futuristic sustainable living with the hover home!

Hello blogosphere!

Hover House 3 is an innovative model for sustainable living.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the FLOAT House – an innovative design that allows homes to “float” in cases of flooding and sea level rise. While making your house able to float on water is cool, how about a hovering house? Glen Irani Architects has worked to design the aesthetically flawless and energy efficient “Hover House 3.”

Located in Los Angeles, the goal of the house is to hover the building structure over outdoor living space in order to maximize the amount of outdoor square footage a property has in an tightly fit urban location.

These hovering structures also reduce indoor floor area significantly, which help lower building costs and consumption of dwindling building resources. The home also boasts large windows, photovoltaic panels on its roof, and many other sustainability-improved technologies.

Happy Sustainable Living!
- Emily

is SEED taking the place of LEED as the best way to measure sustainable environmental design?

The 5 guiding principles of SEED serve as the basis for measuring sustainable practices for housing, real estate development, and other building projects.

Most people in the architecture and sustainability world know about Leadership in Environmental and Environmental Design – better known as LEED. Achieving LEED certification is a great way of proving sustainable practices in housing and other building development. The LEED system is based on a 100 point baseline, and projects are evaluated based on various criteria.

SEED, however, is the newest way to measure sustainability. As economic fluctuations and social justice issues have proven to be an important part of sustainability, SEED – which stands for Social Economic Environmental Design – tries to incorporate these other factors in addition to environmental and energy concerns. Instead of basing the system off of a point system like LEED, SEED qualitative and quantitative measures are context-dependent, but are developed around their five core principles and mission statement. Their philosophy is that a bottom-up, context-dependent measure is a more effective way of evaluating projects rather than “a numerical measurement based on a top-down pre-determined set of rules.”

The question is: Will companies start to turn to SEED now rather than LEED? The subjectivity of the context-dependent evaluation may make it difficult to create an even playing field for all projects. Also, keeping up with all of SEED’s 5 principles may be harder than it looks. However, I feel optimistic about SEED certifications, as their website seednetwork.org links to many promising case studies, one of which is in the Bay Area! Seeing the SEED principles in action makes me feel positive about these new standards for sustainability.

Happy sustainable living!
- Emily

The Passive House: Part 3

This New York Times graphic does an excellent job of showing the intricate components of Passive House design. Just by looking at this image, one can see the many details that go into passive structure planning. But the benefits of this meticulous design are immense – these designs go beyond just being “zero energy” and completely eliminate the need for energy producing systems completely. The shift towards these passive, efficient, and simplified green systems are what make passive house design an attractive new model for creating sustainable homes.

The Passive House: Part 2

Making the “passive” standard work.

The way that Passive House structures come to be is through meticulous planning during the design process. Instead of being able to retrofit and improve older structure, Passive House buildings require a multitude of considerations. One quality of these “passive” structures is that they are airtight and super-insulated. This is necessary in order to reach low-leak goals. Thick walls and an abundance of insulation help achieve this standard. While typical American homes usually have walls that are 6 inches thick, passive structures can be as many as three times as thick.

Another design consideration that is very important for passive house structures is consideration of where the sun is located in relation to the building. Accounting for maximal window and facade exposure to the southern sun is optimal in order to retain as much heat as possible. According to the Passive House Institute’s “Passive House Checklist,” accounting for a “southernly orientation” of +/- 30° and large south-facing window areas is an important part of determining a prime location for passive house construction.

While the passive house standards decrease energy demand for heating significantly, some space heating systems may be required. Minimizing the impact of these augmentative systems is ideal. For example, one passive house structure in Vermont used a wood burning stove and electric radiant floors to ensure a comfortable home and prevention of plumbing problems.

More Information:
Passive House Checklist
“Can We Build in a Brighter Shade of Green?”

The Passive House: Part I

The Passive Solar House: History and Demands

When considering how to design an energy efficient structure, there are many different methods architects can utilize in order to reach energy efficient goals in their designs. One such method is called the Passive House (or Passivhaus) Standard. Popular in Germany and Austria, the idea for the standard sparked when a conversation happened between Lund University professor Bo Adamson and Institut für Wohnen und Umwelt (Institute for Housing and the Environment) professor Wolfgang Feist in May 1988.

The influence of the Passive House standard has grown greatly over the past 24 years. As of August 2012, 15,000 to 20,000 Passive House modeled sites were located in Europe. The U.S. has been slow to adopt this standard though, as only 13 Passive House structures had been built as of August 2010. In 1996, a “Passivhaus Institute” was formed in order to promote and control the standards.

In brief, the standards demand three key energy efficiency requirements – 1) The building must not exceed certain heating and cooling demands; 2) Total primary energy consumption – energy used for eletricity, heating, and hot water – cannot exceed a given limit; and 3) The building cannot leak more than 0.6 time the house volume per hour. All of these requisites allow for these architectural structures to eliminate conventional heating systems from their designs. Energy consumption due to heating in Passive House structures is also slashed by nearly 90%. As a result, the buildings become more energy efficient, green, and less expensive to construct.

Renewable Energy Comes of Age, Part 6

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

The Sun and Wind Show

“The December 2010 Small and Community Wind Conference and Tradeshow held in Portland, Oregon points to the expansion of this market segment. Attendance at this and other renewable energy industry trade shows continues to grow. Another sign of the growing maturity of the small wind segment was the recent adoption of uniform consumer labeling and testing standards by the Small Wind Certification Council (SWCC). SWCC advances uniform power testing of turbines at 11 meters per second (24.4 MPH), metrics for decibel sound rating, and other product performance standards.  Now consumers can buy products with greater confidence, an essential element in the maturing of any industry.

As for solar, there are four ways solar energy is harnessed: photovoltaics or PV (converting light to electricity), heating and cooling systems (solar thermal), concentrating solar power (utility scale), and lighting. Greater clarity about available solar technologies makes it easier to identify segments likely to grow and those not well suited for commercialization.

For example, solar PV encompasses a dozen or more technologies and an equal number for solar thermal. Four technologies dominate the PV market are; mono and polycrystalline silicon wafers, thin-film amorphous silicon, and thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe). There are a couple of up-and-coming contenders including thin-film copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS). But generally speaking disruption of the PV market by startling technologic breakthroughs is not likely in the near term.

The market for these products is huge. Installed solar, like wind systems, can be located at homes or businesses and on large-scale farms that act like central power plants. At year end 2009, the U.S. had 2,108 megawatts (MW) of installed solar electric capacity.  This included about 1,676 MW of PV, 432 MW of utility-scale concentrating solar power, and at least 24,000 MWTh (megawatts thermal equivalent) of solar water heating, cooling, and solar pool heating systems. In 2009 the U.S. ranked fourth in the world for new solar electric installations. Germany ranked first, Italy second, and Japan third.”
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Part 5

Part 7

Renewable Energy Comes of Age, Part 5

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

Renewable Energy is Growing

“Although renewable energy is a relatively small portion of total energy supply both globally and in the United States, renewable energy installations in both the world and in the United States nearly tripled between 2000 and 2008. In the United States, growth in sectors such as wind and solar photovoltaics (sunlight to electricity, also known as “PV”) signify an ongoing shift in the composition of the U.S. electricity supply. Markets for wind turbines continue to grow as economics become more favorable and product offerings expand. The U.S. wind industry installed nearly 10,000 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity in 2009 - enough to serve over 2.4 million homes. The industry consists of at least four market segments as defined by the power output; offshore turbines (>5MW output), onshore big wind turbines (1 to 5MW output), community wind turbines (100kW to 1.5MW output) and small wind (<100kW output). Investment in each of these sectors is expected to grow in the coming years.”
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Part 4

Part 6

Renewable Energy Comes of Age, Part 4

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

Manufacturing Products for Efficient Buildings

“Manufacturers are also aligning products to work with more efficient buildings and the smart grid. General Electric (GE) is but one of many companies that are moving aggressively to develop appliances and devices that communicate with the smart grid and support the use of renewable energy. And why would companies jump at this market? GE invested $5 billion in Ecomagination, the green focused R&D program it began in 2005. Over the last five years products developed from the program generated $70 billion in revenue according to the company. It’s not surprising then that GE announced in November 2010 they will invest another $10 billion in Ecomagination over the next five years.”
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Part 3

Part 5

Renewable Energy Coming of Age, Part 3

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

Energy Efficiency – A Partner in the Growth of Renewable Energy

“In support of an expanding smart grid and adoption of renewable energy systems are initiatives to design & manufacture efficient buildings and energy consuming devices including household appliances. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHREA) develops standards for buildings and mechanical systems. The forthcoming ASHREA 189.1 Standard for the Design of High Performance Green Buildings promotes energy savings in a number of ways including the inter-connectivity of building information systems with power supplies.”
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Part 2

Part 4

Renewable Energy Coming of Age, Part 2

Last week, I attended the Clean Economy Summit in Washington DC.  It was full of movers and shakers in the emerging markets of clean and green business.  The following series of posts are from an article by Don Schjeldahl, Vice President of Renewable Energy Strategies.

Smart Meter Standards

“The prospect of more meters and a functioning smart grid network in the near term got a boost in October 2010 when the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) advised the Federal, Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that it has defined five “foundational” sets of standards for Smart Grid, interoperability and cyber security. These are considered essential for efficient and reliable grid operations. The standards emerged from the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, where Congress directed NIST to coordinate development of communication protocols and other standards to achieve an inter-operable smart grid.”
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Part 1

Part 3