30 years, same dream

New Video from my Friend Billy Weitzenfeld

CEED dedication set for Nov. 17

From the Franklin News Pose
Monday, November 8, 2010

By JOEL TURNER - Staff Writer

After years of planning and construction, the Center for Energy Efficient Design (CEED) will be dedicated on Wednesday, Nov. 17 on the campus of the Gereau Center.

The CEED is a state-of-the-art educational center and template for residential and educational construction for the 21st Century.
"It is a 21st Century creation that combines cutting-edge 'green' technology with modern advancements in education," said Kevin Bezy, principal of the Gereau Center.
The dedication will begin at 10 a.m. on Nov. 17.
The CEED is an energy-studies building, featuring a variety of energy-saving features and energy-producing devices, Bezy said.
At the center, students from Franklin County and surrounding school districts will study and analyze efficient ways of saving and producing energy. The primary focus is on responding to the changing dynamics of the environment.
The CEED will have a number of versatile uses. It will be a classroom for Franklin County students, a field trip destination for surrounding school districts, and a place where citizens and builders can view and learn about energy-producing devices and energy-saving building techniques.
The center is the brainchild of John Richardson and Neil Sigmon, two teachers at the Gereau Center.
The CEED has already won an award even before it opens.
Earlier this year, Franklin County schools was awarded the "2010 Cool Citizen Award" in the Government Category by the Roanoke Valley Cool Cities Coalition for support of environmental education.
The CEED will have classrooms where students can study energy sources, including solar, wind and others.
It will include learning laboratories for hands-on instruction and projects related to the building design and advanced systems features.
The state-of-the-art educational center will be a net zero energy efficient building. Using technologies that include PassivHaus design, earth berming, south facing solar orientation, thermal mass, geothermal energy, photovaltaics, solar hot water heaters, electricity-producing wind turbines, rainwater harvesting, energy efficient appliances, and daylighting, the building will produce more energy than it needs to operate.
The CEED will address problem-based learning with classrooms and other areas for students to work individually, in small groups or in large groups.
Biology, chemistry and physics will be taught in the broader context of environmental science and architecture.
The initial phases of the energy efficient design project were completed earlier. These included the installation of solar hot water heaters at the Gereau Center, solar crossing lights, three solar lights for the school parking lot and two wind turbines.
The center, which was four years in the planning, cost approximately $850,000, with more than $200,000 in-kind donations from building firms and other businesses.
The project has been funded partly with more than $400,000 in federal grants.
Structures Design/Build, LLC, a Roanoke company, constructed the center.

50 Greenest Buildings Around the World

“Greenest” is, of course, always a highly subjective and nebulous term. An environmentally-friendly building encompasses an exceptionally broad spectrum of elements – with some excelling in a couple of areas but potentially in need of a boost in another. Therefore, once one gets to the platinum LEED certification levels as outlined by the United States Green Building Council it is difficult to define what makes a building “greener” than one of its fellow sustainable contemporaries. Not to mention that there are far more than 50 platinum-certified buildings, both retrofitted and built from the ground up around the world. Some nations also play host to extremely green buildings, but hold them to different standards than the United States or have not submitted themselves for LEED certification in spite of probably meeting at least one level of their different criteria. So please consider this list not as a definitive compilation of the latest and greatest in environmentally-friendly architecture, but rather a brief overview of some highlights instead.

Fir the rest of the article and the list click here.

Man Retrofits Freezer to Make an Ultra-Efficient Fridge

An off-grid experimenter in Australia, Tom Chalko, has retrofitted a chest freezer to create a fridge that uses only 100 watt-hours (0.1 kWh) per day! Why a chest freezer? Tom points out that vertical door refrigerators are inherently inefficient. As soon as you open a vertical fridge door the cold air escapes, simply because it is heavier than the warmer air in the room. When you open a chest freezer, the cool air stays inside, just because it’s heavy. Any leak or wear in a vertical door seal causes significant loss of efficiency.

Tom took a standard chest freezer (a Vestfrost SE255), added a $40 external thermostat, then wired the freezer to turn off when the desired temperature was reached. The thermostat runs on 2 AAA batteries which last for months. The freezer runs for about 90 seconds per hour and then shuts down completely, making it not only very efficient but very quiet.

New DIY Renewable Energy Club in Roanoke

The Renewable Energy and Electric Vehicle Association (REEVA) is a Do-It-Yourself club to help members do solar/wind installations and build electric vehicles at project homes thus cutting the cost by removing labor.

How REEVA Began

When REEVA President, Mark Hanson, went on the Solar Home tours and spoke with renewable energy folk's the main conversation topic was, "Gee the energy (solar/wind) is free but the equipment is expensive."

A typical solar grid tie installation is $10 per watt or $50k for a standard 5kw system (without incentives). The total parts run about $5 - $6 per watt.

I was told that someone should start a club where group member's help each other to build solar/wind systems and electric cars (that charge on such systems). Thus REEVA was born where volunteers do the labor and others can see finished projects. (There are also excellent local installers, some are REEVA members who do turnkey projects for folk's who don't want to go the DIY route.)

We also promote renewable energy through legislation and local events.

To Visit the Web Site Click Here

A dream come true!

In 1984 I wrote an article about alternative construction where I said "septic systems and sewage treatment plants are wasteful and barbaric technology that will be abandoned in the future". I was thinking the next ten years, but maybe I was off by a couple of decades. Here is a fun building that gives me hope!

The sewer systems we use today are entirely ineffectual and unnecessary. The primary flaw in our design is that we use fresh water to dispose of feces. This is perhaps the most ineffectual thing to do with human manure — it pollutes fresh water, and it requires municipalities to maintain extremely costly sewage treatment infrastructures. Even after treatment, sewage can still wreck havoc on rivers and groundwater.

The most effective and straightforward thing to do with sewage is to compost it (or use it to produce fuel). It’s a valuable resource.

The C. K. Choi Building is a 30,000-square-foot building that is part of the University of British Columbia. The building has no connection to the sewage system. Instead it has composting toilets and waterless urinals installed.
The toilets on each of the three floors connect via stainless steel chutes to five Clivus Multrum composting systems in the building’s basement. The toilets emit no odors, because all the waste is collected in the basement and fans ensure that no odor escapes the composting containers.

The system is maintained and emptied by the Clivus Multrum company through a service contract. Every day the university maintenance staff wipes down the toilets and adds a can of wood chips or bark mulch to each toilet. Every six months, the compost (which no longer resembles feces) is removed from the system and used as a fertilizer.

Because of this system, the C. K. Choi building uses just 500 liters of water per day (132 gallons), a similarly-sized conventional building uses an average of 7,000 liters of water a day (1850 gallons) or fourteen times as much water.
But about the water from sinks and other systems? This graywater is filtered and pumped into a 300-foot-long outdoor planter bed with lilies. The final discharge is used to irrigate plants. A test by the city of Vancouver of the fecal coliform counts of the discharged water showed that it contained less than 10 CFU per 100 milliliters (by comparison swimming is permitted in water with up to 200 CFU per 100 milliliters).

The building also captures rainwater: the rain is in a 7,000-gallon tank below a staircase. It is used to irrigate the landscape, which is bordered by thirsty ginkgo trees.

What this example clearly shows is that modern buildings can do quite well without a connection to a municipal sewage system. The maintaining the building’s composting system is probably less overall than a building with flushing toilets.

More information on this topic (including many other case studies) can be found in the excellent Composting Toilet System Book by David Del Porto and Carol Steinfeld.

Taiwan’s Solar Stadium is 100% Powered by the Sun

Taiwan recently finished construction on an incredible solar-powered stadium that will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology! Designed by Toyo Ito, the dragon-shaped 50,000 seat arena is clad in 8,844 solar panels that illuminate the track and field with 3,300 lux. The project will officially open later this year to welcome the 2009 World Games.

Not only does the solar system provide electricity during the games, but the surplus energy will also be sold during the non-game period. On days where the stadium is not being used, the Taiwanese government plans to feed the extra energy into the local grid, where it will meet almost 80% of the neighboring area’s energy requirements. Overall, the stadium will generate 1.14 million KWh per year, preventing the release of 660 tons of carbon dioxide into atmosphere annually.

Combined Heat and Power for the Home Now a Reality

The generation of most electricity produces enormous amounts of heat which is typically wasted – literally up the chimney. Cogeneration – or “Combined Heat and Power” – systems make use of this otherwise wasted heat to warm buildings. Much of Manhattan is heated this way courtesy of several con-edison plants in the vicinity. It’s a brilliant solution to improve energy efficiency in an urban area, but doesn’t work so well in less urban areas. There, people typically rely on their own natural gas furnaces to heat their homes.
But what if you could reverse the cogeneration idea? Imagine taking an already efficient gas furnace and generating a home’s electricity directly from it, while it heats?
That’s the reality that Marathon Engine has in store for the North American market today. While not quite a start-up (they’ve been selling units in Europe for 5 years), the company’s “EcoPower MicroCHP” units look set to sell well, despite, or perhaps because of the economy downturn.

The EcoPower unit is not only capable of generating all of a sizable home’s heating and electric needs – it can also sell excess generation back to a utility (assuming Net Metering is in legal and in place). The larger the home, the better the paypack which makes the system particularly suited for multi-family buildings and small businesses with strong heating needs. It’s also best used in cold climates where heat is required for most months of the year – you won’t find much use for it in Phoenix.
As for greenhouse gases, the company claims (see PDF here) to offer a 65% reduction in CO2 emissions vs a coal powered equivalent. In reality it’s very difficult to measure the reduction because there are so many factors that might go in to what the device replaces and what kind of heating and electric demand is called for.

The only drawback is that the EcoPower isn’t cheap – coming in at a whopping $35,000. But for a large home, the device could apparently pay for itself in a half-dozen years or so. Despite the cost, if it works, and as long as energy prices stay high, economies of scale will likely bring the EcoPower within reach of more consumers.

Solar AC

Greenbuild

It is Greenbuild week. I will be in Phoenix getting my education on. I will report on anything super cool I find.

Grow ZEC

Please help me to grow the readers of ZEC by forwarding a link to those whom you think may be interested. ~ Thank you for the help!

2009 Green Living and Energy Expo!

The 2009 Green Living and Energy Expo! will be held 10-6 Friday, Nov. 6 & 10-4 Saturday, Nov. 7.

Please make the effort to come as it will be a great expo.

If you are interested in seeing a presentation on Passivhaus I will be presenting:

"Cutting Edge Low Energy Construction an Introduction to Passivhaus design principles"

at 12:30 on Friday, Nov. 6

This presentation will focus on the basics of Passivhaus design, a scientific European approach to low energy construction and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Passivhaus has a twenty year track record in Europe but has only recently come to the US.

See you there!

Passivhaus Comment

I received this comment and thought it may be helpful to other to share the response.

Nelson Labbe said...

Adam,
How does Passive House certification work? Does one have to go to a PHIUS certified architect to get a house design/plans and Passive House certification? Can a non-PH architect get house plans certified? If so, by who? PHIUS? What are the approximate costs for PHIUS review, consultation, and certification?
Thanks,
Nelson Labbé

Here is the Reply...

Passivhaus certification for a project requires that the plans be analyzed and and submitted to PHIUS by a Certified Passivhaus Consultant. The design can either be by a TEAM of a certified PH consultant & a non certified architect or by a PH certified architect. Personally, as an Architect and a PH certified consultant I find that it would be difficult and time consuming to coordinate with an architect who does not have a good, solid understanding of the concepts, however, I think a good PH consultant can give the Architect and Client a good overview of PH principals in about 4 hours.

The real tough part is the coordination of the design details with the PHPP (Passive House Planning Package). As a design/builder I can tell you that when I am designing I have both my CAD program and the PHPP open to determine the optimal outcome to maximize efficiency and minimize price.

I would think that the the client should be prepared to spend more for an untrained architect as there will be a learning curve and it is likely that there will be considerable redesign to bring the iterations of the plans into compliance with PH principles.

As far as the costs, that depends on the project and the team. My personal recommendation is that the best, most cost effective approach is true design/build, where the architect, PH consultant and builder are one entity and have one point of responsibility to the Owner.

If you want to pursue separate architect, PH consultant and builder, then I would recommend a very intimate process where the team is assembled day one and the Passivhaus Consultant is responsible for orienting the team to PH principles. I cannot stress how important the builder is in all this. You can have a great design and an efficient PH concept, but without a builder grounded in real world details and a deep understanding of PH concepts, the entire project can spin out of control, because of the high level of quality and attention to detail that is required to implement Passivhaus techniques.

I hope this helps!

Solar Hot Water Install

Today found eight of us crawling around, inside, under and atop a home in Blacksburg to install a Solar Hot Water system. We are installing an evacuated tube system that has an on demand hot water backup that senses the temperature of incoming water before coming on, so it does not power up unless there is a real need for hot water. The typical on demand system has only a flow switch which automatically comes on when the water is flowing, which in a solar system is a problem because the solar tank can have water that already is 120 plus degrees F. So finding one with not only a flow switch, but an incoming temperature sensor is critical for a solar system. For more info on the Stiebel Eltron tank we are using click the link. I will have photos of the install posted soon.