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Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:28:00 GMT

Mud and Straw in the Shadow of the U.S. Capitol

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:56:00 GMT

In 2008, the USBG (that's the US Botanic Garden — not the USGBC) organized "One Planet — Ours!" to showcase sustainable techniques and technologies including things like edible school yards, urban orchards, a solar greenhouse, photovoltaic panels, residential wind turbines, green roofs, and rainwater harvesting. Part of the exhibition was a gorgeous little strawbale demonstration building (video link). One of the results of that exhibition — besides the huge public exposure — was a Congressional briefing about straw bales as a building material. Last winter (after the inauguration), the demonstration building was lifted in one 8-ton piece by crane and trucked to a new location where it now lives on as a studio. And there's video of that, too. Even though you've missed the little strawbale house, there's more natural building on the next block. Always Becoming is an art installation on the grounds of the National Museum of the American Indian. "The five sculptures range in height from seven and a half to sixteen feet tall, and are made entirely of natural materials: dirt, sand, straw, clay stone, black locust wood, bamboo, grass, and yam vines." Here's some pictures I took while it was going up in 2007.

Banging the Building Drum Again—With Great Visuals

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:37:00 GMT

Steven Chu, Ph.D, the U.S. Energy Secretary, has a Facebook page. I have no idea if it's actually him posting, but I'm still a fan, meaning I get regular updates. Yesterday, he posted this chart that shows exactly where the 40% of energy used in the U.S. by buildings goes. This is not new information to me--I've heard it several times before in various ways--but it is an unusually powerful graphical representation. You can see immediately that while heating is a big energy hog in residences, lighting is the big deal in commercial buildings. I love this kind of graphic: it's simple, straightforward, and contains a whole lot of information that easily accessible. Now, if only the psychrometric chart were this easy!

Factory Building Rolls Over. Upside-Down.

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:11:00 GMT

In the wake of the pictures of that 13-story apartment building that fell over, here's video of a multistory factory building rolling over and coming to rest upside-down, largely intact.

Success and failure are often matters of perspective.

A bottled water ban

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:17:00 GMT

Link to video

(No relation to the post B'eau-Pal Bottled Water - Dichlormethane, Carbon Tetrachloride, Chloroform... and kudos to our prescient commenter Matthew, who last September predicted the 2020 headline, "Bottled Water Outlawed Worldwide.")

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.

82 Tons of Earthquake: Straw House Gets The Shakes

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:03:00 GMT

On March 27, a shake-table simulation of twice the ground acceleration of the '94 Northridge CA earthquake was run in the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation's Large Structures Laboratory at the University of Nevada on a full-scale model of a strawbale housing unit developed in the wake of the devastating 2005 Kashmir 7.6 magnitude quake that killed nearly 100,000 people and left over three million homeless in Pakistan. Although the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI)-sponsored test was intended to be to failure, in the end the robust little straw house was still standing and structurally sound — check out the video footage below. The quake-resistant buildings designed by PAKSBAB (Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building) are intended to be affordable, energy efficient, and locally built with readily available materials. Bamboo rods and nylon fishing net act as the reinforcement and tie-down system; the netting is wrapped under a soil-cement-encased gravel-bag foundation (made with old vegetable sacks), up both sides of the load-bearing baled-straw wall, and attached to the wooden top plates. The wall-tall bamboo, which also engages both the foundation and the top plate, is attached upright in opposing pairs on either side of the wall at frequent spacings and 'sewn' together through the bales, providing flexible resistance to out-of-plane forces. The whole assembly is covered with earthen plaster. The roofing is light corrugated steel. The hand-made structural straw bales — there are no posts or other bearing members — are smaller than those produced by automatic balers, which are rare in developing countries. [More]

Greg Franta's Body Found

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:07:00 GMT

They found Greg, and his car, yesterday — a month after he mysteriously disappeared. According to the Denver Post, he had slipped off the road and rolled into a ravine. Daily Camera has a more detailed article. I was hoping that when we found out what happened to Greg, even if the news was bad, there would be relief in the closure. There is some of that relief, but it's overwhelmed by the suddenly concrete sense of loss. And of my own vulnerability. It's funny how my response to someone else's huge misfortune becomes about me and my fears, but that's how it's playing out right now. Greg exuded vitality and energy. He embraced and energized those around him, literally all over the world. If someone with that strong a presence in the world can die so unexpectedly, what does that mean for me? A reminder that we're all here on borrowed time — at least in our current form. An invitation to use this time well. For his family and friends, for everyone who is committed to green buildings and making a better world, Greg's sudden departure is a huge loss. There is some consolation, however, in recognizing how much great work he left behind, in his designs, his ideas, and the thousands of people he taught and inspired. Look to the great folks at the Rocky Mountain Institute to help channel grief into yet more positive action. — Nadav Malin

100 Abandoned Houses

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:40:00 GMT

From photographer Kevin Bauman's website. See them all.

The Aftermath: Congressional Briefing about Strawbale Construction

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:50:00 GMT

This is the second post about strawbale building today. The other is Building Science for Strawbale Buildings. Regular readers may recall that post back in June about the straw-bale construction briefing organized by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) that was held in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington DC. The presenters included Laura Bartels (president of GreenWeaver Inc. and member of the Builders Without Borders Building Team), Sandy Wiggins (former chairman of the board of the USGBC), Bob Gough (secretary of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy), and David Eisenberg (director of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology and chair of the USGBC's Codes Committee). Since then, the information from that briefing has become EESI's most-visited archive. In passing along this news, Laura Bartels noted, "If you look at the breadth of topics they cover, the amount of briefings and the kinds of speakers they host, it makes this really astounding." She went on: [More]

Venting about Sustainable Commercial Kitchens

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:29:00 GMT

Despite the economic downturn and the trend toward smaller crowds at building trade shows, Efficiency Vermont's 2009 Better Buildings by Design Conference was a great success and actually increased attendance this year. The enthusiastic response is a tribute to the sustainable building community at large and to Efficiency Vermont, which put on a conference that was well organized, informative, and pragmatically optimistic. The quality of the presenters and workshops was impressive. William Miller from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Steve Selkowitz from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Kevin Dowling from Philips Solid State Lighting Solutions, John Straube from Building Science Corporation, and others, spanned topics ranging from high-performance roofs to the latest in LED technology. I attended a commercial kitchen ventilation (CKV) workshop featuring Don Fisher, co-founder of Fisher-Nickel and the Food Service Technology Center (FSTC). Administered by Pacific Gas and Electric, FSTC is a pioneer in the testing of water- and energy-efficient commercial kitchen appliances. (Anyone interested in commercial kitchens has to visit www.fishnick.com). Fisher's presentation was geared toward experienced kitchen and/or HVAC professionals and discussed his company's work improving the efficiency of existing ventilation systems. For background information, commercial kitchens require massive CKV systems to remove heat and fumes generated by gas ranges, broilers, fryers, and — the biggest emitter — the grill (think of a large, white-hot barbecue burning indoors for 12-18 hours a day). [More]

2,000 Bikes at the Inauguration

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:12:00 GMT

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), a Washington D.C. bicycle advocacy organization, along with America Bikes, the D.C. District Department of Transportation, and Dero Racks (they're listed in GreenSpec), provided free valet parking — for bicycles — at the presidential inauguration last week.

Cyclists were already in line before the 7 a.m. opening. All told, about 2,000 bikes were parked at two locations on either side of the secure area around the White House. By the middle of the day, one of the lots ran out of room and another enclosure needed to be improvised from security barricades to accommodate the volume. [More]

UFO suspected in mystery wind turbine mangling

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:54:00 GMT

whir... whir... whir.. whir... CLUNK! It finally worked... after decades of catching nothing but birds and bats, while making a small amount of electricity as a byproduct, the international effort to catch a UFO netted its first victim. A wind turbine in England lost one of its rotors last week in a nighttime incident with no clear cause, on the same night that locals observed unusual lights. Too bad we misunderestimated the aliens... there is no sign of a downed spacecraft, and they apparently made off with the broken rotor, which can't be found. Meanwhile, George W. Bush was forced to return to the White House and take his chances on a rendezvous with Tony Blair and an escape from planet Earth following the inauguration. For more excellent wind turbine disasters, check out this post and this thriller by my colleague Mark Piepkorn.

Meters Spinning Backwards!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:09:00 GMT

You find the darndest things on YouTube sometimes. Southwest Windpower, the maker of the Skystream 3.7 small-scale wind turbine, brought this video (and others like it) to my attention.

Transportation Energy: Consumers vs. The Consumed

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:02:00 GMT

A current article from Reason magazine (their tag line — "Free Minds and Free Markets" — might reveal a hint of a bias), "The Food Miles Mistake: Saving the planet by eating New Zealand apples" questions one of the main ecological premises of the localvore movement, saying:

...a comprehensive study done by the United Kingdom's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)... reported that 82 percent of food miles were generated within the U.K. — consumer shopping trips accounted for 48 percent and trucking for 31 percent of British food miles. In the United States, a 2007 analysis found that transporting food from producers to retailers accounted for only 4 percent of greenhouse emissions related to food. According to a 2000 study, agriculture was responsible for 7.7 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. In that study, food transport accounted for 14 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture...

It's a bit reminiscent of the Environmental Building News feature, "Driving to Green Buildings: The Transportation Energy Intensity of Buildings," which said, [More]