Archive for the ‘Eco-Friendly Landscaping’ Category
September 29th, 2008
Playa: A LEED Platinum Home in a McMansion Neighborhood
Stumble it!
Some diehard environmentalists consider eco-mansions an oxymoron at best, with militant types even setting fire to greenwashed mega-homes! But eco-mansion haters sometimes ignore an inconvenient truth: Huge homes are constantly getting built, and most of these are anything but green.
That’s the impetus behind “Playa” (above), a case study green home being built in Westchester, Calif., by Go Green Construction. The house, admittedly, will be huge — 4,300 square feet huge, to be exact — and located in a neighborhood that’s not particularly public transit-friendly. On the other hand, Playa’s also pre-rated for LEED platinum, serving as a self-described “living laboratory of green design” in a neighborhood full of ungreen McMansions.
The rooftop view from Playa (left) alone shows the need for green building in this neighborhood, where smoggy haze floats above multi-story single family homes. In contrast to the massive footprints of its neighbors, Playa will boast a full solar array, graywater recycling system, living walls, and smart house automation which allows residents to control the power of the house remotely.
When I stopped by to see the house-in-making last week, I could already see how Playa will be lit up with natural sunlight from the atrium. I also saw proof that Playa’s building materials really are green — as evidenced by the FSC certification stamps on the wood!
All the green features incorporated into Playa are enough to inspire any eco-builder: High efficiency spray foam insulation, low-E glazing double pane windows, Energy Star rated appliances, tankless water heating system, and an elecric car recharging station are just some of the eco-extras to admire. And of course, Playa’s low-VOC painted rooms will be lit with LED and CFL bulbs. Outside, a drought tolerant and native plant landscape will complement the permeable pavement.
Go Green Construction also took care to make sure the old materials didn’t go straight to the landfills. The previous structure was carefully deconstructed (above); 95% of materials were reused or recycled with the help of Habitat for Humanity and other organizations and companies.
Playa will be completed in early 2009, when it’ll open for tours and workshops to educate the public and industry professionals about the feasibility of building green. I plan to visit again in a few months to see firsthand all the state of the art eco-tech appliances and systems in action!
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September 28th, 2008
Academy of Sciences Museum Finally Opens in San Francisco
Written by Keith Rockmael, courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com
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.
Popularity: 1% [?]
September 10th, 2008
Green Walls: Don’t Stop Greening On The Roof!
Green roofs are great - they’re very energy efficient, they capture and filter stormwater, they reduce the urban heat island effect, and they soften the harsh grays and blacks of our cities (at least from above!). We’ve written at length in the past about these benefits. If it works so well on roofs, why stop there?
That’s exactly what the firm Green Living Technologies thought when they developed their Green Living Walls system, which is based on designs they developed for sloped roofs. They’ve developed a modular green wall system that can be used to create anything from a small herb wall in your kitchen to a full facade of an office building and anything in bewteen. You can pick from a huge range of plants suitable to your climate, and you can also choose to grow the plants onsite once the wall is installed or have them delivered pre-grown so that your wall is green from day one.
The set of benefits is slightly different from those of green roofs. Because they are vertical, you can’t capture and filter as much stormwater through them as you could a green roof (although with certain configurations you can route water from the roof through a wall system). Also, you don’t get quite as much insulation bang for your buck since since in most buildings more energy is lost or gained per square foot through the roof than through the walls. However, a well-designed green wall on the south side of a building will reduce cooling demands and increase comfort in the summer.
There are some significant benefits over green roofs. Fruits and vegetables can be grown in GLT’s Green Living Walls, and you don’t have to have access to the roof to care for or harvest them.
Also, think about the benefits in our cities if green walls were more widespread. Green spaces wouldn’t be limited to just rooftops, parks or streetside planting areas, and would instead hide or replace the concrete and glass of buildings. Streets would be cooler. Vegetables could be grown in urban spaces that currently sit unused, reducing the impacts of shipping food in from far away. And at least in a small way cities could begin to sequester some of the carbon they generate.
So, the next time you’re thinking about replacing a wall at home or redoing an internal or external wall where you work, make sure to throw a green one into the mix!
Popularity: 2% [?]
August 20th, 2008
AIA Launches GreenStep Video Series
Written by Dawn Killough, courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com
The American Institute of Architects recently launched its “GreenStep” online video series. The series presents short episodes on several green building topics. It is meant for those planning new buildings or the renovation of existing buildings, and shows how architects can help clients address their green concerns.
The schedule for the release of the videos is as follows:
- Greenstep 1: Water Conservation - already posted.
- Greenstep 2: Smart Controls - already posted.
- Greenstep 3: Radiant Heating and Cooling - already posted.
- Greenstep 4: Vegetation for Sun Control - already posted.
- Greenstep 5: The Whole Building Approach - September 2
- Greenstep 6: Green Tags - September 15
- Greenstep 7: Energy Modeling - September 29
- Greenstep 8: Green Roofs - October 13
- Greenstep 9: Daylighting - October 27
- Greenstep 10: Choosing Green Materials - November 10
- Greenstep 11: Carbon Offsets - November 24
- Greenstep 12: Deconstruction - December 8
Links to the videos can be found at http://www.aia.org/walkthewalk/.
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August 18th, 2008
Trouble In Our Oceans
One of the great things about green building and living is that it takes the “over there” of traditional environmentalism and brings it home. Saving our last great wild and remote places around the globe is critical, but the only way we’re truly going to get there is if everyone can see the benefits right at home. Using FSC-certified reclaimed wood, for instance, not only saves orangutans in Sumatra but also can be used to build a stunning and unique home.
Unfortunately, our oceans are not benefitting in as significant a way from green building, and there’s increasing evidence that they are getting worse. We’ve written before about “dead zones” in the ocean created by excessive fertilizer runoff into our rivers and streams, but a recent study highlighted in the New York Times shows just how bad this problem is becoming — the number of dead zones in the ocean is doubling every ten years, and they are appearing right where they do the most damage, in the incredibly important marshes and estuaries where rivers and streams enter the ocean. That’s not the only bad news. Even though the low oxygen levels that produce these dead zones can be seasonal, the damage that they do isn’t. Once you’ve killed off the worms, clams, etc that form the basis of the marine food chain, they rarely recover.
The composition of the worldwide oceanic ecosystem is also changing due to rampant overfishing and the chemical and temperature changes driven by global warming. Who benefits? Jellyfish and other primitive forms of life that can deal with less-than-ideal ocean conditions. Who loses? Sharks, tuna, marine mammals and the other large predators that make up the top of the food chain (and an important and increasing part of diets around the world). Coral reefs are also in decline and may be gone by 2050 due to the climate-change-related acification of the seas.
Such huge problems are daunting, but there are things we can do in our daily lives that can help. If you’re particularly worried about our oceans, consider taking these steps to help out:
- Buy organic foods & produce. Dead zones are caused by the over-application of concentrated industrical fertilizers. In general organic agriculture uses less and lower-strength fertilizers, so buying organic produce will encourage better use of fertilizers and pesticides.
- Eliminate stormwater runoff from your yard if you live in an urban area. With stormwater runoff, even clean water leaving your yard can do damage. It will pick up pollutants in the streets and storm drains between your home and the ocean. Consider installing rain barrels and rain gardens, two relatively inexpensive ways to capture rainfall on your property. If you have a higher budget, investigate using a cistern to capture rainfall and reuse it for irrigation.
- Buy seafood that has been certified as sustainable. Figuring out what seafood is both healthy for you and won’t harm ocean ecosystems is a very difficult process. The same fish or shellfish can be great if purchases from the right source and very harmful if not. Salmon is a good example - wild-caught Alaskan salmon good, farm-raised salmon generally bad. Check out this sustainable seafood guide.
- Fight global warming. Almost all problems in the ocean have at least some link to global warming, whether it be changes in wind patterns contributing to dead zones or coral die-offs due to acidification. Click here to learn what you can do to reduce global warming.
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