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Green Building: Sun and Water

By Sarah S. Brophy

Green building is taking hold—and not just with celebrities and big-name organizations, but everywhere: with for-profit and nonprofit organizations and with homeowners. Why? For two reasons: Increasing public awareness of how sensible it is to live within the environment’s means; and increasing availability and affordability of green building and remodeling.

You might think green building seems complicated, but its premise is pretty simple: do no harm and try to heal the patient. The complicated parts are keeping track of all the new options in materials and practices and deciding what to do first! Here’s an easy outline of how to look at green building. It’s drawn from the National Park Service’s description of four principles of green building:

Provide a healthy environment. This is one with:

• Good ventilation
• Natural lighting
• Appealing spaces
• Clean air—no chemicals, airborne particulates, formaldehyde fumes, solvents, or volatile organic compounds.

Make careful choices in technologies and materials:

• Choose items that are biodegradable, recyclable, made from renewable resources, and manufactured in a way that has not damaged the environment.
• Use materials with a high percentage of recyclable content and products that are long lasting.
• Keep and reuse existing materials wherever possible.

Consume less energy than market standards

• Reduce ambient lighting and increase task lighting.
• Use sensors, timers, and motion detectors to control energy use in fixtures.
• Consider low-wattage features and individual or zoned controls.
• Use the most efficient energy system available or alternative energy sources, such as photovoltaic cells.
• Maintain systems and finishes so they work at peak efficiency.
• Reduce bulb wattage to save energy in lighting and cooling.

Recycle waste and water

• Select materials based on the ability to recycle them later.
• Collect recyclable materials by type (paper, plastic, glass, vegetable matter).
• Compost, for use in gardening and on grounds.
• Capture rainwater for irrigation.
• Use gray water (used water from noncontaminated sources such as your dishwasher) for toilets and gardens.

With those principles in mind let’s look at water and light. What can you do about sun and water to make your home green?

In Easton, in Talbot County, Kaitlin Waldrip has been steadily transforming her yard and home from their 1956 style to a greener, more natural feel. The natural plantings, gravel paths, bird fountain, and bamboo privacy fence create a peaceful, pleasant garden for her home and burgeoning psychotherapy practice, more sustainable than any paved parking area and formal lawn. Rain barrels and soaker hoses are parts of her watering plan. Rain barrels collect runoff to prevent damage to plants and gravel paths from the rushing water and reduce Easton’s storm water management needs. She’s adding a rain chain—a form of downspout that breaks up the stream of water falling over and through it—as a decorative way to slow and disperse roof runoff in an area too small for a barrel. Waldrip says she’s become “a total convert to soaker hoses.” Last summer she substantially reduced her use of water—even with consistent watering—and saw more bloom than ever before. Her gradual conversion to more native plants has helped, surely, but slow, drip watering means plants get the water they need, where they need it and at the rate at which they need it, without the waste caused by errant spray and evaporation.

Waldrip uses a long trellis as a sunshade for a south-facing room, helping reduce her cooling needs in the summer. She grows seasonal vines into a shade element during the spring and summer, then cuts them back in the fall and winter to let in more daylight and warmth. New double-paned glass improves insulation, and two glass-brick windows let in daylight, block the street view, and provide more insulation than did the old windows—yet they match the 1956 style.

Rain Down

If you want your own rain barrel you can build one for about $15. Instructions are on the Maryland Department of Natural Resources website. If you aren’t exactly the handiest of folks you’ll want to know I’ve found one of the best prices for assembled rain barrels ($50) is for those available from Arlington Echo Outdoor School in Millersville. Another resource for rain barrels is www.gardeners.com . . . just remember, shipping it from far away isn’t very green.

The Spa Creek Conservancy is bent on putting a rain barrel at every home and business in Annapolis. It’ll even do a free rain barrel clinic in your neighborhood to help you spread the word (mid-March to mid-November). It has not reached the Eastern Shore yet, but it’s possible. Check out www.spacreek.org or email rainbarrel@spacreek.org for more information. And remember, you don’t have to live on a creek or river to help the Bay; managing storm water is important everywhere. If you don’t capture and reuse rainwater the storm water system is just going to dump it into the Bay, and then you’ll have to buy the community’s treated water for your plants. (How can that be a good thing?)

Do something!

Homeowners also have a fabulous resource in the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center in Grasonville, Queen Anne’s County. Director Judy Wink is a dedicated champion for greening your home, and the center is a showcase of options. The new building is its own educational exhibit. Wink says, “Although it’s extremely functional, and we will use it hard, we also want the building to be a teaching tool.” For starters, on one side of the building two cisterns and eight rain barrel setups collect runoff. Take a look to decide whether fancy or simple, plastic or wooden, stacked or linked will suit your site best. Rain running off the other half of the building’s roof is collected in a demonstration rain garden. You’ll find conservation lessons everywhere—a septic system that produces potable water and doesn’t need to be pumped, plus recycling gray water, and dual-flush toilets that use less water to flush liquids and more to flush solids.

Wink says doing “something is better than nothing,” so she tells homeowners not to worry if they aren’t installing a solar array; one change is never a complete remedy anyway. What’s important is that you use as many available strategies as are appropriate for your situation. And reducing consumption is always the first step. So while some may be able to install solar water heaters or photovoltaic panels, others are saving energy by using on-demand water heaters, blocking direct sunlight to reduce cooling needs, choosing ENERGY STAR appliances, and using light sensors to dim or turn off lights.

Green Rehab

The Adkins Arboretum is planning a major green rehabilitation and addition at its site in Ridgely in Caroline County. The arboretum’s sun management strategies include an insulated roof on the education pavilion that will reduce summertime heat gain. It’s made of structural insulated panels (SIP), all-in-one units you can use for walls, floors, ceilings, and roofs. Sliding doors in the pavilion have polycarbonate strips to let in daylight while the door blocks direct sun. The pavilion has west-facing windows with mechanical shades that work on sensors to roll down or up to manage sun and glare. They’re on the outside so that when they’re down the heat never makes it into the pavilion. Other tricks include metal awnings at nearly every window or door opening, a shaded walkway on the southeast side of the building at the entry, and a rebuilt trellis with photovoltaic panels that produce energy and shade the gathering space below.

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates of Massachusetts has created a storm water management plan to convert the arboretum’s traditional parking lot to an eco-friendly landscape. The traditional big, open lot sent runoff into a catch basin, from which it gushed through a single pipe into the arboretum’s wetlands. The new plan spreads the runoff out among smaller parking areas and roadsides, sending water flowing into a vegetated swale (landscaped ditch) that slows it down, lets the soil and plants clean it, and allows it to gradually filter into the ground or gently enter the wetlands. It’s a kinder, gentler system. Rainwater from the roof will end up in huge cisterns and be stored for watering the plant collection. The arboretum will need all the rainwater it can collect for irrigation, even with its super-efficient watering system with controls tied to weather station data. So instead of reducing the need for fresh water by using rainwater in the building, it will do so by conserving water through efficient fixtures such as waterless urinals and low-flow faucets. Ellie Altman, the arboretum’s director, says, “For too long we have had to say to the public ‘Do what we say, not what we do.’ This redesign is consistent with the arboretum’s conservation mission and is a tremendous opportunity to promote best management practices by demonstrating best management practices.”

So if you’re interested in making some changes in your home, these are some of the simplest, quickest changes for managing water and sunshine:

• Use awnings and trellises to shade windows, porches, and decks.
• Take advantage of cross-ventilation by opening only the shaded windows and putting screens on all your windows and doors.
• Install rain barrels and rain gardens and use drip irrigation.
• If you’re replacing a toilet, install a low-flow or dual-flush system.
• If you replace your water heater, consider solar hot water or tankless heaters.

Green for Dummies—Useful Reading

If you’re thinking of building or remodeling you may find this new book helpful: Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies by Eric Corey Freed (December 2007, Wiley Publishing, Inc., $14.95 from Amazon.com). It’s an easy-to-read introduction to what’s happening, what’s possible, and what to watch for in building green. It has five sections:

• Why green and how to go about being green
• Understanding what makes materials green
• Green construction methods
• Green systems and site planning
• A bunch of get-started lists

It may oversimplify a few concepts but that’s understandable for a starter book. Besides, the green building environment is changing so rapidly, and is so complex, that no one person or book can be your sole source of information on it. This is a great place to start in your quest for a green home.

Definitions

Green & Sustainable:
Even though people often use the terms "green" and "sustainable" interchangeably, each has a proper definition: green refers to products and behaviors that are environmentally benign (think of it as the “do no harm clause”), while sustainable means practices that rely on renewable or reusable materials, are green or environmentally benign—processes that are capable of continuing (being sustained) with minimal long-term effects on the environment. Renewable and reusable are critical for keeping the planet-patient alive.

Greenwashing:
This is not truth in advertising. Greenwashing is suggesting that a product or process is more environmentally friendly than can be proved or than it really is. Just as we’ve learned to interpret food labels for healthfulness, now we learn to interpret claims of green, natural, and eco-friendly. The dealer may say the building material has recycled content, but how much—10 percent or 50 percent? And how sensible is the recycling process: did they have to ship the waste material 1,000 miles to be recycled, and then ship it to you? Local is better—less gas is spent driving it all around.

Life Cycle:
A life cycle assessment examines the costs of a product and the processes involved in harvesting, making, shipping, using, and disposing of or reusing it—in cash and in environmental terms. Each process along the way uses resources and produces wastes. The life cycle of a piece of paper starts with moving people and equipment to the wood harvest site. The rest of its life cycle includes harvesting and shipping the wood; making the paper; packaging, shipping, and using the paper; and disposing of the paper. Those add up to a lot more costs than just the money you pay to buy it at Staples. If the process uses recycled content, uses rapidly renewable resources, avoids using chlorine bleach, takes place locally to avoid using transportation, avoids using packaging, and re-recycles the paper, then the cost over the entire life cycle of that piece of paper becomes much less.

Tags: sarah s. brophy apr 08

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