Archive for the ‘project rationales’ Category

Discovering the other side of green

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Written by Marcus de la fleur

When we went into this project we had a certain perception of green. Our goal is to eventually turn the house into a zero-energy building. We subsequently focused a lot on insulation and energy issues and associated gadgets such as solar hot water and photo voltaic.

An invaluable amount of research, a healthy learning curve and a lot of hands-on time began to morph that initial perception into something new – well, sort of new.

I had many conversations in the past with colleagues in the architectural field, colleagues that have an interest in historic preservation. When talking about green building technologies they made the case that they already were working green way before it became fashionable.

I heard what they were saying. I knew what they were saying. But I only recently got to appreciate the real depth of this statement.

Think about all the resources that went into the construction of our home in 1902, and think about the carbon foot print associated with it. The good news is that the building has lasted over 100 years already. And there is no reason why it could not last another 100, 200 or even 300 years.

This is where green begins: Spreading the energy input and carbon footprint of the initial construction thinner and thinner across the years with the increased age of the building. You can feel good about your energy efficient light bulb after you started with the preservation of and tender loving care for an old building.

The challenge

The problem is that there are a thousand very easy ways to screw up an old building, which would put a sudden stop to spreading out the initial impact.

It could be as simple as the lack of or wrong type of building maintenance. Ignoring the subtleties of moisture management and movement or the appropriate type of mortar for masonry repair work can inflict lasting and sometimes irreversible damage.

Unfortunately, the expertise on how these old buildings were put together and how they work is spread thin too. But this base knowledge is critical when it comes to retrofitting the old building stock with green building technologies.

Most of the excitement, talk and focus is on new green buildings, which does not help us with the existing building stock. I hope that the focus will shift to this sleeping giant soon, bringing back the expertise and knowledge and making it easier to access information on how to retrofit existing buildings with green technologies while preserving their integrity and longevity.

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What happened to ‘Green’

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Written by Marcus de la fleur

After all the recent and intense focus on the sewers in the basement, I decided it was time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

The first thing I notice was that in the concoction of resolving technical DWV (Drain-Waste-Vent) questions, the green or sustainable aspect appeared to have fallen to the wayside.

Really, there is nothing sustainable to collecting your bathroom waste, transporting it through an elaborate sanitary sewer system with lift stations to a central location where it gets treated (to more or less ‘safe’ levels) and then dumped. The liquids get dumped into the nearest waterway, and the solids – well, most of them may end up in a landfill as landfill cover or just plain old waste. In short, this is mostly a one way waste stream with little or no recycling or reuse.

The alterative would be to process our sewage at the source. There are small onsite waste water treatment systems, if there is enough space on the property.

If there is not enough space, a large chunk of our bathroom waste could be diverted to a grey-water system and/or composting toilets.

Oops! Did I just trigger a couple of heart attacks in the Chicago and Illinois Department of Heath! Not to mention the Department of Building or Water Management.

Onsite waste water treatment would move us away from the energy hungry one way waste stream, towards an energy efficient, decentralized treatment that would allow for reuse of the end product (water and organic matter). Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating abandoning our sanitary sewer structure. But we certainly could reduce what and how much we channel into it, even in an urban context.

Yes, there will be some challenges to overcome, such as watching what chemicals we use in our household and pour into our drains. Or accepting that the food we eat and digest one day could become the basis for growing the food we eat tomorrow.

But isn’t humanity so successful because we manage to adapt to new challenges?

At the risk of causing further casualties, let me share some links about composting toilets. Have fun sniffing around!

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A trashy decision

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Written by Marcus de la fleur

I have this major battle going between diligently separating my construction and demolition (C&D) waste (see also 07/12/2009 post), or to give in and start comingling it like everybody else does and have it recycled later (see also 07/17/2009 and 07/25/2009 post).

When asking around to why we (in Chicagoland) don’t separate our C&D waste, the predominant opinion is that the contractors don’t want to deal with it. Hello! Any contractor out there who disagrees? I’d like to hear from you!

I do know that contractors on out-of-state projects do separate their materials on site and that it does work well (see also 07/17/2009 post). And think about it. These are smart people who have to schedule, organize and coordinate complex construction operations. This takes a lot of skill and assuming that they can’t handle a simple task such as C&D waste separation seems – let’s say, unreasonable.

So, what do I do with my C&D waste and where do I go from here with all I recently learned? I will stick to my guns and continue with the separation process I started (see also 07/12/2009 post), because the effort is not in vain. I went over the logistics with my waste hauler (Kevin from WasteBox, Inc.) and determined that we create some efficiency after all.

I understand from my conversations with him that I am somewhat an exception. Not all customers are as diligent (or nerdy) with their separating of materials, and so Kevin must sort through the Dumpster loads and recycle in his yard.  He has visited and seen my operation (and obsession) and has the confidence that I don’t mix or hide materials in the bottom of a container.

When I have a clean, single material load, such as drywall and plaster only, Kevin can transport the material directly to a transfer station without going sieving through the materials searching for recyclables. A load of “clean” wood that I collected, such as all the wood lath, can go directly to a wood recycling facility, eliminating the double handling of materials and reducing the cost for that Dumpster load.

filling the Dumpster with clean wood
filling the Dumpster with clean wood
filling the Dumpster with clean wood

filling the Dumpster with clean wood

Why should I throw metals or old electrical cables into the bin, if I can put them into the back of my truck, bring them to a metal scrap yard and even get a few bucks for it? And why on earth should I give up the feel-good factor, all the fun and sense of accomplishment I get from my construction waste management adventures?  I’ll keep separating.

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Getting over the cost shock

Saturday, May 9th, 2009
Written by Marcus de la fleur

The cost shock kept us occupied for some weeks. It gave us time to reflect, which was very much needed (our house search was going slowly at the time). We were able to put our finger on a fundamental flaw in my thinking.

For example: A tight building envelope, or a super-insulated home, is very important and a top priority for us. It significantly reduces the building energy consumption and operational cost. It further allows scaling back and cost-savings on mechanical equipment, such as heating and cooling.

With that said, why exactly do I want radiant floor heating in a super insulated home (see also 05/07/2009 post)? It’s like I am searching for a hybrid car with eight wheels, just because I like wheels. It is counterproductive and will have a negative effect on the gas mileage. Four wheels will do the job! And you know what? Two wheels will do an even better job – that thing called bicycle. Not only would I not burn gasoline or require all that energy that goes into the production of the automobile, but I get the needed fresh air and exercise and have the opportunity to wave hello to my neighbors while I am pedaling by.

Why was I focusing on radiant floor heating (and some other fancy but costly items), if all I really need is a solar collector, a hot water thank, and a very simple radiator system that only needs to come on occasionally?  Time to rethink and remember basic sustainable design principles!

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Rationales Part 3 – Why on earth into the city?

Friday, March 13th, 2009
Written by Marcus de la fleur

This is almost always the first question asked when Cathy and I talk about our plan to leave our rental in the cozy suburb of Elmhurst to move into the city of Chicago. The quick and simple answer is this: because it is more economic, efficient and sustainable considering our lifestyle, our resource usage and the energy prices trend . Here is some of our reasoning:

A lot of city neighborhoods in Chicago have excellent sound building stock (a lot of it good masonry building stock) that already served several generations, and that could serve some more. Think of the energy savings that result from reusing such structures generation after generation. Compare that to the loss of embedded energy in a tear-down and required energy input for new construction. Cathy and I would like to find a sound masonry building that we can rehab; a building where we can re-use the embedded energy of the core building structure.

How much land does one need to live on – sustainably? There is a whole array of advantages embedded in development densities that are found in many of our city neighborhoods. It is all about that magic word ‘energy’—in this case, the energy we use to move around.

As professionals, the key considerations for us are to live close to work and to live close to public transportation, to live close to stores and other amenities such as parks or Lake Michigan. It’s a quality of life issue – to have easy access to our daily needs. It is about being money-smart in this age of rising energy and individual transportation cost.

We are both also very aware that our dependence on our cars will get us into big time trouble. We would like to stay out of trouble – we would like to be as car-independent as we can, in a walkable neighborhood. We would like to live in a community with an intelligent development density where we can use our bicycles.

And we would like to explore how much productive use, such as in terms of food production, can be generated form a city lot.

We can’t and we don’t want to take these advantages for granted though. We know that we have to take an active interest in all assets the City of Chicago can provide in order to support and improve them.

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Rationales Part 2 –Economics

Sunday, March 8th, 2009
Written by Marcus de la fleur

I talked about the information void that has emerged. This void is often filled with misinformation, particularly on the cost side, that can lead to unfortunate decisions.

Have you heard the complaints on how expensive this “green stuff” is? Is it really? Say it is summer and your fridge is broken. You don’t want to spend money on repairs or a new one. But you keep buying fresh and frozen groceries like to always do. Needless to say a lot of the groceries will go bad and end up in the trash. Before you know it, you have wasted enough money on groceries gone bad that you could have paid for the repairs or new fridge.

Things can get really expensive in life if we are unwilling to manage our finite resource responsibly and are unwilling to take a critical look at our habits. We have to get smarter on how we use our finite resources. Same for the “green stuff.”

A few years back I worked on a project that was looking into a ground source heat pump (geothermal system) for some of the cooling and heating needs. It was finally deemed too expensive and cut from the project. Fast forward a few years. Energy prices have risen, and looking back the geothermal system suddenly looks really attractive. The problem is, that money has already been spent on a conventional heating and cooling system and construction cost have risen.

If we only think one step ahead, if we just look at the initial cost, if we are solely interested in making a quick buck, we will think “expensive.” If we think long-term and identify available opportunities to manage our resources more effectively we may actually save money – even though those repairs, the new fridge, or that “green stuff” seemed so expensive.

Cathy and I hope to be smart with our money and make it last and work a long time. To get there we realize that we have to be good system thinkers and consider the consequences of our decisions we make today – including their impact on our wallets.

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Rationales Part 1 – Filling the information gap

Friday, March 6th, 2009
Written by Marcus de la fleur

The green grass-roots movement is growing. It has grown so much so that the flow of information (or education) can’t keep up with the increasing interest. A void is emerging that needs to be filled with information. I am talking about useful, applicable and pragmatic information that applies to a broad audience, not just a few privileged green geeks (such as myself). Cathy and I learned how much such information is appreciated through the 168 Elm Ave. pilot project, which only covered the landscape, not the building.

We would like to repeat the landscape component, this time on a lot in the city. We also would like to make information on sustainable building options accessible. Have you ever scrolled through publication, magazines and news articles that feature green residential buildings, such as single-family homes and two- or three-flats? The majority are not in the city, but somewhere with plenty of land around them. In the city or not, most are new construction that is untenable for the majority of home owners.

We can’t just tear down every old build to build a new green home. That in itself would be outright unsustainable and would produce way to much waste and consume way too much energy during the rebuilding process. What about the huge existing housing stock out there? We need to quickly figure out what we can do to that existing stock, and how we can turn it green. Cathy and I would like to figure out the how through this new pilot project.

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