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Vol. 11, No. 10 and

Growing its collection of innovations in the flooring industry, Interface, Inc. has introduced FLOR™, a modular flooring system designed for use in homes. FLOR’s ten product lines represent a variety of fabrics, colors, textures, and patterns. According to Chip DeGrace, InterfaceFLOR’s vice president of marketing, “FLOR bridges hard surface and carpet.” Although some lines are similar to carpet, “some of it looks and feels completely different, more akin to a vinyl surface,” DeGrace told

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A Quebec-based manufacturer of contract fabrics is the first to offer a line of polyester textiles that meet a stringent set of ecological criteria developed by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC). The Eco Intelligent™ fabrics from Victor Innovatex are made in accordance with MBDC’s “cradle-to-cradle” protocol. In this protocol, each material, chemical, and process is screened for compliance with a series of ecological and human health criteria. The resulting fabric is available to designers through The Designtex Group and will soon be available in office furniture from Steelcase, Designtex’s parent company. Other companies are also expected to introduce products using Eco Intelligent fabrics.

almost another system. Taco®, the nation’s largest manufacturer of HVAC pumps, has just introduced its own version of the D’mand System.

Vol. 11, No. 11), designers pursuing LEED™ Indoor Environmental Quality Credit 4.4 have been at a loss for fire-retardant panel products. This credit requires that composite wood and ag-fiber products contain no added urea-formaldehyde resins. Seeing the market opportunity, Panel Source International, a small Alberta-based company that serves as consultants and sales representatives for ag-fiber panel products, has introduced a product line they’ve been developing for some time: Pyroblock® PB Plus (particleboard) and Pyroblock MDF plus.

Unlike conventional fire-retardant panels, in which a fire-retardant chemical is incorporated throughout the product, Pyroblock particleboard and MDF panels rely on an intumescent coating. Intumescent coatings expand and char when subjected to heat, thereby insulating and protecting the substrate from the flame. The products meet the applicable flame spread standards (ASTM E-84(00) in the U.S., and CAN/ULC 102-M in Canada). Panel Source recently completed final testing on the products and has started selling them directly to users, according to senior vice president Brian McLeod. Price varies with panel thickness, size of order, and transportation distance—a lift of 11⁄16” (17.5 mm) panels costs about $1.75/ft2 ($19/m2) delivered halfway across the country.

LodeStone is just emerging from the research and development stage, and has been marketed primarily to architecture firms in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The first building to feature LodeStone is the new 13,500 ft2 (1,250 m2) administration building for the Solid Waste Department in Denton, Texas. Texas Cast Stone donated the 2,200 ft2 (200 m2) of LodeStone cladding and 650 ft (200 m) of water-table trim for the wainscoting around the building’s exterior. Everyone connected with that installation seems impressed.

The project architect was Dan Crise of Huitt-Zollars’ Ft. Worth office. The LodeStone was selected by the client and provided at no cost, so Crise didn’t research it extensively. Nevertheless, he is pleased with how it worked out. “I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend consideration of it,” Crise says, adding: “I like the way it looks.” Bill Soye, the mason who installed the LodeStone, likes it enough that he’d like to use it on his own house. “I think the architects are going to spec it on a lot of jobs. There is nothing else like it,” he says. “It lays up like any other standard product.”

The paint has virtually no smell, allowing interior painting without evacuating a building or providing additional ventilation. American Pride paint is being used for restoration work at The Pentagon and is currently being used in all of the academic buildings at the University of Southern Mississippi. American Pride is only the second product to be certified under the paint standard from the nonprofit standards-setting organization Green Seal.

According to Southern Diversified manager Rocky Prior, USM researchers responsible for this project were driven by a twofold desire to create environmentally sound products and to find an economically viable use for Mississippi agricultural products. They specifically wanted to create a use for castor oil, lesquerella oil, and soybean oil because Mississippi farmers can grow these crops. From a national perspective, a wider use of domestic biobased oil in place of petroleum products reduces the demand for foreign oil.

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Vol. 7, No. 2) and the more recently introduced Falcon Waterfree urinal (see

Toto, Ltd. of Japan and its U.S. subsidiary Toto USA, Inc. now offer the EcoPower line of sensor-activated faucets that rely on tiny hydropower generators to keep the manganese dioxide lithium batteries charged.

Toto is the world’s largest manufacturer of toilets. They have 80 affiliated manufacturing facilities worldwide and over $4 billion in annual sales. They entered the U.S. market in 1990 and now have two manufacturing plants here. Their water-saving toilets consistently perform at or near the top in performance surveys of 1.6 gallon-per-flush (6 liter-per-flush) toilets.