Curing sick buildings made for sick people...

I'm back but broken, so we're going to keep it pretty basic. I don't want to go and expose my immune system --or lack there of-- to all the viruses on teh interwebs (imagine Tommy Lee's .wmv file touching Tila Tequila's mySpace page...that's how germy I feel). So this is a simple, undemanding, clean post to bring me back.

Does your ICU need TLC?

With healthcare design beginning to crest at each and every green request, here's a wonderful report showcasing the various stages in which/on which/to which you can improve hospital performance. It seem pretty basic, but incorporates some case studies from UF, Emory, Kaiser Permanente and the Discovery Health Center, so it turns out to be an interesting read.

On a sidenote, isn't is funny how green tech no longer seems tech per se, but more "Hey, that's obvious"? I typed basic in the previous paragraph and paused for a moment.

I love looking back at the last two decades and seeing how far we've come. Now that the public is embracing sustainability, you'll read a report like the one featured below and wonder why they even need to point such obvious solutions, when only 15 years ago this report would have sounded like the operating instructions for an Excelsior NX-2000 Ship with experimental transwarp drive.

Likewise, I'm also amazed at how google can make you sound like a complete Star Trek junkie with one simple search, given the fact that my accumulated Star Trek watching amounts to paltry 2.34 seconds of my life.

It's the little things.

The report:

Building Healthy Hospitals:

The Pacific Southwest Regional Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked with architects, designers, engineers, healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals to identify the "Top 5 Green Building Strategies for Healthcare" that support the Joint Commission’s Environment of Care objectives and best combine: enhanced community reputation; benefits to the environment, patients and staff; and cost competitiveness. The overview summarizes the benefits and case study results for each of the five green building strategies.

Top 5 Green Building Strategies for Healthcare:

-Case Studies Overview (PDF)
-#1:Energy Efficiency—Integrated Design and HVAC Systems (PDF)
-#2:Process Water Efficiency (PDF)
-#3:Sustainable Flooring Material Selection (PDF)
-#4: Indoor Air Quality: Materials Selection (PDF)
-#5:Lighting Efficiency—Optimizing Artificial and Natural Lighting (PDF)

To the (smaller) masses...

Large architectural design firms have a massive amount of resources at their disposal - from the 3D printers to the LEED gurus to the eco-marked resource libraries to the specifiers to the continuing education classes to the specialized committees...

What's the little guy to do?

Founded in 2000 as an environmental/software consultancy firm, Square 1 research now devotes the majority of their work to energy efficient environmental design. Co-founders Dr. Andrew J. Marsh [insert bazillion certifications and accreditations here] and Caroline Raines [insert bazillion certifications and accreditations here] have developed and produced a ton of corporate-commercial software programs for purchase -as well as various free software packages- to help designers produce the most energy efficient buildings they can.

Various tools from their website include, but are by no means limited to:

ECOTECT

ECOTECT is the most user friendly and fully featured building performance analysis and design tool on the market today. It combines an interactive building design interface and 3D modeller with a wide range of environmental analysis tools for a detailed assessment of solar, thermal, lighting, shadows & shading design, energy & building regulations, acoustics, air flow, cost & resource performance of buildings at any scale. ...and even more importantly, it has been written and developed by designers for designers, to be as useful at concept stage as it is during final design development.

Solar Tool

With its interactive user interface, the Solar Tool makes the process of accurately sizing and positioning overhangs, shading devices and louvres easy. You will never use manual methods again. This software is a must for architects, planners and building services engineers, anyone who needs to consider the extent of solar penetration into buildings, overshadowing or the most appropriate means of shading a window.

Weather Tool

The Weather Tool is a visualisation and analysis program for hourly climate data. It recognises a wide range of international weather file formats as well as allowing users to specify customised data import formats for ASCII files. It also provides a wide range of display options, including both 2D and 3D graphs as well as wind roses and sun-path diagrams.

1 million dollars if you let me sleep with your country...

Remember that post a while back about 9-volts not saving the world?

Remember the inventiveness of the children of Guinea?

Well, the World Bank Group is trying to shake things up in the $38 billion (B!) fuel-based global lighting market with a new design competition.

Fancy yourself the Bono of bulbs? Then why not register and compete in Lighting Africa!

From their website:

Lighting Africa is a World Bank Group initiative aimed at providing up to 250 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa with access to non-fossil fuel based, low cost, safe, and reliable lighting products with associated basic energy services by the year 2030.

Currently, 1.7 billion people worldwide are without electricity. The problem is most acute in Sub-Saharan Africa where over 500 million people presently lack modern energy, with rural electricity access rates as low as 2%.

Among the poorest of the poor, lighting is often the most expensive item among their energy uses, typically accounting for 10-15% of total household income. Yet, while consuming a large share of scarce income, fuel based lighting provides little in return.

New advancements in lighting technology, such as compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs), promise clean, portable, durable, lower cost, and higher quality lighting. The challenge is to make these products accessible to the half billion "energy poor" in Africa. With expenditures on fuel based lighting estimated at US$38 billion annually, the potential exists to engage the international lighting industry in this new market area, while serving consumers, bolstering local commerce, creating jobs, enhancing incomes, cleaning the air, and improving health, safety, and quality of life.

Plus, their little satellite image of Africa at night is pretty cool. I think I can see my house.

So back to the previous posts....

A recipe for winning the Lighting Africa competition (I love the recipe schtick...creative gold...if you ever hear one at a wedding reception, duck and cover).

1) Take the best invention ever created
2) Fold in half a cup of Pedal-A-Watt
3) Add a dash of ingenuity with William Kamkwamba and others
4) Toss in three sprinkles of human powered zero-emissions
5) Encourage technological advancement without pity (I guess that would be considered baking)

-and-

Viola.

Seriously though, does it really take a $200,000 prize to come up with a solution? How much is this problem/will this problem be over-thought until we've blown it up into some abusively researched acrylic monstrosity, decorated to the tilt in Western design stereotypes by people with no understanding of the affecting cultural and socioeconomic norms and traditions of another country?

I'm just frustrated. The designs (typically) have no staying power and never really pan out. If they do, they're implemented with little to no follow-up by an organization that donated the time (see: their name in lights). Parts break, people remain untrained to fix and/or operate the machinery...all goes to waste.

Fortunately, I'm always optimistic that my pessimism is wrong.

Seriously though, check out Afrigadget. There's some amazing stuff there. Check it out already. Go.

9Volts won't save the world, but....

While stationed as a volunteer in the Republic of Kiribati, the lack of twilight lighting was a major issue for volunteers and students alike. Given the fact that many of the houses in the surrounding government stations would have solar or generator-powered fluorescent lighting, they were still of no help to the volunteers and I-Kiribati (native Kiribati) in the outer villages who only had oil lamps in which to study, cook and work. In some areas of the world children are able to improvise. However, isolated countries like Kiribati have little to offer in terms of industrial faculty and resourcefulness (when Air Kiribati was actually running, we only had one scheduled flight to and from our island per week).

We might take efficient lighting for granted in developed countries but as you can see from the Peace Corps project donation site, power and energy are on-going projects in a large portion of under-developed countries. With the understanding that lighting facilitates a higher standard of living, I've been looking anxiously for a simple solution.

I happened across Mathmos.com and and lit up when I saw their 9Volt project:


Clean, simple, undemanding design at its best.

BUT-there's always a but...


Are they over-priced? Yes. (I love the wine glasses)
At a sale price of 5 for $100, I don't see them falling into the hands of Guinea seventh graders any time soon.

Are they renewable? Not necessarily.
As the US industrialized, our position in the global pecking order proffered us the ability to progress at any speed we felt necessary - with or without the concerns of the environment at our conscience (See: Northwest Atlantic Cod - even in the early 90's!). So while many of these countries might not have a capable means to dispose of the batteries, it is unfortunately viable that they are so readily available. Why not afford them the same opportunities we had so that we may only need to teach one generation?* So...

...are the batteries really a problem? Not necessarily.
Take this design and do what inventors have been doing for years: run with it. Replace the battery with solar cells...what about higher lumen LED's... or non-electrochemical envirofriendly cells...maybe a secondary battery with a crank chargeable attachment for a bike chain...include a hand crank to store the charge...*subsidize the distribution with the help of a battery directive...and so on and so on and so on. If a concept like OLPC is plausible, then a battery/LED project is a piece of cake!

Just some thoughts for your Thursday morning...

Hybrid Solar Lighting

Fiber optics meet Mother Nature, Mother Nature I'd like to introduce you to fiber optics.

Hybrid Solar Technology is an idea long past due, basically concentrating the sun's rays into bendable, flexible tubing that can stretch the length of your home or office, adding natural light throughout.

I first reported on this in-house in late May, but have since been hoping that further technological advancements would be made. Alas, while the system is still winning awards, their only video looks about as modern as an episode of Mr. Wizard's World (RIP).


From the website:

HSL technology uses rooftop, 4-ft-wide mirrored dishes that track the sun with the help of a GPS receiver. The collector focuses the sunlight onto 127 optical fibers. The fibers, which can be thought of as flexible light pipes, are connected to hybrid light fixtures that have special diffusion rods that spread out the light in all directions. One collector powers about eight hybrid light fixtures—which can illuminate about 1,000 square feet.





So what if it's dark out, you say? The end-source of the light tubes are mounted to fixtures that also contain electric lamps so you can combine the usage with fluorescent tubes and other various lighting sources, and I'll admit that while there's a long road to haul for commercial applications, I'd take this system over track lighting any day.

You can also catch a 12 minute podcast from Marilyn Brown's Earth & Sky radio show.