June 2012
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
« May   Jul »
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Month June 2012

Entries 4 Total

How Windows Affect Your Whole-Wall Thermal Performance

Jun 25, ’12 12:22 PM

In the era of building science and energy modelling, there’s increased awareness, within the industry, of the effect windows have on the thermal performance of buildings.

How significant is that effect?

It’s quite startling, actually, to see just how much a window can lower the R-value of a whole wall. BuildingGreen, an online-based independent publishing company, recently released the timely report “Better Window Decisions: Mastering the Performance and Cost Options”. This document contains valuable information for anyone faced with choosing windows. It includes a comprehensive overview of glazing options, along with practical advice and cost-saving strategies.

Here’s one particularly eye-opening fact shared by the authors:

“If the effective R-value of the opaque area of a wall is R-30 (accounting for thermal bridging through the framing), and clear, double-glazed (U-0.5) windows are installed covering 12% of the wall area, the effective whole-wall R-value will drop by 60% to about R-12.”

In fact, most windows tend to be 10 times less energy efficient than the wall area they replace.

At Biostruct, our main focus has been on developing and marketing a hemp-lime bio-masonry wall product, including both prefabricated and do-it-yourself versions. Currently we are in the final stages of testing and piloting our wall system, which we believe will “stand tall” among building products of the future. At the same time, we recognize that it’s pointless to incorporate solid, high thermal-performance walls in a project if those walls aren’t matched with good windows. This is the reason we’ve looked for energy efficient glazing companies with which to partner.

Energy efficiency is the fuel of the future!

The cost of fossil fuels will inevitably continue to rise; it’s predicted, in fact, that by 2050, the price of oil may go as high as $220 a barrel. But what does that mean for you and me?

Petroleum products are embedded in so many of the things we use–including the food we eat, the buildings we inhabit, the vehicles we drive…even the pharmaceuticals in our medicine cabinets. It’s critical, therefore, that when we select a material for a project or renovation, we choose one that is purposefully designed–not for “planned obsolescence” (the intended fate of the majority of the products we purchase) but for longevity and durability.

Currently, PVC has a huge lead in most window markets. Yet it’s also found on various materials red lists (inventories of substances considered “worst in class” from the standpoint of human and/or ecological health), including the Living Building Challenge Red List. Vinyl “qualifies” for inclusion on these lists because, in addition to containing heavy metal additives intended to keep the plastic from breaking down rapidly, it’s known to create toxic by-products such as dioxin. Even from a purely practical standpoint, PVC windows miss the mark. When compared to other frame options, such as fiberglass or wood, they have higher rates of expansion and contraction; the depressing result, over time, is that seal integrity and window durability are compromised.

So why has PVC taken such a big chunk of the window market?

The vinyl and petroleum industries have huge lobby groups in Washington and around the globe; it’s largely due to their efforts that a “worst in class” product has been able to maintain its large market and subsidies, even as many health and environmental consultants are recommending that its use be phased out. Companies like Apple and Nike started removing it from their products years ago, so why do we still accept it in windows and many other buildings products? Let’s just say “no” to vinyl!

According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, buildings worldwide account for a surprisingly high 40% of global energy consumption; the resulting carbon footprint is significantly bigger than that from all forms of transportation combined.

“Large and attractive opportunities exist to reduce buildings’ energy use at lower costs and higher returns than other sectors. These reductions are fundamental to support achieving the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) target of a 77% reduction in the planet’s carbon footprint against the 2050 baseline to reach stabilized CO2 levels called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

Obviously, one way to aggressively reduce energy consumption, and vastly improve thermal performance, in new and existing buildings–and, by extension, to support the achievement of the IEA target–is through widespread use of better wall and glazing systems. In regard to the latter, specifically, not only do efficient windows save you (or your client) money every month–they also reduce your building’s contribution to climate change, while increasing the comfort level of its inhabitants.

Save money. Save energy. Inhabit the future now.

Comments (0)

What Are Carbon Neutral Buildings? Cutting Through the Hot Air

Jun 18, ’12 12:42 PM

Last week, we covered the 100 Mile House Competition and the effort many communities are making to re-localize manufacturing. In addition to boosting our local economies, this movement will benefit the entire planet by lowering the environmental impacts of our transportation networks. Reducing carbon emissions is something the whole world needs to take seriously. So how can we design and build our habitat and accompanying infrastructure to be as carbon neutral as possible?

ARE CARBON NEUTRAL BUILDINGS REALLY POSSIBLE?

Ensuring a project or activity produces no net carbon seems a pretty straightforward idea; putting it into practice on a project can be more complex. In the context of building, the concept itself can be confusing. For example, one definition of “carbon neutral” applies only to energy use once the building is complete. Another includes emissions during construction, while still another aims to account for the energy embedded in materials used in the project.

We at Biostruct believe that as the price of fossil fuels goes up, the need to stop subsidizing them, and also to require full cost accounting by the fossil fuel industry, will become increasingly clear. The inevitable result will be a shift towards an economy based more heavily on renewable carbohydrates and less heavily on non-renewable hydrocarbons.

If we truly want to reduce our dependence and consumption of fossil fuels, we must stop using fossil fuel-based materials to manufacture key building components, especially now that better options are available.

Work currently being done in the field of life-cycle assessment (LCA) is showing us a useful way to fully understand a product’s life-long effects. LCA is defined as a technique to assess the environmental impact associated with all the stages of a product’s life, from cradle-to-grave (i.e., from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair & maintenance, and disposal or recycling).

LCAs can help us avoid a narrow outlook on environmental concerns by:

  • Compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs as well as environmental releases;
  • Evaluating the potential impacts associated with identified inputs and releases;
  • Interpreting the results to facilitate more informed decision-making.

While farming in all its forms is currently responsible for between 10 and 12 percent of global GHG emissions, these emissions are expected to increase more than 50 percent by 2030, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, as discussed by Stephen Russell in a blog for GreenBiz, “agricultural emissions are difficult to consistently quantify and report.”

One reason for this is that, due to the strong influence of weather (droughts, heat waves etc.) and natural landscapes, emissions from any one farm can vary widely over time. Another difficulty is that emissions from many agricultural sources, such as manure management and livestock, are shaped by complex microbial processes that are not fully understood. Finally, changes in the amount of carbon stored in soil and biomass do not occur at the same time as shifts in farming practices. For example, a farm may switch from high-intensity tilling (associated with high emissions) to conservation tillage (associated with lower emissions), but the benefit would only accumulate over time as the carbon in the soil slowly builds up. This issue can make it difficult to know if and when changes in stored carbon should be reported.

Now, let’s consider industrial hemp farming in particular. Hemp plants are known to sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide (10 tons per acre), reducing the atmospheric pollution that contributes to climate change. But what about the farming techniques themselves? Hemp, which is considered a lower input crop, does not require synthetic pesticides. Nitrogen fertilizer is sometimes used; however, since most of the hemp grown in Canada (25,000 acres in 2010) is for the health food industry, more and more of our farmers are using organic methods. Instead of using chemical fertilizers, they prefer to incorporate their industrial hemp into a crop rotation. Typically a legume like alfalfa will be grown to “fix” nitrogen in the soil during the season before the hemp is to be planted.

When used in building, hemp is combined with lime, which brings along with it a much bigger environmental footprint! Lime is the main constituent of Portland cement, and cement and concrete production alone account for approximately 5-10% of the world’s total CO2 emissions (with over 2.35 billion tonnes of the latter being produced every year). In terms of lifetime C02 emissions, however, natural lime achieves a better rating than Portland cement. For one thing, lime-based binders have a lower kiln temperature than cement-based binders. Lime also has the benefit of sucking CO2 back in. It has been said that lime will reabsorb between 60% and 90% of the carbon dioxide that it emits during the calcination reaction of production. This CO2 is then locked within the fabric of the building. The hemp-lime combination is reported to sequester 110 kg of CO2 for every cubic metre of its mass, a level most building materials can’t even come close to.

Some may wonder–wouldn’t the total impact be even lower if we combined hemp with a substance like clay? Clay is a beautiful material with many beneficial characteristics. Unfortunately, hemp-clay wall mixes have not provided the same quality results as hemp-lime; they also tend to mould quickly. Lime has unique physical properties that are simply hard to match. Also, lime is an abundant material, so we won’t be running out of it any time soon!

CAN ANYTHING BE DONE TO MAKE LIME PRODUCTION MORE SUSTAINABLE?

The answer is yes! At Biostruct, we’re currently researching the most sustainable options for long-term production of all our materials. Included are everything from small-scale kiln production (that can be powered by biomass and renewable fuels), to the use of computer-aided design and 3D printing (additive manufacturing), which has the potential to reduce both the resource and energy requirements of production.

HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE CARBON-NEUTRAL BUILDINGS? IT STARTS WITH SOME BIG PICTURE THINKING.

Looking at the big picture, we can see that while LCA promises to be a very useful new tool, much work remains to be done before its full potential can be realized. The solutions to our problems are out there. A truly carbon-neutral building is possible. But it’s critical that we take a system-thinking approach to finding them. Otherwise we may find ourselves resolving one issue, but creating another one farther down the line!

Comments (0)

100 Mile House Competition Highlights Need to Re-Localize Manufacturing

Jun 11, ’12 12:03 PM

Congratulations are in order for Tony Osborn of Vancouver, who won the “100 Mile House” Ideas Competition. As the competition’s organizers announced this past May 19th, Tony’s entry, called “Myco Home,” was selected out of 57 submissions from over 17 different countries. Put on by the Architectural Foundation of British Columbia, the competition was judged by a panel of internationally recognized architects, sustainable design experts, and patrons of design, including Vancouver-based architect Peter Busby, a managing director at Perkins+Will, whose work is known internationally; Larry Beasley, retired Director of Planning at the City of Vancouver; Mike Harcourt, a former Premier of B.C.; Ray Cole, a professor at the University of British Columbia, and architect Michael Geller.

Participation in the competition entailed exploring, rethinking, questioning and experimenting with new ideas that challenge the concept of the regional house and the way we live. Competitors were asked to conceptualize a home able to accommodate four people, with a maximum area of 1200 square feet, using only materials and systems that are made/manufactured/recycled within one hundred miles of the City of Vancouver. Tony’s winning design is intended “to bring the region closer to environmental resiliency,” and includes, among other outstanding features, an interior coating of hemp-lime plaster that completes a breathable, yet water and airtight wall assembly. The Myco Home employs a building system that is “made, used, and recycled” locally; it’s truly “a way home” to a sustainable, yet comfortable future!

The concept of the “100 Mile House” reinforces a movement towards increased local production and manufacturing of goods–support for which is already being encouraged by building certification systems like LEED and the Living Building Challenge. In addition to reducing industry’s carbon footprint, this trend provides other benefits as well–like the potential to create new “green jobs.” It also bolsters less toxic supply chains, since manufacturers are more likely to avoid practices that could potentially damage their reputation (such as the illicit dumping of toxic materials) when they know the products they create are destined for use in their own bioregions. If companies deviate from the “high road,” after all, those deviations are bound, at some point, to come to light, whereas the (often disturbing) reality that underlies the production of materials halfway around the globe can more easily be kept secret.

Living Economies and the Third Industrial Revolution

Another movement that is steadily gathering steam is the revitalization of local (living) economies. As the global financial system becomes more and more convoluted, many areas — particularly those affected by harsh austerity measures and cuts — are responding by strengthening their regional economic base. Community members are finding various ways to get on board: by “moving their money” to a credit union, supporting urban agriculture initiatives, creating local currencies, using recycled and/or upcycled materials from the region, and/or creating and supporting new business models that encourage local production and distribution. We’ve written previously about a growing body of evidence demonstrating that local ownership in businesses pumps up the multiplier effect, meaning that every dollar spent locally generates up to four times the economic benefit—as measured in income, wealth, jobs, and tax revenue—of a dollar spent at a multinational business. Of course, renewed interest in local economies doesn’t mean an end to global trade: as Michael Shuman, economist with the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and author of “Small Mart” has noted, “In a world of more self-reliant communities, where every community produces more of its own cost-effective goods and services, trade does not disappear. To the contrary, every act of cost-effective localization, by leaving the home community just a little wealthier, enables that community to import more things that it truly couldn’t otherwise produce for itself. In a world of localization, ironically, the value of global trade could well increase–only, the trade would be in highly specialized goods and services.”

Best selling author and advisor to many heads-of-state, Jeremy Rifkin, writes (and speaks) about the convergence of Internet communication technology, renewable energy, and digital manufacturing to usher in what he calls the world’s “Third Industrial Revolution.” The resulting democratization of media, energy, and manufacturing will facilitate the emergence of an exciting new system for distributing power in the 21st century. Rifkin says that in the same way the Internet radically reduced entry costs for generating and distributing information, digital and additive manufacturing technologies have the potential to greatly reduce the cost of producing hard goods, lowering entry costs enough to encourage hundreds of thousands of mini-manufacturers — small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) — to challenge and potentially outcompete the giant manufacturing companies that drove the First and Second Industrial Revolution economies. At every step of the digital manufacturing process, savings abound: fewer resources are needed to make an item, and less energy is expended in its production. When applied across the global economy, this amounts to a qualitative increase in energy efficiency beyond anything previously imaginable!

The impact of a laterally operating Third Industrial Revolution becomes strikingly apparent, according to Rifkin, when renewable energy is generated onsite to power the production process. We’ve already seen how marketing costs tumble when manufacturing is democratized: the Internet has reduced a formerly significant expense to a negligible one. Now, having the ability to promote their goods and services on websites that exist only in virtual space, startups–as well as small and medium sized enterprises–can give the world’s giant business enterprises a “run for their money.” And the little guy’s chance of winning at least some of those races is getting better all the time!

As new digital and additive manufacturing becomes more widespread, customized manufacturing of products will also reduce logistics costs, providing huge energy savings. Rifkin believes the cost of transporting products will drop in the coming decades because an increasing array of goods will be produced locally, in thousands of micro-manufacturing plants, and transported regionally. It is this lateral scaling of the Third Industrial Revolution that will allow small and medium size enterprises to flourish.

And we can do our part by voting with our dollars and supporting local businesses as much as possible. Let’s live this new Third Industrial Revolution into being!

To read more about Jeremy Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution click here. You can find out if there is a BALLE affiliate in your community/region here. To find out more about Tony Osborn’s winning entry in the 100 Mile House Competition, click here.

Comments (0)

Fire Retardant Chemicals in Food. Not Cool! Why We Need to Build Better.

Jun 4, ’12 6:17 PM

Last week, several news organizations reported on a recent study by Environmental Health Perspectives that confirmed a particular flame retardant–called HBCD or hexabromocyclododecane–is making its way into our food supply. Since the story of finding industrial chemicals in food is ongoing, we probably shouldn’t be too surprised by this news. Indeed, as early as 2003, Environmental Working Group announced that brominated flame retardants were building up in animals and people.

SO HOW ARE WE GETTING THESE CHEMICALS IN OUR FOOD?

Flame retardants are used, in a variety of products we buy, to inhibit or resist the spread of fire. As materials based on petrochemicals have become more and more prevalent in our society over the last few decades, the need to protect ourselves from potential fires has steadily increased. (This is because synthetic materials like polyurethane tend to be a lot more flammable than a natural material like wool.) Thus, a diversity of products, including mattresses, sofas, carpet, insulation, wiring, etc. are being treated with flame-retarding chemicals. Most homes, in fact, are full of them!

We are finding these chemicals in food because we are using them everywhere. From buildings to landfills, to water to the food supply. It’s time to start making our wellness a priority!

The use of these retardants has always been a contentious issue, ever since PCBs, known to be highly toxic, were banned in the 1970s. But industry’s answer has often been to replace one toxic substance with another; thus, over the years we’ve been exposed to a witch’s brew of chemicals that includes everything from PBBs (polybrominated biphenyls), to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), and now HBCD. Before the new HBCD study, the most recent headlines regarding flame retardants related to the family of chemicals known as PBDEs. As of 2006, California, the EU and Canada had all placed restrictions on some types of PBDEs, but many are still out there. Levels in Swedish breast milk samples, for example, were 55 times higher in 1997 than in 1972. Breast milk samples collected from U.S. women indicate first-time American mothers have even higher levels of PBDEs in their bodies than mothers in Europe.

Because HBCD is used primarily in building materials like polystyrene insulation, the new study by EHP is particularly interesting. According to the EHP report, fifteen (42%) of the 36 individual foods tested had detectable levels of HBCD. Once ingested, the same fat-loving disposition that attracted the chemical to fatty foods like meat and nuts also enables it to bind to human fat; this means it’s bioaccumulative. Snugly lodged in those extra pounds we just can’t seem to lose, HBCD can “stick” around in our bodies for years, eventually causing problems. Specifically, these may include alterations in immune and reproductive systems, neurotoxic effects, and endocrine (hormonal) disruption.

As the use of synthetic products has gained mainstream acceptance over the years, there has been a corresponding increase in the incidence of devastating fires in housing. The action of fire retardants is often not enough to control these fires. We need to remember that substances like HBCD don’t make materials completely non-flammable; moreover, just because a treated product burns more slowly in a lab doesn’t mean this will be the case in the real world. Making matters worse is the fact that skyrocketing land prices have necessitated building houses closer together. This, of course, increases the danger of a fire spreading from one house to the whole block. Fire departments have responded to the issue by suggesting commercial grade sprinklers be installed in all new housing. But is this an adequate solution to the problem?

So what CAN be done?

Increasing our use of renewable, natural and organic materials is a good start. Whether you’re looking for a more comfortable mattress or building a new home, it’s more important than ever to choose and use natural products. Study after study has confirmed the toxic repercussions of industrial chemicals on our health. We can no longer afford to ignore these warnings–especially since, in today’s interconnected world, these substances are affecting us not only through direct contact, but now through the food chain as well.

Use stuff that doesn’t burn: naturally.

Hearing about the use of industrial hemp and other biomaterials in building, some people may find themselves recalling the story of The Three Little Pigs. As a picture comes into their minds of the “big bad wolf” huffing and puffing until he “blew the house down,” these individuals may be inclined to wonder whether straw is an adequately durable material for building. “Big bad wolves” notwithstanding, it most certainly is! Bio-materials like hemp have been used for eons to make rope, shipping sails, and (when mixed with lime) insulating bio-masonry walls. Hemp’s awesome strength is one of its best known characteristics; another desirable feature that’s perhaps less well known relates to its lower flammability. The fact that paper made with hemp burns more slowly than most cellulose materials is the reason it has long been used to make cigarette papers. In their book Building with Hemp-Lime Composites, Tom Wooley and Rachel Bevan report: “When used as a hemp-lime-composite solid mass, it is almost impossible to ignite the material. The hemp-lime solid material encasing a timber frame also protects the timber frame. Fire tests have been carried out in France at the Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment on 250 mm thick walls of hemp-lime blocks, laid in a lime mortar. There were no emissions of toxic material and no re-ignition. The wall remained intact for 1 hour 40 minutes and the blocks did not fail.”

Let’s clean up our buildings and our homes. Building better and healthier is more important than ever.

Hemp bio-masonry and many other natural products, reduce and/or eliminate the need for toxic fire retardants. Is it any wonder more and more people are getting “hepped up” about them?

For more technical information on hemp-lime composites, please contact us.

Comments (0)