Sustainable Design at 2225...

This page describes green features intended to be incorporated into the final design:
[Recycling of Existing Building] [Waste Management] [Power of the Sun] [Green Roofs] [Water Conservation] [Rainwater Harvesting] [Green Paint] [Natural Mattresses]

• Recycling of Existing Building. In the snap of a finger, an existing building can be knocked down and rubble quickly removed, all 'waste' delivered to one of Pennsylvania's local transfer stations. It's too easy, and in my opinion, it's the traditional (and seemingly cost effective) way to demolish an existing building. Why take any other route? What demolition options are available? One option brought to my attention was a company called Second Chance (a 501(c)(3)) based out of Baltimore Maryland. Their business model takes homes marked for demolition and removes the valuable parts prior to its destruction. In doing so, they accomplish: deconstruction - by identifying valuable goods and keeping them from ending up in landfills, architectural salvage - by storing the goods until they can be reused back into the community, and job training - by giving low-income Baltimore residents a chance to train in the art of construction through the practice of deconstruction. Second Chance is a brilliant company that fills a much needed niche. My goal in this project was to avoid sending as much waste as possible to the landfills. Second Chance not only allowed me to accomplish this but helped me rethink what waste is. What I learned is that every element / every material has some form of recycling value. Every item that goes into the making of a building can be looked at as a valuable asset during its removal from that building. All buildings have a life-span, whether 10 years or 100 years or 1000 years, and when it's a building's time to be taken down (including ones hit by natural disasters), when a building has reached its end-of-life point, rather than crumple it up & toss it away into the garbage, we need to take the time to disassemble it and find reuse in all its elements. In my first walkthru of the building, I did not see the value in what remained... toilets, sinks, doors, windows, ceiling tiles, HVAC systems, piping, wiring, lighting, cabinets, tiles, the list goes on. Second Chance opened my eyes. For the project, Second Chance broke up their job into two phases: first phase targeting interior fixtures (such as sinks, doors, cabinets) & second phase targeting exterior fixtures (such as door entrances and exterior windows) and items more embedded in the structure (such as wiring, lighting, piping, HVAC). The reason for the split had to do with the fact that I required asbestos remediation since small traces of asbestos were discovered in the original ceiling and tiles. The plan was to clear the building of interior fixtures prior to asbestos removal followed by exterior fixtures prior to demolition.   

• Waste Management. Here stood before me a two-story medical building which needed to come down before I could start new construction. Traditional demolition methods would send all debris into landfills. Second Chance took a huge bite out of the potential waste by salvaging a large portion of the building's materials. But that left a bare-bone building composed of brick, cement blocks, steel, wood framing, and a concrete foundation. And a very simple job for any demolition crew. What annoyed me was that the default behavior for most demolition crews would be to take the demolition debris and send it to the dump. Were there any other options? Where Second Chance left off is where Avi Golen and his Construction Waste Management business would take over. CWM is one of few waste management companies in the Delaware Valley area focused on C&D - Construction & Demolition - recycling. Avi enlightened me by showing me that all demolition debris has an intrinsic value. Take a dumpster of raw materials and you have trash; separate the same heap into individual containers and you have a collection of valuable commodities ready for recycling. Avi and his company fill a greatly needed niche in the construction waste industry and at the same time attack a much larger problem of depleting landfills. Why dump it if it can be reused? Avi and his company have solved the problem!! In my opinion, CWM is a pioneer in the field. Their mission statement claims: "Our goal is to recycle construction waste, keeping it from landfills and delivering it to end markets. Our commitment is to save builders money by doing so." CWM has also taught me that construction waste does not end at the demolition phase, equally important is addressing construction waste produced during new construction - where one can find significant portions of virgin material marked as trash, materials fresh from the factory that end up in the dumps, materials made up of mostly scraps & fragments from the job site, and goods that arrive with imperfections. For example, wood waste makes up 40-50 percent of what comes off a residential jobsite; ground-up wood can be used for mulch, composting, animal bedding, landfill cover, and as an industrial fuel source. Drywall comprises about 15 percent of the waste stream and weighs about one pound per square foot of living space; drywall manufacturing plants are gradually adding the technology for recycling construction site wastes, and some states permit agricultural uses of ground gypsum wallboard. Cardboard packaging doesn't add much to the weight of debris but can account for up to 30 percent of the volume and, if unconsolidated, can send the dumpster to the landfill long before it's necessary. It is understandable that there will be some volume of waste at a new construction site; it is unacceptable that this waste finds its way into landfills. Recycle Recycle Recycle...  and close the loop!!!   

• Power of the Sun. The sun will hopefully produce light for many years to come (...estimates hint at approximately five billion more years). Just as the rain gives us free water, the sun hands us free sunshine. And sunshine can be harnessed to produce hot water, electricity, and more. According to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Philadelphia receives over half a year of sunshine annually. That's a lot of exposed sunlight to take advantage of. Put another way, that's a lot of potential energy wasted if we don't take advantage of it!! On this project, I will be producing electricity through the use of photovoltaic (PV) cells located on the roof of the house. PV cells are groups of semiconductors that convert photons into electricity. The beauty in doing this is if you collect more electricity than you use in a given day, then you can send the surplus back into the utility grid, actually spinning your usage meter backwards; through the concept of 'net metering' your monthly (positive & negative) usage is calculated and a net total is determined, which could possibly be a negative number meaning that you've produced more electricity than used over your billing cycle. That's good news because that means that you'll be receiving a check from the utility company rather than paying one!! Producing your own electricity through solar takes a bite out of your dependency on the city's manufacturing of electricity (and that's a good thing since the city's burning of fossil fuels contributes to 'global warming'). How much electricity you net depends on your electrical load requirements & the size of your PV array. For this project, load requirements have not yet been determined. Therefore, the amount of savings is unknown (although estimates hover in the 50% range). The goal will be to populate as many PV arrays onto the rooftop as will fit. In late 2004, through word of mouth, I found a local PV installer - MESA Environmental Sciences, Inc. - run by Sarah Hetznecker & Gary Sheehan. They came out to the property to take measurements using a device called a "Solar Pathfinder" which interprets how much direct sunlight is received at a given location over a period of a full year, broken down by month and time of day (see graphics at right, the large dark blob in the middle is a reflection of Jim who took the picture). It is a very simple yet telling tool. Even though there stood a large apartment building across the street, the Pathfinder returned results indicating my property would receive direct sunlight most of the year, especially during the hottest days. That news along with the building's southern orientation on the north side of the street and the fact that actual roof height would be higher than the existing roofline, plus location of PV cells would sit on the northern half of the structure, signified this site was a good candidate for solar installation. A few weeks later, I received a "Solar PV Assessment" from MESA along with a grant application for the Sustainable Development Fund (SDF). The assessment recommended 60 solar modules covering an area of approximately 1,000 square feet for a total gain of 9.6KW - a very rough preliminary estimate considering no completed site design existed at this time. I was encouraged to get the grant application in sooner rather than later to secure funding from the state, then we could tweak PV requirements as the project design became more understood. Details about SDF's solar coverage can be found here. It took some time, but I was successful in securing funding (which would cover roughly half the upfront cost of the job). Then shortly thereafter was let go from the program when new program parameters were imposed that set hard construction start-dates that I could not meet. Found myself out of the program quicker than I could say photovoltaic. The SDF program administrator reassured me that more money - and additional solar grants - would become available soon. I have yet to see this happen but need to inquire. Design ownership over the PV installation will be determined shortly. It has been well over a year since the MESA assessment, and can only hope that photovoltaic semiconductor technology has advanced considerably to the point that I can pull more juice out of a smaller collection of cells - and that the price has dropped! In actuality, the (5-year short-term) price has not dropped: an article Solar Surge on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer's Business section (dated Friday September 1st 2006) prints "The [photovoltaic] surge in demand has strained supplies of silicon, which is the indispensable material in 94 percent of the photovoltaic modules being manufactured today. Silicon is also used in the electronics industry, which is notorious for boom-and-bust cycles. That experience has made silicon manufacturers cautious about expanding to meet solar-panel demand." But the demand is there: "[government incentive] programs have pushed global sales of photovoltaic solar panels to $15 billion in 2005, continuing a five-year trend of more than 30 percent annual growth." The great thing about this article is that MESA continues to run a strong business - it is a photograph of their installation that is featured. In addition to solar electricity, I plan to use cool tubing technology (the Macro version of fiber optics) that redirects natural sunlight hitting your roof into dark interior spaces. This cuts down on artificial indoor lighting and therefore reduces overall electrical load. Click here for an animated example of this technology.   

• Green Roofs. Now here's something that you don't see everyday... a lawn on your rooftop!! Am I hearing this right? A lawn on top of the house? Yep... you heard correct. But this is not the typical patch of chemically-controlled meticulously-cared for grass-oasis you're used to seeing around the neighborhood. It is quite the opposite in fact, its purpose multifaceted: providing natural shading to the home, an extra layer of protection from the elements, extending the life of the roof membrane which hides underneath; natural shade gives way to greater solar insulation and less cooling requirements on hot days; carefully constructed green roofs serve as excellent water retention devices, delaying the flow of rainwater off the property (aka "stormwater runoff"), reducing the amount of water that finds its way back into municipal stormwater drains (in an urban environment). Stormwater runoff has become a growing problem in many cities that combine both sanitary sewage and rainwater runoff into one dedicated sewage system; CSOs - Combined Sewer Overflows - send excess waste water (untreated, bacteria and pollutant filled water) during rain storms into rivers, streams, lakes, and other clean waterways. Any measure to cut down on runoff is encouraged!! Solutions include: green roofs, disconnecting gutter downspouts and diverting rainwater into the lawn or gardens, or using barrels or other containers to collect the rain (-see Rainwater Harvesting). The question that comes to mind for a green roof is... how much lawn maintenance is required? The answer is little to none. A green roof is not a lawn in the typical sense, the vegetation that grows on the rooftop is specially selected for its durability and resilience to both extreme draught and excess moisture exposure, as well as its ability to be manicure-free. One such common green roof species is the sedum. Most of these species can also handle the harsh coating of snow and ice during the winter months. A green roof could be viewed as the perfect lawn since it is nearly care-free but understand that these species are plants and not grasses, therefore they may bloom and they take on a variety of shapes and sizes, the result a more wild or natural landscape aesthetic. Green roofs can take on a variety of sizes (heights) depending on the depth of the tub that they will sit in. For this project, there are two areas of the house that will host a green roof - the very top level which is also home to the photovoltaics (the two features will co-exist in the same space) & a smaller area off the rear office level. I have chosen to go for a visually tame spread for the former, a visually enticing layout for the later. You don't hear much about joint green roof & photovoltaic installations in the US but from what I understand, there is great benefit for combining the two: solar cells provide additional shading to the rooftop & vegetation lowers the rooftop temperature allowing the solar cells to run more efficiently; the two technologies (theoretically) work nicely hand-in-hand. I have chosen Charlie Miller of Roofscapes to design and manage the installation of the green roof. They were responsible for placing a green roof on top of Chicago's City Hall (where McDonough + Partners served as the architects). For a brief history of green roofs as described by Metropolis magazine, click here. For those Do-It-Yourself folks, you might want to consider Weston Solutions' highly innovative GreenGrid modular system, a kit that you purchase and install yourself.

• Water Conservation. A November 13th 2005 NY TIMES article Steps to Take Before the Collective Well Runs Dry printed "According to a Government Accountability Office report in 2003, some 36 of 47 states participating in its water survey expected shortages within 10 years; all but one said they expected shortages if they experienced a drought. And since 1996, water bills have risen at nearly twice the rate of inflation." When it comes to water, there are many measures you can take to minimize dependency on the city's water system for your watering needs. One simple step is curbing your usage habits (car washing, long showers, using toilets to flush trash, etc). Another is tending to leaks. A more steadfast solution is the investment of water-efficient appliances & "low flow" fixtures (shower heads, toilets, etc) which put a huge dent in water usage. The less obvious and more costly alternative is the implementation of water plumbing systems that reflect a new way of thinking how water is used - that is, is there really a need to have fresh drinking water for use in our toilets or irrigation? Grey water systems and rainwater harvesting systems fill this niche nicely while significantly reducing city water consumption load. On this project, water-efficient appliances and "low flow" fixtures (showerheads, toilets) will be used. Grey water and non-potable toilet systems will not be implemented due to the cost in installing redundant conduit runs. However, cisterns will be installed under the building to collect rainwater used for irrigation, greatly cutting down on water demand (-see Rainwater Harvesting). One cool innovative product I heard about is this shower system that does not release water until the desired temperature is reached - think about how much water is wasted while waiting for your shower water to hit that perfect level of comfort!! There's always the option of putting down a bucket to collect unused water. Don't laugh... fresh water is a precious commodity!! Click here for a list of many more ideas on how to conserve water.

• Rainwater Harvesting. Construction design philosophy (mostly in urban areas) basically states: route rainwater off the property as quickly as possible. Send it into the streets and sewer systems where it can be collected and treated by the local municipalities. But the rainwater that runs into the sewer systems - called "stormwater runoff" - is now a growing problem in most cities, where excess rainwater causes untreated sewage to overflow into natural waterways, polluting the local ecosystem. I've discussed some of this above under Green Roofs. For suburban areas, this is less of an issue, where falling rainwater tends to percolate back into the lawns. To combat this problem, there are many things you can do such as: install pervious pavers that allow water to seep through sidewalks, driveways, patios back into the ground (where it is intended to flow, returning water to its more natural lifecycle); hang innovative gutter downspouts (such as the copper "Bluebell Raincup" by Olive Barn pictured at right) that temporarily retains water from escaping (and cascades during heavy rains); use green roofs as described above; or collect the rainwater in cisterns for (non-potable) use in irrigation, toilet water, or washing cars. This project will incorporate many of these concepts: rainwater hitting the building will be diverted to an underground cistern (to be designed by Rainwater Recovery) that will in turn get pumped out to an irrigation drip system on the property. Overflow will go to the city. Sensors embedded into the soil of the plantings will regulate irrigation flow allowing the system to differentiate between light rain and heavy thunderstorms. The system will run at great efficiency, only using water when needed. (Note that the green roof will not be tied into the irrigation system - it sustains its own moisture control).

• Green Paint. As consumers, we now have the option of purchasing paints made with minimal toxins. The result is improved air quality for a healthier living environment. There's also the advantage of less harsh chemicals being thrown into landfills when the paint is eventually stripped or torn down (or thrown out due to jobsite waste). What you see in the following table is an attempt to collect a list of sustainable paint options for your review. I don't think national chains such as Home Depot or Lowes carry any of these just yet, but I've included in the table a link to help you find local merchants if they exist.  [to the paint page]

• Natural Mattresses. It was time to buy a new bed, my aged futon I think had reached its prime. I purchased a platform bed frame first - setting the scene for simple & modern. But what would sit on top of it? Which mattress would be suitable for my body type? What would come next? It was Natural Home & Garden's Nov/Dec 2005 issue that opened my eyes to natural bedding options and I was suddenly intrigued. I didn't like the fact that harmful chemicals were added to standard mattresses (polybrominated diphenyl ethers used as fire retardants on polyurethane foam) - a compelling argument for a natural alternative. Natural Home & Garden had a nice chart that laid out material makeup, features, pricing, and how to purchase the mattresses. But where were the showrooms? I didn't want to buy anything without testing them. So a quick Internet search led me to a small town in Pennsylvania called Hellertown, an hour and a half from Philadelphia, an hour and a half from New York City. The place was called The Organic Mattress Store and I made a visit to check them out. The obvious question, why the inconvenience? Why so few showrooms? Why aren't existing major-brand showrooms sharing their floors? Someone in the business of natural bedding will tell you that as these products become more popular, they will become more easily available. They will also tell you there is a conflict of interest if major-brand showroom floors were to split their space - it is a natural mattress' advertising slogan to say that it is not full of hazardous chemicals found in all other types of bedding; the two worlds do not go hand-in-hand. So why aren't more people lead to believe that a natural mattress is the way to go? Could be a weak market exposure, awareness of environmental impact, awareness of health risks. What about comfort and expense? Natural mattresses seemed pricey but perhaps equal in cost compared to high-end brand-named models. In terms of comfort, I headed to The Organic Mattress Store where I let my body do the talking. I was greeted by Dennis Hornick, a calm and friendly sales staff who took the time to walk me through the small (but dense) showroom floor and explain the different technologies that went into each manufacturer. It was just Dennis and his wife Leora who ran the shop which was embedded into an historic home on Main Street. I was the only one there on a Wednesday evening at 5pm, so I had all the time to give each mattress equal attention (...Dennis helped in this process by dimming the showroom lights, leaving the room, and encouraged me to rest on each mattress for a good 15 minutes!!). I was starting from scratch and knew very little about natural foam-rubber, which seemed to be the primary ingredient in many of the organic beds. I decided to stay away from spring mattresses for some reason (maybe because natural latex mattresses are more easily recyclable but this was a large risk considering I had just returned a Tempurpedic, foam-based, mattress because it was killing my back after one month of use). Natural rubber is made from the sap of the rubber tree and when molded into bedding plates provide a solid even-keeled feel. The rubber is naturally antibacterial, hypoallergenic, mold and dust-free. And virtually no chemicals are used in its processing. Vivetique uses 6" of solid core. Obasan splits the mattress into a 4" firm layer and a 2" soft layer. Green Sleep adds a third 2" layer for a total of 8". And Royal-Pedic, the top-of-the-line model, sections the rubber into 'zones' that change firmness from head-to-toe. The rubber cores are then wrapped in 100% organic cottons and wools (- the wool acts as a natural flame retardant). In all the time at the store - moving pillows and toppers from one bed to the next, running between rooms - Dennis gave me the space and time with no pressure and answered all questions I threw at him. He explained that there are four types of people who purchase organic mattresses: the chemically sensitive ones, the environmentalists, the ones who are just plain curious, and the ones in it for the 'cool' factor. Where did I stand? I am just a curious lad who wants to find solutions that better our planet and at the same time introduce a healthier living environment for my guests and for myself. Does going organic mean giving up comfort? I don't believe so, but I will let you know after a few months. I spent a good three hours at the store and ended up selecting Green Sleep's Vimala. I stayed till 8pm, and little did I realize the shop closed at 7pm!! Dennis had not said a word. On my way home, I wondered how many other organic and 'green' mattress manufacturers there were that were not represented at this store. I imagine there are many but The Organic Mattress Store (the only showroom in my area) did present a wide selection. I was glad to have made the effort. One area I have not looked into is the environmental impact of mattresses. There's the obvious health benefits of natural (chemical-free) mattresses, but natural mattresses use natural resources and so a company's eco-impact depends on its harvesting, manufacturing, and shipping policies. At the tail-end of a mattress' lifecycle, there is its waste impact, much to do with how a mattress is designed and how well it can be disassembled and reused. Natural mattresses are no better than ordinary mattresses if they cannot be fully recycled or naturally decompose. Regardless of your type of mattress, having it properly recycled (if a local program exists in your area - you will have to check this out) makes a huge positive impact. Remember the important goal: avoid contributing to landfill waste if at all possible!! Addendum to this story (now that a few months have gone by)... to follow up on the level of comfort on natural latex mattresses. Simply put, they are extremely comfortable. Unfortunately I had the same reaction to the Vimala as I did to the Tempurpedic: over time, a sore back. Therefore I will leave the Vimala organic foam mattress for my guests who I am certain will enjoy it thoroughly.