By Delia Montgomery •
November 7, 2009
Seems yurt manufacturers have been surveying customer comments. Good thing, as that’s how progressive changes occurred at the Colorado Yurt Company. They recently added a new design because customers relayed their preference to open their windows from inside.
This is good news for yurt dwellers without an exterior walking deck and with a raised platform. For those, it’s go outside with your ladder.
Fully Operable Windows is the new description in Colorado. It opens like a traditional home window with a crank. Each window is big enough to meet code requirements for egress. Made with a thermal pane and Low-E glass in a Doug fir frame. E-glass means low emissivity glass, a new technology for energy efficiency.
By Jeff Kart •
August 19, 2009
Aug. 29 is the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and Kanye West’s “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” comment on live TV.
The rebuilding of New Orleans continues. And it’s being rebuilt in shades of green.
According to a “New Orleans Green Building Assessment” released by the Sierra Club, the devastation of 2005 has provided the city with a unique opportunity to develop a national model for rebuilding with sustainability in mind.
By Jeff Kart •
June 2, 2009
LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has become the alpha acronym when referring to green, or eco-friendly, buildings. The standard, from the U.S. Green Building Council, recently went 3.0.
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, is taking the green diploma to an even higher degree. University officials are betting a new Living Learning Center will meet the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most stringent green building rating system from the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of the USGBC and its Canadian counterpart.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
April 14, 2009
Though green roofs are reemerging in the most advanced building designs around the world, for centuries, people constructed buildings out of materials immediately available to them in their surrounding environment. It is only a relatively recent luxury, for example, that people have easy access to roofing materials like asphalt shingles made hundreds, perhaps, thousands of miles away.
On the island of Læsø, Denmark there still stand a handful of buildings that are excellent examples of what communities would do with what was immediately available to them — if only they had any of it left.
In the Middle Ages the island of Læsø became famous for its salt industry. Hundreds of salt kilns were built, throughout the island, requiring constant fuel for the important final stage of commercial salt concentration. But on the island of Læsø—a community with a finite availability of natural resources—constantly feeding the hundreds of salt kilns eventually led to the island’s deforestation.
Under recommendations from the UK Green Building Council, otters could return to urban rivers, bats could roost under bridges, swifts could flock to office blocks and peregrine falcons soar above cathedrals. Written by Felicity Carus and shared via the Guardian Environment Network.
What do the Westfield shopping centre, Canary Wharf and a Victorian museum have in common? They are all at the vanguard of a move to encourage biodiversity in buildings that could take on an unprecedented scale if guidelines published today are adopted.
By Andrew Williams •
January 8, 2009
A groundbreaking study has proved that man-made light sources can change natural light cycles, triggering abnormal animal behavior that often leads to injury and even death.
The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, confirms that polarized light pollution can cause confusion in creatures that rely on light ‘cues’ to navigate through their environment, with many animals also thrown off course by light reflecting from buildings.
By Low Impact Living •
October 5, 2008
Some diehard environmentalists consider eco-mansions an oxymoron at best, with militant types even setting fire to greenwashed mega-homes! But eco-mansion haters sometimes ignore an inconvenient truth: Huge homes are constantly getting built, and most of these are anything but green.
That’s the impetus behind “Playa” (above), a case study green home being built in Westchester, Calif., by Go Green Construction. The house, admittedly, will be huge — 4,300 square feet huge, to be exact — and located in a neighborhood that’s not particularly public transit-friendly. On the other hand, Playa’s also pre-rated for LEED platinum, serving as a self-described “living laboratory of green design” in a neighborhood full of ungreen McMansions.
The rooftop view from Playa (left) alone shows the need for green building in this neighborhood, where smoggy haze floats above multi-story single family homes. In contrast to the massive footprints of its neighbors, Playa will boast a full solar array, graywater recycling system, living walls, and smart house automation which allows residents to control the power of the house remotely.
By GO Media Sponsor •
August 22, 2008
Editor’s Note: This post was provided by one of our paid sponsors, Solar Energy International (SEI), a USA non-profit organization whose mission is to help others use renewable energy and environmental building technologies through education. SEI teaches individuals from all walks of life how to design, install and maintain renewable energy systems, and how to design and build efficient, sustainable homes. SEI offers trainings online and in 22 locations around the world.
Homes built today are generally twice as efficient as their 1980s counterparts. Improved window technology, more efficient heating and cooling equipment, better control of air infiltration, and greater use of insulation are helping decrease energy use in today’s homes. But building science—the physics of optimizing building performance and understanding why buildings fail—also plays a pivotal role.
Building science encompasses the study of heat transfer, airflow, and moisture movement through building enclosures; and how those factors affect the building’s performance, durability, comfort, and air quality. It predicts and measures the relationship people have to the controlled environment of buildings. Building science encompasses home design, construction, diagnostics, repair, and operation—all pitching in to make better buildings.
Dealing with Heat Flow
Insulation controls the flow of heat through a building assembly by slowing the conductive heat transfer through the envelope. Wherever floors, walls, ceilings, windows, and doors are exposed to differing inside and outside temperatures, heat conduction takes place.
Note: My inspiration for posting this is attributable to the many radically creative and excellent ideas in Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community by H.C. Flores.
The clock is ticking. On Wednesday, I am to shoot a segment for the Sust Enable film project in which I construct a draft box (alternative to a refrigerator), solar cooker (alternative to a stove/oven), and hot water solar shower, in order to illustrate how easy and cheap it is to build such items for the average person. Once applied, these technologies can divert significant amounts of energy that would normally come from the plugs in your home, to free energy provided by the sun and wind. (Of course, the issue of winter and weather conditions arises, but I believe that every little applied creative technology helps in the approach toward sustainable living.)
But there is one obstacle looming… can I overcome it in the hours before the shoot begins?
How do I sustainably acquire the necessary materials?
If I am claiming to live a 100% sustainable lifestyle, then certainly I cannot acquire anything new–all supplies must be redeemed from the waste stream of others. Or must they? I began to realize that the likelihood of me garbage-picking a 55-gallon drum, spigots, fixtures, tools, aluminum foil and black hose was rather slim in the time frame given, and with the transportation resources I have (i.e., a bike).
Hence, I must consider the tradeoff of my actions as thoroughly as I can. What are the consequences of the manufacturing of a metal spigot, bought new from Home Depot? What’s the tradeoff if I were to continue to use conventional hot water heaters for all of my showers for the next few years of my life?
By Gavin Hudson •
April 29, 2008
By 2010, China will unveil a modern city powered by 100% renewable resources, capable of growing all of its own food using organic farming methods and recycling all of its waste.
The future city, Dongtan, is growing out of an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River Delta. The unique Ecocity being built on the island is also a creative way to protect the island’s ecologically sensitive wetland environment from China’s fast-paced development.
What will life in China’s first ecocity look like?
Seems yurt manufacturers have been surveying customer comments. Good thing, as that’s how progressive changes occurred at the Colorado Yurt Company. They recently added a new design because customers relayed their preference to open their windows from inside.
