2021 UPDATE: The original product review is from 2013. Stramit USA no longer exists. Similar technology is still used by a Delaware-based company called greenBuilt International Building Company. We have not reviewed that company’s claims, product, or legitimacy.

Despite their promise as a durable, rapidly renewable building material that uses agricultural waste, compressed-straw boards have not taken off in the U.S. That’s not for lack of trying: counting various straw composites, EBN has covered the comings and goings of more than a dozen products over the last 20 years. The newest entrant is the second coming of CAFboard from Stramit USA, which previously shut down in 1996 after a year of production. Based in Forth Worth, Texas, the company has been producing Stramit CAFboard (“CAF” stands for compressed agricultural fiber) for the last two years and is shipping across the U.S.

Not all chillers are created equal, however, and large centrifugal chillers that use magnetic levitation bearings—including Daikin McQuay’s Magnitude, Johnson Controls/TROY’s YMC2, and Multistack’s MagLev—provide better overall energy efficiency than conventional, comparably sized chillers; they also require far less maintenance.

It turns out there is solid science behind these products, but their benefits don’t really have much to do with smog and outdoor air quality. Many building owners will find the self-cleaning properties of these products are what make them worth the modest extra investment.

Advantages over polystyrene

High-performing wall assemblies are increasingly incorporating continuous insulation outside of the structural assembly to reduce thermal bridging and provide continuous air and water barriers. Wrapping the exterior in rigid polystyrene foam is common, but polystyrene poses problems of its own—from use of a non-renewable resource to toxic flame retardant content to global warming potential. The relatively low vapor-permeability of polystyrene (along with many structural sheathing products) can be a benefit, though, such as in installations where sunshine can drive water vapor from masonry cladding inward through an exterior assembly.

However, in most applications using polystyrene, its low vapor-permeability is not necessarily beneficial. As long as such an assembly allows drying to the interior, it’s fine, and prominent building scientists have lauded this overall approach—but some designers and builders argue that we should open the exterior to vapor movement to maximize drying potential, especially in colder climates where interior water vapor can condense inside a wall and cause rot.

Porcelain is often confused with conventional ceramic tiles, which are made with a combination of clay and sand, and fired at 1,900°F. After firing, ceramic tile can still be somewhat porous, with moisture absorption greater than 0.5% and as high as 20%, according to StonePeak. Porcelain contains sand, clay, and also feldspar and is heated to about 2,300°F. The high heat melts the feldspar and other ingredients together, leaving the final product with a moisture absorption of less than 0.5%—the ANSI standard for porcelain that is used by the Porcelain Tile Certification Agency and ISO (though ISO does not use the term “porcelain”).

Porcelain panels are very thin, similar to tile—at approximately 1⁄8" for Crossville’s Laminam (3 mm) and Daltile’s SlimLite (3.5 mm), and slightly thicker at 1⁄4" (6 mm) for StonePeak’s Plane. This thickness typically includes a thin fiberglass mesh backing for added strength. Porcelain panels are available as large as 5' x 10' for Plane and approximately 3' x 10' for Laminam and SlimLite and are available in more than 50 color and texture options for Laminam; 40 for SlimLite; and white, silver, and Calacatta Vena for Plane. Note that StonePeak uses an innovative large-format print process for Calacatta Vena that mimics the look of marble (real marble is expensive and difficult to maintain) and Plane panels can also be used for flooring—uniquely so.

Industry guidelines like ASHRAE Standard 55-2010 say offices should be comfortable for 80% of their occupants. What about the other 20%? or those who work late or on weekends?

Heating or cooling an entire office is wasteful, and space heaters use a lot of energy. Some offices create “personal microclimates” by giving individual occupants control of airflow through floor diffusers or desktop nozzles, but that heated or cooled airflow quickly disperses. An office chair with its own heating and cooling controlled by a dial is the solution being offered by Arizona company Tempronics, and some energy experts are taking notice.

Treating wastewater for onsite use could take a burden off our aging infrastructure while creating high-quality water that won’t contaminate local watersheds (as septic systems can), but capturing and treating wastewater for reuse is tricky. For example, reusing graywater from bathing and washing clothes requires separating it from blackwater from toilets and kitchen sinks, and to prevent growth of bacteria it has to be chemically treated or used immediately for landscape irrigation. Kansas manufacturer Bio-Microbics has developed a residential wastewater treatment system, BioBarrier, that can process combined household wastewater, including blackwater, into non-potable water clean enough to be reused onsite, even indoors. BioBarrier is currently the only system that meets the ANSI/NSF Standard 350 for Onsite Residential and Commercial Water Reuse Treatment Systems.

BioBarrier is a modular system that treats a household’s wastewater using membrane bioreactors (MBR), simplified versions of technology found in many municipal wastewater treatment systems. It is not a full water reuse system, in that it does not contain water storage or distribution networks; those would have to be purchased and installed separately. BioBarrier units certified to NSF 350 use a two-compartment septic tank, an MBR cartridge, a blower, a pump, and controls. Household wastewater (influent) flows into the first chamber, where solids settle out to be pumped out later, like in other septic systems. The company’s SaniTEE device (essentially a cleanable pre-filter) separates out remaining larger pieces before the water flows into a second chamber.

According to Andy Buchanan, president of Sika USA, the meters make sense for any building that wants to control its water usage—anything from a single-family home to multifamily residential, hotels, offices, or any other building type. At $100 per unit, plus $300 for a central data receiver, the units are relatively affordable, but the cost could add up for an entire floor or building. Larger buildings might also need $200 signal repeaters—one per floor is likely—to bridge the gap in wireless communication from the meters to the central receiver. The receiver includes a software package that allows for data collection, trend spotting, and usage alarms.

The submeters fill a distinct gap for monitoring water use inside buildings. Whether it’s the right gap to fill is up for debate, however. “The biggest sticking point in water metering is the installation cost of the meters; people hate cutting pipe to stick one of these things in there,” Dan Ackerstein, a consultant and expert in sustainability for existing facilities, told

Hard water, common in many locations, can lead to scale buildup and reduce the energy efficiency of plumbing and HVAC equipment. Template-assisted crystallization (TAC) is a relatively new technology that offers scale prevention without requiring electricity, chemically altering the water, or wasting water during backwash cycles. It’s also not technically a water softener; rather, it’s a physical water treatment. Although the water treatment market is filled with unproven and questionable technologies, TAC systems, including those manufactured by Next Filtration, are positioned to prove themselves to be an environmentally responsible alternative.

Water hardness refers to the concentration of calcium and magnesium cations. These positively charged ions dissolve in water as it percolates through alkaline soils or bedrock. Hardness is commonly measured either by the concentration of calcium and magnesium ions in the water or by the grains per gallon (gpg) of calcium carbonate dissolved in water. Hard water is closely linked with scale, in which calcium or magnesium carbonate crystallizes on the interior surface of pipes. Scale reduces the efficiency of heat-transfer equipment such as water heaters and is expensive and time-consuming to remove.

By Brent EhrlichThe last decade has seen an explosion in the variety of products available to monitor our energy use and provide complex “smart” controls. There’s still plenty of room for new ideas, however, as shown by SafePlug outlets, made by 2D2C, Inc. Originally designed to protect occupants against electric shock and fire, SafePlug is the only plug-and-play system that uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to help track energy use from

individual appliances and turn them on and off remotely.