Optimize Site Potential: Creating sustainable buildings
starts with proper site selection, including consideration of the reuse
or rehabilitation of existing buildings. The site orientation and
landscaping of a building is affected by the local ecosystems,
transportation methods, and energy use. Along with site design for
sustainability, it must be addressed in the preliminary design phase to
achieve a successful project.
See WBDG
Balancing Security/Safety and Sustainability Objectives.
Minimize Energy Consumption: A building should rely on
conservation and passive design measures rather than fossil fuels for
its operation. It should meet or exceed applicable energy performance
standards.
Protect and Conserve Water: In many parts of the country,
fresh water is an increasingly scarce resource. A sustainable building
should reduce control, or treat site-runoff, use water efficiently, and
reuse or recycle water for on-site use when feasible.
Use Environmentally Preferable Products: A sustainable
building should be constructed of materials that minimize life-cycle
environmental impacts such as global warming, resource depletion, and
human toxicity.
Enhance Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ): The indoor
environmental quality (IEQ) of a building has a significant impact on
occupant health, comfort, and productivity. Among other attributes, a
sustainable building should maximize daylighting; have appropriate
ventilation and moisture control; and avoid the use of materials with
high-VOC emissions.
Optimize Operational and Maintenance Practices:
Incorporating operating and maintenance considerations into the design
of a facility will greatly contribute to improved working environments,
higher productivity, and reduced energy and resource costs.
Advances in smart building design,
are expanding the amount of value added technologies owners can include
in their portfolio of services to the building occupants. These services
empower the occupant in realizing their goals in terms of cost, comfort,
convenience, safety, and long-term flexibility1.
One component of this integrated
approach to building design is in the area of building communication
systems. Careful planning and installation of the building’s wiring,
cabling, and distribution needs is key to a building project success and
the optimization of critical services offered to the building’s
occupant(s). This will ensure the occupant will enjoy the delivery of
such services offered by Voice, Data, Internet, Security systems, Cable
broadcast, Videoconferencing, and exploit the benefits of energy
management and control systems in reducing operating cost. Energy
management and control systems are used to control and monitor both
lighting and HVAC type applications. Many of these systems use an
open-ended communication platform.
Figure .2. Today’s automated building systems rely on open-ended
communication platforms
such as LonTalk (shown) or BACnet for device-level communications.
In the past many of these systems
were closed-ended consisting of a central controller to monitor and
maintain the system on-site. This type system typically consisted of a
central computer networked to various sub-systems used to control
lighting, building temperature, building security just to name a few.
These type systems were often considered very affordable in terms of
initial cost, but could be more costly to upgrade in terms of
integrating other building systems.
Today’s open ended systems, give
much more control to the individual sub-systems in controlling lighting,
building temperature, and other building systems. The central controller
is seen as a kind of switch only giving control to those sub-systems
that have been assigned a given priority-level over each of the other
sub-systems. Many of these sub-systems incorporate smart devices which
permit them to be tailored to the occupants needs in terms of
convenience and comfort2.
Figure.1). This three-layer Meadow 1 system provides
passive irrigation and optimal conditions for efficient active base
trickle irrigation.
Modern green roof technology is the result of advanced material research
in Europe over the past 35 years. Green roofs are thin layers of living
plants that are installed on top of conventional roofs. Using strict
design standards, green roofs duplicate many of the same processes found
in nature. As in nature green roofs help control storm water runoff,
improve water quality, reduce erosion as well as pollution in the
environment.
Many complex factors must be considered in the design of a green roof.
Some of these factors include understanding the climate patterns (i.e.
temperature and rainfall patterns), the strength of supporting
structures (to determine what type of plant life would be suitable), the
size, slope, height, and directional orientation of the roof. Other
factors to consider include proper selection of drainage elements,
waterproofing materials, and any visual or aesthetic preferences
established by the owner. Adequate consideration of all the various
design factors will help reduce cost while ensuring that the structure
meets the tenants intended use3.
Figure
.2). Intensive
Woodlands
systems provide 12 inches or more of growth medium, sustaining complex
landscapes
With regular maintenance a green roof will last much longer than a
conventional roof--typically in the range of 50 to 60 years. This
combined with the energy savings achieved in reducing the heating and
cooling demands of the building makes green roof systems a viable
alternative in the future.
In the Enertia® Building System, solid Energy-Engineered(tm) wood walls
replace siding, framing, insulation, and paneling. An air flow and
access channel, or Envelope, runs around the building, just inside the
walls - creating a miniature biosphere. Here solar heated air
circulates, pumping and boosting geothermal energy from beneath the
house, storing it in the massive wood walls.
Thermal inertia causes the house to "float" between the cycles of night
and day, and even between the seasons. Many aspects of the Enertia®
House are unusual and innovative - but backed up by science,
common-sense, and prototype homes across America. In fact, each aspect
listed below increases the energy efficiency of the building.
The effect is Synergistic - equal to more than the sum of the parts. The
Enertia® House can make more energy than it uses!
There is no logical reason to use a drop of fuel, or a watt of energy,
to heat or cool any home or building attached to the Earth. Just below
the surface, within reach of the average basement, is an infinite
reservoir of heat that never drops below 50 degrees F.
The night-day cycle is more than ample to raise that temperature into
the comfort zone, with a simple shift in Time. The use of daytime heat
at night, and nighttime cool by day, is made possible by Thermal
Inertia, and the engineered Lag-in-Time is a property of the thickness
and Specific Heat of the solid wood walls.
The task of extracting useful heat from the geothermal reserve or
outside air is usually relegated to the electric Heat Pump. They have
been tacked onto homes by the millions - encouraged, even financed, by
the electric utilities. You have seen them - noisy, power-hungry,
CFC-filled, life-support machines - hanging off the side of an obviously
troubled building.
Our solution, in the Enertia® Building System, is to make the house
itself a heat pump, using the natural energy of rising solar-heated air
to extract and enhance the pool of geothermal energy just beneath the
building's floor. Simple, foolproof, no CFC's, no electric bill (see
"Heat Pump House," Popular Science, June 1992, p.42).
Structural
Insulated Panels join high performance rigid foam insulation to Oriented
Strand Board (OSB) or plywood. The thickness of foam is adjusted to
increase R-Value. As labor sources become more scarce and costs increase
in the future, building with Structural Insulated Panels will become the
preferred building system. Exterior and interior facings are shown with
standard OSB. CCX plywood is used when laminating aluminum, steel or FRP.
Drywall is field
applied as needed. The first Solid Core type construction was made in
1935 and the buildings are still in use today, nearly 70 years later.
The biggest benefit
of Solid Core Design versus stick built is energy efficiency.
• The EPS (Expanded polystyrene) insulation is solid and does not allow
air movement.
• The EPS resists water whereas batt insulation absorbs water.
• The stick frame has framing thermal shorts but Structural Insulated
Panels don't.
• The closed cell panel prevents dust and allergens from penetrating the
building.
Framing, insulation
and sheathing are combined into one panel and allows builders to frame
more projects per year. Less cutting and fabricating in the field means
smaller crews are needed. There is a huge savings in waste at the job
site, as disposal of a Solid Core Building project is measured in number
of bags, not dumpsters. SIP's will also reduce framing and fabrication
errors in the field. Less job site fabrication means improved profits
and consistent field costs. It is much easier to maintain your expected
field hours as there are fewer variables that can go wrong.
Much larger clear
spans can be designed over stick built projects using Solid Core
Buildings. The panel loads are distributed over the entire panel due to
the continuous bond between the sheathing and rigid insulation. Eighty
foot clear spans with freedom of design are true benefits of the
pre-engineered Solid Core Building.
