A letter that BuildingGreen President Nadav Malin sent to our community on March 16, 2020
To our friends and colleagues in the green building world,
We are now, in the most challenging sense, living in interesting times. As of today very few of us in North America are suffering from the illness caused by COVID-19, but we’re all experiencing its secondary effects: efforts to contain it that are shutting down gatherings, schools, and businesses. And, despite our best efforts now, we’re aware that widespread illness and even loss of life are increasingly likely in the near future.
We need to eliminate toxic fossil fuels from our buildings. This joint letter to HVAC equipment manufacturers asks them to address the gaps in the equipment that’s currently available.
Have you been moving toward electrifying HVAC systems but struggling to find the equipment you need?
The SDL Show-and-Tell session is where Greenbuild becomes more personal, more intimate, less business-to-business, and more community-centric.
The Greenbuild International Conference and Expo is the world’s largest conference and expo centered around sustainable design. Greenbuild is unparalleled in its robust educational and networking opportunities, but it can also be a bit overwhelming.
Can buildings be both comfortable and energy efficient? The Kendeda Building shows how the two can go hand in hand.
By Alissa Kingsley
User control may seem antithetical to high-performance buildings: imagine the amount of energy that might be wasted when building occupants are able to adjust the thermostat or open and close windows at will.
Selecting the greenest products doesn’t do any good unless strong specifications support your choices. Here’s some language you can use.
Editor’s note: Guest blogger Anne Hicks Harney, of Long Green Specs, is our partner in providing product vetting services. Harney offers guidance on writing green specs and on finding products for LEED v4, WELL, and beyond.
For real this time?
For twenty years or so, companies like Pilkington (Spacia) have been cranking out R-5ish (center-of-glass) vacuum-insulated glazing (VIG).
The carbon that’s emitted when we produce materials and construct our buildings is finally getting the attention it deserves.
Shortly after the release of Paula Melton’s Spotlight Report on Embodied Carbon, which has been getting amazing reviews and
How the accumulation of dust, pollen, and bird droppings affects the energy production of a PV array
I was at my brother’s house in Lee, New Hampshire, recently and looked up to see that his photovoltaic (PV) panels looked a bit dull (see Image #2 in the slideshow). His PV array is easy to get to—the long north slope of his roof has a walkable 5:12 pitch—so we went up and took a closer look.
Learn how to find products for LEED and WELL projects in this webinar.
Are you struggling to find products for your LEED or WELL project? We’ve been there, and we know how to help.
In this hour-long free webinar, BuildingGreen's Nadav Malin and our partner Anne Hicks Harney of Long Green Specs share their tips finding green, healthy products that meet the requirements for LEED and WELL.
Can we put to bed the corrosion concerns with this insulation?
A particularly well thought-out and thorough question from reader Aaron Birkland on the pH of phenolic foam and its possible corrosive nature prompted me to follow up my original blog post on Kingspan’s Kooltherm rigid insulation. Aaron has two main questions:
Reducing your building’s carbon footprint or health impacts? Going after new LEED credits? Transparency documents for steel studs can help.
Editor’s note: Guest blogger Anne Hicks Harney, of Long Green Specs, is our partner in providing product vetting services. Harney offers guidance on writing green specs and on finding products for LEED v4, WELL, and beyond.
Mean radiant temperature, a major component of thermal comfort, is easy to measure.
All the way back in 1993, one of my first research projects at the NAHB Research Center—now Home Innovation Research Labs—was assessing the performance of radiant ceiling panels for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Housing Technology Program. (The final report was titled “An Evaluation of Thermal Comfort and Energy Consumption for the Enerjoy Radiant Panel Heating System.”)
Buildings need renewables—but we need to look beyond the site.
No man is an island, and neither is a building.
UGL Drylok Extreme, Koster NB1 Grey, Xypex Concentrate: Do these interior waterproofing systems really work?
Back in May 2017, I wrote a blog post about negative side waterproofing (NSW). But I was still feeling troubled. The standardized test for NSW from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (“Standard Test Method for Water Permeability of Concrete”) is really complicated; the schematic seems impossible to decipher (see Image #1 in the slideshow). Instead of using this test, could we do a real-world, Wingnut-style test for negative-side waterproofing?
