Posts Tagged ‘Water Use & Plumbing’

Harvesting Rainwater From an Arid Future


AJC Architects have thought ahead to a hotter Utah in the sensible ideas incorporated into their  Wetland Discovery Point educational building that helps educate Utah schoolchildren about nature.

These are the green ideas in order of importance to sustainable design:

  1. On-site solar panels for green electricity - to make net zero energy onsite;
  2. Solar thermal collectors for hot water supply and radiant floor heating;
  3. Radiant cooling via infloor cold

[...]

Buffalo House to Weather Rainstorms in Kansas

We are seeing more climate conscious design in architecture: In this case; the rain screen.

A skin over the house is designed to manage and harvest occasional heavy precipitation, to provide protection from premature decay from moisture intrusion.

Umbrella Design Harvests Desert Moisture for Childrens’ Hospital

This cooling effect is a bonus in addition to gathering rainwater or overnight dew for water use. In VisionDivision’s prototype, the umbrella element will funnel the cool water to a central holding tank to supply the hospital with clean water. The hospital rooms are gathered in clusters around the tank to benefit from the cooling effect of the water.

David Brower Center - Green to the bones

Even in a Greencentric city like Berkeley, locals and Bay Area visitors would be Green with envy when they see the just opened David Brower Center. It feels healthy just to walk through the Green down-to-the-bones building which combines advanced technology along with simple recycled materials.

When entering for their housewarming party we had a difficult time not noticing the soaring concrete walls which made us think more dot com than gallery. The fact that in creating a building with an oh- so-feathery carbon footprint (when compared to most structures) Principal Architect, Daniel Solomon included up to 70 percent slag in those walls.

Water Efficiency Often Ignored in Green Buildings

Many green buildings address water efficiency as second to energy efficiency. But, as this article shows, they are more closely tied together than we may think.

Energetic Sustainable Symposium in San Francisco

What do get when you mix four of the Bay Area’s top green stars, a LEED certified location, lunch and corporate sponsor wanting to spread its green wings? The spirited Sustainable Symposium sponsored by Ace here in glorious San Francisco. The symposium, in short, brought some energetic and often useful ideas from the knowledgeable and spry panel (not to mention moderator and Chicago Ace Hardware store owner Lou Manfredini) and created solid dialogue in what could have been one of another “How to green this and that discussion.”

State Compensation Insurance Fund Building Goes Green

statefundvacaville.jpgLeave it to the State Compensation Insurance Fund, the quasi-public workers’ compensation insurer based in San Francisco, to bring more green building to the Bay Area. Okay, we’re stretching it a little to call Vacaville the Bay Area but what’s a few miles for a true green building.

The fact that the $77 million green campus that consists of three 85,000-square-foot buildings diverted more than 20 percent of the building materials from the nasty [...]

Residential Energy Management System Now Available

With Advanced Telemetry’s new EcoView system, home and small business owners can track their energy and water use in real time, set goals, and access their system remotely.

First LEED Certified Green Data Center

date-center-green-blog.jpg Mostly when we talk about LEED certified buildings we think about office buildings or government centers but here we scope out another first. The Advanced Data Center building in Sac-town already became the first data center to be pre-certified LEED Platinum. Surprised? You bet. Most people think that these data centers with all of the computers are huge energy hogs, and they’re right. That’s why the firm had to work extra hard [...]

Largest LEED Platinum Building in the World

This post, like the masses of crowds, makes its way inside the just opened Academy of Sciences Museum. And why not as the Museum just became the largest LEED Platinum building in the world as well as the world’s most sustainable museum building. Take that Louvre.

As a Green building, the designers highlighted the new qualities but the also the previously used materials. What could be more famous then the [...]

Super-Effficient Water-Saving Shower

Showering is one of the major uses of domestic water. Showering is responsible for roughly 18% of indoor water use. But with a new kind of shower system invented in Australia, showering could, according to the manufacturer, use 4 times less water and save up to 87% of the energy used in typical showering.

Australia has been suffering through a drought for the last several years. Since 2003, most of Australia has been experiencing the most severe drought conditions on record. And Australia is the driest populated continent, which further exacerbates water issues there. So it’s not surprising that a super-efficient shower would come from Australia.

According to the Quench Showers brochure, “If we focus on Australia’s water position we are at crisis point. Being aware of this is a start, but more importantly, we all need to understand the crisis and take immediate action if we are going to influence change. Without changing the way we consume and manage our water usage in our day-to-day activity, this crisis will become a widespread catastrophe!”

So how does the Quench shower save so much water and energy?

Advertisement