is certified LEED Platinum, and the homes are performing 44% better than Canada's Model National Energy Code.  Green features include:

• increased density in the inner city and surrounding the public transut
• pedestrian oriented design
• live-work units
• solar orientation
  
• low maintenance vegetation
• construction waste management plans
• water efficient irrigation
• indoor/outdoor bicycle parking
• low volume toilets and shower heads

Affordable units are included in the mix, as are small, local businesses on ground level Wouldn't it be great if Chicago decided to initiate a development like this out of the hulk that is Cook County Hospital?

New Green Building Resources to Limit Buildings' Embedded Energy

Today's New York Times is worth checking out for its coverage of the following new green building resources and materials, and more:

• Transmaterial.net highlights new green building technologies and materials each week
• Calera, a California startup, is developing a concrete that can trap carbon dioxide.
• EcoRock, a zero-carbon drywall from Serious Materials.

It's exciting to see that the building industry is trying to address the issue of buildings' carbon footprint.

The Heart of a Green Home: The HVAC System

Bloomington Hollyhocks
Originally uploaded by cgulyas2002

We are finalizing plans for our high-performance home in Bloomington, Indiana, and received this email from our Energy Modeler and Home Engineer, Marko Spiegel.

David,
I'm enclosing a number of pdf files, some of them  RemRate summaries, and one of them my summary.  Here is the conclusion:

a.  All electric at $0.065 is the most economical way to heat and equip your house - least capital and least annual cost

b.  air source heat pumps will do the trick and all alternatives and not economically justifiable - if you guys were economists - not passionate promoters of sustainability

c.  The #1 energy saving measure you guys do is dramatically lowering all loads - therefore all paybacks of high tech solutions look really questionable

d.  Of all the renewable energy options and combinations the ground source heat pump in combination with 2.5kW Solar PV is of course the best - it achieves HERS17!!! - and lots of bragging rights

e.  Air source heat pump and 2.5kW Solar PV get you at least to HERS 29- not bad at all
If you asked me what I would do given the major difference in cost:  I would choose the simplest HVAC system using air source heat pump to start out with and add PV once the house is complete and you guys are comfortable in your situation.  An on-demand electrical water heater from Stiebel Eltron costs max. $500.-/piece.   PV will address ALL your loads and keeps your systems simple.  Simple is a big part of our design goal."

What combination would YOU choose?

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.

"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.

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.

Aging Cheese in a Solar-Powered Formworks "Cave"

The Chicago Reader ran a story last week on Willi Lehner's Wisconsin cheese operation.  His cheeses are aged in an underground building which stays at a uniform temperature of between 51 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The small amount of heat and energy he needs comes from solar panels and a wind turbine.  The structure, from Formworks, cost $130,000 but he expects it to pay for itself in 15 years, just from the money he saves on energy.  Lehner's cheese is highly prized and the New York Times   referred to him as....

"....something of a local legend, the off-the-grid rock star of the Wisconsin artisanal cheese movement. Lehner practices his freestyle alchemy in nearby Blue Mounds, within an underground cheese-curing vault that he excavated from the land. Inside, the beautiful ceilings worthy of an Italian chapelare filled with shelf after wooden shelf of cheese, from complex, English-style bandaged cheddars to the funky Earth Schmier, which Lehner spritzes with a brine culture derived from soil taken from his woods."

Smart Home Exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry

The Museum of Science & Industry is hosting a Smart Home Exhibit featuring a house designed by Michelle Kauffman, whose GlideHouse prefab home design we have written about before.  This new design is an attempt to make her prefabs more affordable.  The entire house is contained within the grounds of the museum.   It is a three-story loft plan with a small footprint and a green roof, among other green features, including:

• Daylighting
• Energy-efficient heating ventilation and AC systems
• Eco-friendly building components
• Rain water capture for plant irrigation
• Grey water recycling for toilets
• Recycled furniture and materials

The  Museum is open every day except Christmas day, and its  hours are M-S 9:30-4, Sunday 11-4.