Pulse Technology: Micro-monitoring Your Energy Use for Conservation

How cool would it be to receive updates on the amount of energy used every time you turn on a light, open a window, or turn on the heat?

Thanks to Pulse, a digital tool developed by Investa Sustainability Institute and Green Buildings Alive, electricity usage per building can be assessed and uploaded directly to the web. Pulse data feeds update every 15 minutes, and create summaries of daily overall consumption.

“What we are doing here might look simple, but the practice draws from nearly a decade of measuring and monitoring what really makes a building greener. We’ve learnt that sustainability in our sector doesn’t have to mean a fancy façade or expensive technology. Real, measurable energy savings are the bedrock of the radical changes on the horizon for cites worldwide,” says Craig Roussac, director of the Investa Sustainability Institute.

Pulse technology aims to influence behavioral change and raise energy awareness among building occupants. Already, large corporate buildings have the ability to compare their energy usage with that of competitors as well as the increased involvement of employers in ensuring a greener work space. Pulse can also uncover and report costly energy anomalies automatically. It doesn’t get much more convenient than checking your automatically reported energy usage online.

-Caroline

“green” vs. “sustainable”… what do they actually mean?

The words “sustainable” and “green” are both buzzwords often used interchangeably. Up until I took an Environmental Studies class last semester, I wasn’t completely clear on the distinctions between them. From a designer’s point of view, however, the distinctions are critical to understand an otherwise hackneyed movement in architecture and design.

First, let’s look at “sustainable.” A sustainable product lowers pressure on the environment by using renewable or sustainably produced materials. A sustainably produced material, in turn,  is one that doesn’t pollute, destroy or erode the environment in which it is gathered or produced, and one that doesn’t permanently reduce the supply.

“Green,” on the other hand, refers to products that function so efficiently and/or strategically as to cause reduced or minimal impact on the environment. Specifically, green design minimizes waste, fuel, and other potentially unnecessary resources that go into construction. Usually, buildings are “green,” but not sustainable. However, there are a few out there that are both. Oberlin College’s Lewis Center, for example, employs its own water treatment system, features scores of solar panels on its roof, and uses geothermal wells to heat and cool the building.

Of course, the term “green” has also come to be known as something too that’s politically liberal, but here at KSDG, we believe that caring about the health of the environment and the people in it shouldn’t be restricted to one political party or another, don’t you?

-Caroline

architects! use the energy star target finder

Here Kevin Stephens Design Group, we’re always searching for new systems to save energy and measure the savings. It’s good for the planet, and good for the pocketbook. We’re a full-service design, construction management, architecture, and sustainability retrofitting firm, so these guides help us do our job better.

One tool we’ve found is Energy Star’s “Target Finder”, a free online tool that enables architects and building owners to set an energy performance target, compare estimated energy consumption to that target, and receive an EPA score and reduction percentage for the estimated whole building energy use.

EPA scores, based on standards of the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, are calculated by considering all energy consumption associated with a given project, from construction to long term maintenance. EPA scores range from 1 – 100, and projects that earn a score of 75 or higher are eligible for Energy Star certification.

In addition to the EPA score, users also receive strategies on how to  achieve  an energy-efficient design as well as an estimate of annual energy use and its associated costs. Target Finder teaches architects to set realistic goals for energy use, and to examine a variety of ways to minimize energy consumption. As a growing number of national and regional initiatives require an EPA score before moving forward on any given project, Target Finder will hopefully make green design the standard in modern architecture.

-Caroline

how do you spell green revolution? C-o-n-X-t-e-c-h

When you hear of a 101,000 square foot, steel reinforced data center built in nine days, you’d think it unfeasible. Then when you hear about a 10 story steel tower built in three days, you’d have to think “impossible.” These two extraordinary feats have one thing in common: ConXtech, a Hayward-based technology company that manufactures prefabricated steel space frame systems.

Their modular systems are comprised of wide flange beams, HSS (or box columns,) and ConXR or ConXL connectors, allowing for mass-customization and configuration. With a ConX system, architects can select the structural grid early on in the design process, saving time that otherwise would have been spent designing around certain structural constraints.

Dimensional accuracy also enables various architectural elements such as curtain systems, stairs, and balconies to be attached to the framework. ConX systems also allow for seismically sound, higher buildings as a result of their unique moment connection with bolted collar systems. ConXtech’s cost effective systems have already been employed for projects at Burning Man (where five people assembled a ten story building in five days in the middle of the desert), Stanford Law School, and the Coronado U.S. Naval Base.

What makes ConX systems so green is their decreased overall tonnage, collapse resistance, and energy and material efficiency. I guess this just goes to show that with maximum efficiency, anything is possible.

Cool, huh?

-Caroline

the new urban garden: hanging IV bags filled with algae?

A man breathes carbon dioxide into the IV bag of a hanging algae plant at the H.O.R.T.U.S. exhibit

Imagine this: You’re strolling around the city, and stumble across an installation of IV bags containing algae hanging from the ceiling. Each bag has a tube, and you see a man go up and breathe into one of these tubes. You’re completely puzzled, right?

Well, this scene may not be so absurd after all – ecoLogicStudio has created what it calls “H.O.R.T.U.S.”  or “Hydro Organisms Responsive to Urban Stimuli.” The algae plants create an urban garden that thrives on human interaction in order to survive. By breathing into the tubes, humans provide the plants with the carbon dioxide they need to grow.

The project also has a “cyber” component, where visitors are encouraged to use their smartphones to scan the algae bags to learn more about the plants. Tweeting about the experiment is also highly encouraged. This integration of social media, technology on the humanand plant side, and urban agriculture makes for an interesting and innovative way to think about gardening!

Happy sustainable living!
- Emily 

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

Cut your daily water usage by 1,213 gallons!

So if you’ve been keeping up with my posts about water use and how you can cut down, you may be thinking “This is great
and all, but are there any small things I can change in my daily life to help cut down on my water usage?” The answer is YES!

Check out this short video by GOOD.is that gives you a few tips of what you could do throughout the day. In the end you could be left with 1,213 gallons of water saved. As the conclusion of the video says, image how much we could save in a year!

Composting Toilets – An Alternative to Flushing Away Our Water!

In my last blog, I talked about how water use is a huge problem in our society. Water from toilets is an especially large chunk of our water consumption. So what is a solution? Compostable toilets are one way that we can reduce the amount of water we use.

These toilet systems are water-less,  and use composting methods to turn human waste into a reusable soil additive. Some say that compostable toilets would be like old-fashioned outhouses, but modern designers are doing a lot to develop very advanced compostable toilet systems that don’t resemble (or smell like) outhouses at all!

Left: composting toilet... Right: the hidden parts

The best part of compostable toilets is that not only do they help save water, but they turn our waste into a safe, useful product that can be used to enrich our soil. Many people who already compost and think about sustainable farming – agree that this is the next step. Instead of flushing away our waste into the water supply, it can be returned to the land and made much safer. Let’s work to reuse and revitalize our world with compostable toilets : )

Here are some FAQ’s about composting toilets.

Happy sustainable living!
- emily

Live near a levee? Build a FLOATing house!

A photograph from the outside of FLOAT house

When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, not many predicted the magnitude of damage that this natural disaster would cause. Homes were destroyed, people stranded, and New Orleans as a whole was left in shambles. Still today, people are trying to find solutions to make our cities more resistant to disasters like these.

Morphosis Architects, UCLA Professor Thom Mayne, and graduate students from UCLA have worked with the Make it Right Foundation to built what they call “The FLOAT House.” By situating the foundation of the home on a chassis that functions like a raft, this structure is capable of rising as high as 12 feet when a major flood occurs. Designed to generate its own electricity through solar and to collect its own water, the FLOAT House is also a “green” model. This awesome innovation is a step forward in green design and disaster planning!

More Information:
Time lapse video The FLOAT House being constructed
Project description from the Morphosis Architects website
Make it Right NOLA Webpage