Being Green – Going Beyond Design

Hi Folks:  Been a little quiet here on the ‘Being Green‘ side of our blog for a while, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight a couple of articles I came across recently.  Actually, in starting this I remembered a somewhat similar post I had written, which as fate would have it, was written almost exactly a year ago.  That one was titled, “Being Green – Questions“.  Anyway, I digress…

The first article I wanted to mention is on the ‘Buildinggreen.com’ site, and titled “Net-Zero Does Not Live by Design Alone: The Human Factor“.  From the article: Continue Reading →

Being Green – Modeling and Monitoring

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Before I get started, last week’s post included a shout out for Steve Satow and a group of dedicated people in the Victoria area who are working to develop the Alternate Solutions Resource Initiative.  They’re still looking for support from interested parties.  On a more personal note, Steve is currently in the process of building his own home using ‘rammed earth’.  If you’d like to keep up to date with his progress, you can find out more at: the Natural Building project: a model for sustainability.

Now then: since one of the attributes of many if not all green building certification systems is the integration of a building’s different systems (heating/cooling, energy and water use, etc.), it’s very helpful to be able to model a building’s performance as part of the design plan.  Anyone who has done energy modeling (and I haven’t) will tell you that getting this exactly right is impossible.  Too much depends on the number of occupants of a building at any given time, their activity and resulting energy use, local weather conditions…  Still, an approximation can be made.

Once a building is completed and in operation, it’s also very important to determine whether or not the building is performing to specification, and if it isn’t, to be aware of it, determine the source of the problem and rectify it. Continue Reading →