BuildingGreen.com LIVE - Product Talk

Bonded Logic Factory Tour in Chandler, Arizona (live fom Greenbuild)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:21:00 GMT

I've gotta say, I love visiting factories, especially those that make products I've been writing about for years. I just toured Bonded Logic's Chandler, Arizona plant, 20 minutes outside of Phoenix, where each month the company converts 300 tons of post-industrial recycled denim and other cotton fabric into the UltraTouch line of cotton insulation, sound-proofing materials, duct insulation, and related products. I never knew there was so much I didn't know about cotton insulation! Liz Obloy, the publisher of Sustainable Facility magazine, and I saw the manufacturing process first hand, from the bales of incoming raw materials to the packaging of finished product. This plant gets the cotton after it's already been fiberized — broken down into the constituent fibers. Bales of polyester and polyolefin "binder" fibers that give the material loft also come into the plant. The fiberized cotton is treated with a borate solution to make it resistant to fire, mold, mildew, and pests. [More]

Trane Completes the Switch to Ozone-Safe R-410A

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:25:00 GMT

Robotics at the Trane factory

In the Trane factory

I took the last train into Clarksville, Tennessee this week (that will mean something to those with enough gray hair) to visit Trane's commercial HVAC equipment manufacturing plant. I was invited, along with a half-dozen other editors, to report on Trane's transition to an ozone-safe refrigerant in its commercial HVAC equipment. Trane used the opportunity to show off the state-of-the-art mechanical systems at the new 270-bed Clarksville Gateway Medical Center, and give us a wonderful tour of their massive, 1.2-million-square-foot Clarksville factory (one of Trane's largest). This was followed with a presentation by the Ingersoll Rand president and other company managers to the assembled 1,300 employees in celebration of the company's 18-month conversion from R-22 to R-410A — an effort that cost the company more than $100 million. (Ingersoll Rand acquired Trane in June 2008.) That was followed by a great barbeque under tents outdoors, and an exhibit of the company's 17 newly introduced, redesigned, ozone-safe products. I've got to admit that I love touring industrial facilities. Seeing massive pieces of machinery turning raw materials into complex functioning equipment somehow gives me faith that we have the skills and technical know-how to solve the really big problems we're facing, such as climate change. [More]

Why are people drawn to design inspired by nature?

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:36:00 GMT

I received an email from a Design student at Kingston University (London) writing a dissertation on "why people are drawn to design inspired by nature." Three questions were sent; I went overboard answering the first one, and basically wussed out on the second two. I'd be interested in your takes on this highly subjective stuff, and will be sure to let our dissertation author in on the discussion.
1. Why in your opinion are people so drawn to design inspired by nature?

2. What in your opinion is the finest example of design inspired by nature in the field of product and furniture design (my course)?

3. Do you think there are psychological benefits to design inspired by nature, and what do you think they are?

1. Why in your opinion are people so drawn to design inspired by nature? I don't think everyone is drawn to design inspired by nature. Some like Le Corbusier's buildings at their boxiest, and contemporary glass and aluminum offices and homes, and Danish Modern furniture, while others like nature-inspired design... simply because they do. There's no accounting for taste. I know that speaks to the shallowest part of peoples' immediate and visceral reactions to aesthetics, but I think that most of the time — especially in this day and age — that's all there is to it. It's certainly not true of everyone, but most people in these harried times never have any need or desire to consider why some fashion appeals to them while some other fashion doesn't. It is what it is, and there are ten thousand other urgent things to attend to. If pressed, they'll tend to latch onto any available notions that support their position without actually considering them. Look to politics as an independent example of that. Trying to detangle rationalizations from pure impulse is a tricky business. (But it would probably be a much better world if more people tried.) [More]

Making Lime Mortars DVD

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:36:00 GMT

Over at The Last Straw blog, Jeff Ruppert has posted a review of Making Lime Mortars, the first of a four-disc tutorial offered by St. Astier Natural Limes. Perhaps the thing I like best about the review is that it doesn't get into the whole "Why use lime" conversation... it respectfully assumes that you already know. But in case you don't know, here's most of the product description for St. Astier's natural hydraulic lime from GreenSpec:

St. Astier Natural Hydraulic Lime, or NHL, is a 100% natural product that has been in production since 1851. St. Astier NHL Mortar is widely used in the restoration of old buildings. This natural hydraulic lime mortar imported from France allows stone to "breathe" naturally. Used in construction as plaster, stucco, mortar, and paint, its high level of vapor exchange and mineral composition can help reduce the risk of mold development and dry rot. NHL products are highly permeable, elastic, low shrinking, zero VOC, self-healing, and recyclable.

"The drama of a 2x4 shot from an air cannon at glass windows"

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:15:00 GMT

Architectural testing concern HTL will be at GlassBuild America shooting missiles at windows again. The demonstration/demolition follows the Miami-Dade large missile protocol by shooting 2x4s at impact-resistant and non-impact-resistant windows. A press release from HTL quotes NGA Industry Events Director Susan Jacob: "There is nothing quite like the drama of a 2x4 missile shot from an air cannon at glass windows." Wish I was going! I checked HTL's website for some footage, but was left wanting. There's a link for client videos (and there's some top name clients in there), but they all seem to be password-protected. So it was off to YouTube to find this:

Another interesting short video — less than two minutes — was shot at last year's Glassbuild conference; a reporter from e-Glass Weekly played word-association with a few exhibitors. If this small sampling is any indication, the fenestration industry does not like the NFRC at all; was optimistic (as of last year) about commercial construction; and thinks green building and LEED are the future.

BuildingGreen Bulletin: Efficient HVAC Options — September GreenSpec

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:20:00 GMT

Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time. Here's an unformatted, text-only version of the current bulletin:

Free BuildingGreen Email News Bulletin - Become a member of BuildingGreen Suite and get access to more tools and information critical to your green design and construction work. New product listings in the GreenSpec Directory are available online. Breaking News
· People Get Sicker in Overcooled and Overheated Buildings (membership required)
· USGBC Revising Forest Certification Benchmark for LEED
· Read More News... Featured New GreenSpec Listing
Evergreen Aftermarket Blower Motor for Residential HVAC. Evergreen is an electronically commutated motor (ECM) aftermarket replacement for permanent-split-capacitor (PSC) blower motors in residential HVAC systems (except furnaces). According to the company, Evergreen can add up to 1 SEER point to an existing system and uses 25% less electricity than a PSC motor and 74% less in constant-fan applications. (membership required) Select New GreenSpec Listings
· IceStor Ice-On-Coil Thermal Energy Storage System for Commercial Use (membership required)
· Silva Cell Supports Tree Growth and Stormwater Management Even with Paved Surfaces (membership required)
· Separett Villa is a Swedish-Made, Waterless Urine-Separating Composting Toilet
· Children's Furniture from Solid FSC-Certified Maple Harvested in Northeast U.S.
· More New Listings... (membership required) Case Study Highlight
Half-Moon Outfitters Distribution Center, North Charleston, SC. Expected to use 46% less energy than a comparable conventional building, energy-reduction strategies include efficient fluorescent lighting, dimming ballasts, daylight and occupancy sensors for lighting, SEER-19 split-system heat pumps, and demand-controlled ventilation. Check out more case studies in the High-Performance Buildings Database... BuildingGreen's Blog
· Living With Climate Change: How to Design Buildings and Communities for Adaptation
· LEED 2009: Should You Upgrade Your Project?
· More blog posts... Featured Event
West Coast Green, San Francisco CA, Oct. 1-3. Visit BuildingGreen in Booth #137 with a nifty offer for thrifty residential designers and builders. Stump Peter Yost and other our Green Building Advisors at their Q&A session, and see Alex Wilson's picks and pans for green products. Registration discount of 20% with this link. View All Events... Find us on Facebook
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More Toilet Flushing Fun

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:13:00 GMT

Regular readers might remember the toilet-flushing video from March that showed ridiculous quantities of carrots, chess pieces, Gummi bears, hot dogs, plastic letters and numbers, grapes, golf balls, and dog food getting flushed. Fun, but it didn't qualify for GreenSpec because it only met the federal minimum standard for water use. Well, here's one that does. The H2Option Dual-Flush from American Standard offers an industry-first siphonic flush of either 1.6 or 1.0 gallons. And it's fun, too. Be sure to show this to the kids (because they don't already have enough ideas).

20 golf balls (full flush)
1 lb orange peels (full flush)
11 water wigglers (full flush)
56 chicken nuggets (full flush)
2 lbs flushable cat litter (full flush)
5 large hot dogs (full flush)
5 large hot dogs (half flush)

Wieners aside, it would have been nice to see how all of these went down — or not — on half-flush.

Men Should Pee Sitting Down

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:21:00 GMT

Men should pee sitting down. Now before you call me a strident feminist, let me say that I'm backed up on this one by male colleagues and the reasons aren't what you think. I'm not arguing for toilet equality here. I'm talking about urine-separating toilets, which are much easier to use for men and women when sitting down. The bowl of these toilets takes urine in the front, feces in the back. It's hard enough to aim for the whole bowl (or so the evidence of many bathroom floors tells me), much less the front part of the bowl. One guy put a pee can in the corner, but that seems inefficient: pee in the can, then pour it down the toilet. Why not just pee in the toilet? Why should you care? Because urine contains up to 90% of the nitrogen and 50% of the phosphorous in domestic wastewater. Those chemicals make for great fertilizer — stuff we have to use a lot of energy to produce artificially. In healthy populations, urine is sterile, and removing it from feces makes composting the solids easier and more effective. Two models of these toilets are available in the U.S., both from Ecovita. But before you rush out to buy one and change your life, remember that composting solids and using urine to irrigate your tomatoes isn't legal in most places. You might be able to get special dispensation from the building code folks, but like most things involving wastewater treatment alternatives, it won't be easy. Watch for the coming article in the September issue of EBN. Update - the article is online (members only, though). Urine Separation: The Next Wave of Ecological Wastewater Treatment

How Green is Polystyrene Insulation? EBN's Position, and How It Affects GreenSpec-Listed Products

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:49:00 GMT

Chart from the feature (requires login):
Human Health and Environmental Concerns with Polystyrene Constituents
(click image to enlarge)

The August EBN feature article, "Polystyrene Insulation: Does it Belong in a Green Building?" (requires BuildingGreen Suite membership) and an accompanying editorial "Rethinking Polystyrene Insulation" (free content) has led our company to reexamine some of the products we list in the GreenSpec Directory. As those articles (and the related blog post, "Avoid Polystyrene Insulation") point out, there are some troubling health and environmental concerns with both extruded and expanded polystyrene insulation (XPS and EPS). These concerns relate both to the underlying chemistry of polystyrene (especially the benzene used in its manufacture) and a flame retardant, HBCD, that is used in all building-related XPS and EPS products. Given these concerns, our editorial staff reached the conclusion that polystyrene insulation made with HBCD is "less green" than most other insulation materials. This doesn't mean that there aren't green products made with EPS or that alternative products are necessarily benign. But when there are alternative insulation products that we consider to be more attractive from a health or environmental standpoint and when they offer comparable energy performance, then we consider those alternative materials to be preferable. So, what does this mean relative to our GreenSpec listings? Due to environmental concerns with ozone-depleting HCFC blowing agents (which are to be phased out by the end of this year), we do not, and have never, included XPS products in GreenSpec, so there is no change there. We did remove several EPS boardstock insulation products, and we are working hard to replace them with what we believe to be greener products, such as additional rigid mineral wool insulation products. However, there are a lot of EPS-based products that are remaining in GreenSpec because we believe that their energy-saving benefits outweigh the health and environmental concerns. These are mostly structural insulated panels (SIPs) and insulated concrete forms (ICFs) — of which we list dozens of each — as well as some specialized products, such as exterior insulation systems used for insulating existing buildings. These products are being used in many of the lowest-energy buildings being built today. Note that our inclusion of these products may be reconsidered in the future if good, non-EPS alternatives emerge in the marketplace and EPS manufacturers fail to find an alternative to HBCD. While we very much hope to see the HBCD flame retardant removed from these products — and we are confident that manufacturers are working to identify safer replacement chemicals — we recognize that energy performance of buildings is a top environmental priority, and EPS continues to play a vital role with many such products. We look forward to participating in a dialog about life-cycle concerns with polystyrene insulation and hope that our position begins that discussion. We welcome any comments you wish to post about this issue — use the comment function below. You can follow my musings about this and other issues through Twitter.

Avoid Polystyrene Insulation

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 21:15:00 GMT

Polystyrene Molecular Structure

Let me start by saying that insulation is an absolutely critical component of buildings. I like insulation and I like a lot of insulation. In northern climates, I recommend a minimum insulation value of R-40 in walls, for example, and I would personally aim for R-50 were I to build a house today. That said, insulation materials are not all created equal. When we consider the health and environmental impacts of products over their life cycle (with life-cycle assessment or LCA), some materials look a lot better than others. That's just as true with insulation as it is with any other product, from flooring to adhesives and paints. This brings us to the issue of polystyrene insulation. Recent concerns have been raised about the brominated flame retardant HBCD (hexabromocyclododecane for the organic chemists among us)—see our coverage in EBN about this—that is found in all polystyrene insulation, both extruded (XPS) and expanded (EPS). HBCD may not (yet) be a household word like bisphenol-A has become, but it's been raising plenty of concern. [More]

Committee tightens up NSF-140 carpet standard

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Ah, if only it were possible to be a fly-on-the-wall in every committee for every standard... I know this is a fantasy only a standards-geek could have, and is one of those fantasies you don't really want to actualize, but there's no doubt much of the real work defining the rules of the game is done in committee meetings that most of us never hear about. In their last meeting, with little fanfare, the NSF-140 committee approved a simple change that greenwash-fighters should approve of, while finding the need for it unfortunate. The language in the standard was changed to say, "A certified and non-certified product cannot have the same trade name designation." What this means is that a company can't get, for example, NSF-140 Platinum on select options for a product line, and then go and market the main product line as NSF-140 Platinum. Apparently, this issue was brought to the table because one company was doing just that — marketing the product line as NSF-140 Platinum despite the fact that the platinum prerequisite of 10% post-consumer recycled material was only met with special order options. The discrepancy is being fixed by the company — as is the standard by NSF. [More]

Making ice at night to cool buildings

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:24:00 GMT

Calmac IceBank tanks at One Bryant Park, one of the nation's greenest high-rise buildings.

Photo: © Gunther Intelmann for Cook+Fox Architects

What surprised me most in researching thermal energy storage for the EBN feature article this month is that it's not incorporated into virtually all commercial buildings. In a nutshell, the idea is to use electricity at night to make ice and then use that ice during the daytime as the cooling source for the building. Thermal energy storage (TES) can also involve chilled water (instead of ice) or electric heat stored in bricks or other thermal mass, but I focused on ice with this article. A number of very well-known green buildings rely on ice-based TES cooling. One of the newest such buildings is the 2.1-million square-foot (195,000 m2) Bank of America building in New York City at One Bryant Park. I visited the sub-basement (three floors down) to see the 44 eight-foot-diameter, insulated CALMAC tanks in the building that collectively provide about a quarter of the building's cooling. Each of these tanks holds about 1,600 gallons of water that is alternately frozen and thawed by circulating a glycol solution through about three miles of plastic tubing. It's high-tech, but the result is surprisingly simple. Benefits of ice-based TES include the following: [More]

Considerations of Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs)

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:30:00 GMT

ICFs (Insulating Concrete Forms) are permanent, stay-in-place forms for making insulated poured-concrete walls, floors, and roof decks. Most of them are made with expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam produced with a non-ozone-depleting blowing agent (unlike XPS, an option to avoid from some manufacturers), while others are made with EPS beads (typically from recycled sources) or mineralized recycled wood chips glued together with portland cement. Generally, the pure-foam sort are direct replacements for standard removable forms and are used to make regular, flat poured-concrete walls with an equal amount of insulation on both sides; while the cement-bonded foam-bead or wood-chip type usually have voids that get filled with concrete to make structural grids, columns, or "waffles" encased in insulation. This is usually the way it is; there's some overlap and variation. From here on, it gets tricky and sticky. [More]

New to Green Building? Try GBA.

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Recently, I broke one of my long-standing rules and blogged about something BuildingGreen-related at my own blog. My Costanzian fears were indeed warranted, and I've been egged on to cross-post it to the Live blog. Here she is, warts and all: my unvarnished opinion on the very best parts of the BuildingGreen product GreenBuildingAdvisor.com./BF

I don't often blog about worky stuff here, but decided this week that my "Worlds Will Collide!" fears are probably completely unwarranted. Besides, I'm working on some cool stuff these days. And finally, when my wife asks me, "What have you been doing?," when I come to bed at an obscene hour, I have an acceptable answer: "Changing the world, baby. Changing the world."

BuildingGreen launched a new property several months ago, GreenBuildingAdvisor.com (GBA). Now, this was in process as I came into the company in September 2008 and involved a whole lot of organization and reorganization to get the team in place for even content production, but I can't get into much of that here. What I *CAN* get into are what I think are the absolute coolest content areas on this Drupal-based site.

Green Basics

It's really important to come at a new field with a common vocabulary. Think of this as a vocab-building primer of terms and concepts bandied about in Green but seldom explained or contextualized. Click anywhere on that page and you get access to detail diagrams and explanations of key concepts and terms. I subscribe to a couple of building magazines and use their sites a lot. NOTHING is as good as this, period.

Green Homes

Now, case studies are not something new for BuildingGreen given the popularity of the High Performance Buildings Database, but there's one aspect in the corresponding Green Homes feature area that stands out: these pictures are gorgeous and inspiring. Sure, I can look up a product if I hear about and learn enough to put it in myself... but watching it get installed? Or seeing it in a context that gives me another product idea?? Reading about the compromises that lead to selection of that product in tandem with another? That's pretty awesome.

Product Guide

The Product Guide is some content syndication from GreenSpec, another key BuildingGreen property that provides a ready-to-use index of green products, manufacturers, and product categories. They sum it up on the GBA page with this: "Product manufacturers can not buy their way on to this list." These are a true best-of and where I first turned for ideas when we did our kitchen remodel this year.

Summary

Now, I know I've probably alienated some portion of the site that's behind the payed membership wall (oh yeah, some of this content is part of a paid GBA Pro membership that gets you even more like CAD Details & whatnot), but these are the stand-outs from my perspective and key to what makes this site a truly amazing asset. At the time of this writing, you can get a 10-day trial to the premium GBA Pro content - the energy savings I've realized alone have outvalued the cost of this annual or monthly membership - or be a lurker for a while before you take the plunge. Personally, I'm probably not renewing some of those magazines whose sites I use in favor of this totally righteous tool.

BuildingGreen and ecoScorecard Announce Partnership

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:39:00 GMT

The press release says,

This partnership pairs a respected and independent source of green building information with a platform that enhances the usefulness of green product information. The GreenSpec Directory helps the green building community find sustainable products, while ecoScorecard offers an effective way to identify and evaluate products against every significant environmental rating system.

ecoScorecard is a web-based system where manufacturers provide detailed, SKU-level information about its products. Those details are run through a calculation engine to produce submission documentation for LEED, GGHC, Labs 21, CHPS, NAHB, Re:Green and third-party certifications. Verrry handy for architects, designers, and other building professionals. The two systems aren't interchangeable — not all products in ecoScorecard will be listed in GreenSpec, and vice-versa. The collaboration provides users with a combination of ecoScorecard's thorough reporting with GreenSpec's independent review process. This partnership is similar to the arrangement between GreenSpec and the Construction Specifications Institute's GreenFormat program. BuildingGreen doesn't charge for listings, or accept advertising. The editors have sole control of product selection and product descriptions. For information on how products get listed in GreenSpec, see the article How do products get listed in GreenSpec?