Up to my Elbows in the Green Economy
What is your impact on the global health of the climate? That is a question we are now getting daily from websites, the media, our friends, our politicians. When consumers go to a website that has a carbon calculator, they will see their carbon footprint generated. A large portion of it will be from what they spend on their electricity, gas and water.
As architects, we need to be leaders and experts on this because buildings use most of our energy and water. Clients are going to want to know what they can do. The biggest problem is not ignorance, it’s what people know that isn’t true.
I spent this last weekend volunteering at Green Festival in Seattle. The convention was only $10 to get in, but instead I decided to volunteer on the Green Team. The Green Team has two parts, Garbage separation and Education. On day one, I was on the education end. My teammate and I stood behind the garbage cans, recycling bin and compost bin. We instructed attendees how to dispose of their trash. Your standard coffee cup with lid and cuff we split into three parts. The lid, #6 plastic is not recyclable – it goes in the trash. The cuff (if clean) can go into the recycle bin, and the cup goes to compost (because it is soiled). Many people think that plastics #4 – #6 can be recycled, and generally, they cannot. Excessively soiled paper in with other clean paper that batch of recycled paper is tossed out. Compost with too much plastic, glass, or metal is rejected – ending up in a landfill. To recycle effectively you must know the requirements of the processor receiving your materials.
The next day I served on the back of house aspect of the Green Team. Here our duties are more hands on. Each bag that came in from the floor is opened and the garbage further separated. Our goal at Green Festivals is a 93% to 98% diversion of material from landfill. We physically pull the materials out and sort them, down to the last sample toothpick or the smallest bit of plastic. We had a dumpster for glass, paper, and recyclable plastic. Additionally there was a separate dumpster for corrugated cardboard, and a dumpster for compost, and finally one small dumpster for landfill. We also received garbage from the kitchen too. In the course of my life I have lost most of my sense of smell – that day it was a blessing.
Green Washing
One of the things that irked me was that some of the sample containers vendors were passing out – in huge numbers – are non-recyclable containers. Most of the vendors were putting samples in corn-based sample cups. Perfectly fine, corn plastics we composted. The kitchen was terrible at separating their garbage. We would get bags of food waste – designated compost – and it would be full of plastic, rubber gloves, glass. Only a few bags like that could have contaminated our whole dumpster of compost. It would have been rejected and have to go to landfill. So fortunately, we were able to go through it and correctly separate it. Again the tradeoffs: The convention needs to sell spaces to vendors, so they provide a venue for green businesses, and collect an audience receptive to the ideas of conservation and the new green economy – the tradeoff – some of the sample containers are not so eco-friendly. I have to report though the overall amount of garbage left by the attendees was very low.
What this experience taught me was as architects we have to be thorough. Many product sales people are going to tell us something is recyclable, low impact, carbon neutral, etc. We have to find out what they mean by that. Read the fine print. Understand the tradeoff the product has.
Things we can do
Conservation – If you are not concerned with conserving gas, electricity or your money – get with the program! This is the easiest way to make a change for the positive. Drive less, make fewer trips, do what you can to bike or walk to accomplish a task. One group taking a good approach that I met at Green Festival is 10:10US. Originally started in Britain, the basic goal is 10% reduction in direct carbon emissions every year for 10 years. They don’t count emissions offsets purchased to absolve you of your lifestyle choices. Very practical and strait forward – I calculated my Carbon Foot Print to be about 13.09 Metric Tons of carbon a year, so I need to find a way to cut out 1.3 tons this year. I have a low carbon footprint for several reasons: Unemployment (so I don’t commute), I live in an apartment (so I use less power), and I have all electric utilities. It will be larger once I start commuting, how large will depend on where and how. I’ll have to make that choice: do I drive, take the train, where do I make compromises?
In building design, it’s all about tradeoffs. There is no one building material, structure, or system that will guarantee better building performance. It’s how you put all of the systems together in the site as it is. Knowing the client’s goal is important too. If they want to be purely carbon neutral on paper, you can cut down those trees and they can purchase an offset – If they are purists, leave the trees and get creative. Again the fine print, what are the goals. If they don’t know, it’s our job to explain the implications of choices, the trade offs of costs and benefits to the client’s budget or to the planet.
photo credit: ezioman
A hiaku for architects
Many hats are worn today.
Our hats are stolen by knaves!
Authority ours!
Establish a new order now!
Take your hat back now!
Heat and Repeat
So with Memorial Day weekend over the nation will be thinking of things like air conditioning as the summer officially kicks off. Today, I am going out line manifolded ductless heat pumps. I was able to learn firsthand about these systems working on a LEED hotel in Colorado. I want to give readers some background and my thoughts on this technology.
Ductless Heat Pumps
Used in Europe and Asia for the last 2 decades, however installations are new here in the US. How are these different from our more familiar heat pump systems? Heat pumps that we may be familiar with are known as Split Systems – compressor outside connected to the heat sink, and inside the energy is moved to a coil in the air handler. The air in the air handler blows air over the coil, changing the temperature. The heat exchange goes on in the air handler. The heat sink maybe their ambient air, a ground loop, a cooling tower, or a pond. Refrigerant is pumped through loops to transfer heat to the sink. In the winter heat can be draw in from the ground that is at 55°F year round below frost depth.
Ductless systems are also Split Systems, but are more complex than the normal arrangement. These systems have the outside compressor, heat sink, like the other system. However, inside the building, it gets much different. The refrigerant from the compressor is piped to a Manifold, and then from the Manifold it is exchanged to pipes leading to Terminal Units spread throughout the building.
How does this operate differently from the normal HVAC ducts? First in the duct, the system moves heated or cooled air to the zone(s) based on the thermostat setting for that zone. The familiar “click” we know and then the sound of the fan blowing air to the room. In these ductless systems, controls rely on a more complex system of moving existing heat around the building. Each Terminal Unit has a thermostat that is tied to the computer that runs the Manifold. The Terminal Unit senses it is above or below the set point and then tells the Manifold to send the correct temperature refrigerant. The Manifold checks the available heat or cold difference in other terminal units and adjusts the flows until the set points are met. If it needs to it will activate the heat pump outside to reach the set points. Terminal Units typically have a coil and a fan unit. They use very little power as compared to baseboard electric heat.
Here is an example of how it works; you have a building, the west side and south side rooms are gaining solar heat and will require more cooling. Now factor then also on the opposite sides of the building, those rooms are losing heat through walls and windows. What the Ductless system does is first try to move heat to the cooler parts of the building. It first absorbs the heat from the warm rooms, and moves it to the cool ones. Then based on the set point will activate the outside compressor system to toss out more heat from those other rooms.
Other advantages are on remodels, only the holes for the piping need to penetrate walls. Systems come with a variety of Terminal Units, from wall mounted, to ones that fit in suspended ceiling grids, even ones that look like picture frames. For the architect this opens up many possibilities.
On that LEED hotel project, our initial plans were to replace the typical PTAC (Packaged Through-wall A/C) with terminal units in each guest room. In effect, we would use the entire hotel as the heat sink, solar gain rooms would have heat dumped into shade side rooms, and the occupied rooms would dump heat into the unoccupied rooms. Most of this would go on without any compressors kicking in. That has huge implications for energy savings. In addition, these units have SEER ratings of 19 to 26, very efficient, compared to PTACs, with a SEER of 13 to 15. Combined with the other systems and considerations we are incorporating into the LEED plans it looked good to get that LEED Gold. Or does it?
Cost – Benefits of the system
Hotels are difficult typologies when it comes to LEED applications. Hotels are like large houses, with everyone getting up at the same time and wanting a hot shower, TV on and the AC blasting. The customers are purchasing the right to have it their way, LEED or nor LEED plaque on the front of the building. As such, the demands are greater at peak usage than for other types of buildings.
What is an energy and money saver in a house, bank, or office has the opposite effect sometimes in a hotel. We found that out the hard way with the electric instant-hot water taps. Likewise, for the ductless system all though it’s efficiency was in every way superior to the best PTACs, the install cost was the killer.
Here is what we found: Installation was several times more expensive, the overall system was more expensive to supply. Second, durability – commercial PTACs last about 5 years in the hotel environment, the ductless system can last at least 20 years. So installed in a house, office building, even condominium it would make sense because these are long-term investments for the owners. Hotels have to be profitable very quickly, typically in 3 to 5 years. Even though our client was intending to keep the project long term, part of the business plan is to be at a profit in 5 years. Part of achieving that was the choice to go back to high efficiency PTACs with advanced controls and vacancy sensors – even though PTAC replacement four times in the next 20 years will cost more than the ductless system installed.
Additionally Hotels have a higher level of fire compartmentalization, and we would need to run fresh air supply ducts in order to balance the typical bathroom exhaust from each room. A PTAC typically brings in enough fresh air to meet those requirements. In other building types, this is not as strict so undercutting doors, and other means of natural ventilation are used.
We did have the system used in the offices and public areas of the hotel, and that improved our overall building efficiency. Because as architects we had an open mind when the engineer suggested the system we explored its possible applications and implications to ventilation and energy design. We were fortunate that we had very good energy modeling services. They helped the client choose the best system that met LEED goals and the business plan.
Conclusions
We looked at Mitsubishi Electric and Sanyo (through Trane), these are the two available in the US at the time of the project. Both systems function in the same way, but carefully consider how they communicate with the rest of the temperature controls in the building.
I feel that these kinds of systems will find their way into more housing and office projects. I feel that this will be another useful tool in many applications. Architects should ask their engineers if it is a possible fit, but have sober ideas about the cost in larger applications.
GIS and Due Diligence
Hello fellow designers and planners, this is my first blog for Blueprint For Design, I hope you find it useful. This article is about using GIS to gather information for planning architectural projects.
First, what is GIS?
Geographic-Information System – those who have not used them before these are systems that store property tax information, map information, and sometimes-utility information. To some extent, this also includes things like zoning maps, Aerial photos, building footprints, and road contours. More and more counties, cities, and other jurisdictions are implementing GIS to make information available across disciplines for the use of the city departments. However, since this is public information we in the design community can make use of it too.
How to find it.
First, one of my favorite tools is epodunk.com, this website will list everything about a town, no matter how small, how remote. Often there will be link to GIS information, and if not find the Town or county website. From here if the county has GIS you should be able to find it. Additionally this site is valuable to find local resources that may become useful later, or for gathering other information about the town that may be useful to you or your client. If no link can be found call the county, they may still have one you can use.
What is it good for?
GIS information is typically available in a special browser. Read carefully what browsers it works best for, some will favor Explorer over Firefox or Chrome. The browsers I’ve used typically ask for property addresses, tax ID numbers or cross streets, and then they zoom in like most map programs. Most will also let you zoom in using a magnifying tool.
Once you find your property see if the browser has a menu to include information like zoning, FEMA map boundaries, utilities, rights of way, and other information. I’ve used several and they all have different options.
Additionally there are queries that using the Tax ID number or a tool with usually an “I”, one can click the boundary, and it will bring up information about ownership, tax value and other public information. This may also be useful to look at the properties surrounding your client’s property, especially brown fields, commercial or industrial structures.
Some browsers also contain measurement tools. These can be useful if the survey the client has given you is limited in scope and you need quick take offs for zoning or other ordinances that may have limiting factors on the position of the building to other structures.
Additionally what is on the GPS is what the tax records indicate. It should a red flag if the two don’t agree on the general shape and size of the parcels. Then you should confirm the age and accuracy of the survey with the surveyor.
Liabilities
Again, don’t take the GIS information as gospel, it should never replace a survey performed by a licensed professional. Any information that becomes part of the contract documents, or cited in correspondence from the GIS should be noted by date it was viewed and what the source information is. New information is constantly being input, so your facts could change. Clearly indicate in notes that it must be V.I.F – Verified In Field – by contractors prior to any work. There is no substitute for a site visit either, but this tool can help pull information together and help you serve your client. These tools can help you know what else to look for while you are there.
Other GIS locations
Here is a short list of other websites that can be useful in the due diligence process.
EPA – locations of known hazard reports
FEMA Flood Maps – official flood insurance maps
USGS – All kinds of maps, and GIS systems.