The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification system has proven to be enormously successful at pushing commercial buildings to reduce their environmental footprint. However the New York Times featured an important story on the under-performance of some of these buildings and has just published an opinion piece by Alec Applebaum in which he suggests that governments add-long term energy management initiatives to a LEED building in order to keep the project from “going gray after its grand opening.” Is the LEED system dropping the ball on energy efficiency?
Read more: Is LEED Still Leading the Way for Green Building? | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
has proven to be enormously successful at pushing commercial buildings to reduce their environmental footprint
you'll find a number of people disagree with that sentiment. i certainly don't agree with that, especially if you only take into account the PEI of materials. most LEED buildings aren't seeing significant reductions in energy loads.
my $0.02 is that passivhaus will overtake LEED for performance and respect rather quickly, as it's a faster and proven way toward net zero over the long run.
frankly, i'm as interested in TABS (thermally activated building systems) and seasonal thermal storage as a method of reducing CO2.
Passivehouse has a simple powerful ideal- kw per sqr ft per year, but is a one size fits all that cannot adapt to larger commercial projects. It will certainly take over LEED Homes, but LEED is about IEQ, Materials, Connectivity etc as well, very real green building issues that passivehouse ignores. Pick your green poison, energy is big but not everything.
passivhaus doesn't ignore issues of IEQ... it just doesn't reward architects/developers for doing things they should already be doing.
passivhaus can be (and has been) adapted to larger commercial projects, towers, schools, libraries, etc.
what tends to happen is those that care enough to eliminate thermal bridging and loss of BTUs tend to care just as much (if not more) about where materials are sourced from, quality of light inside, etc. at least that's been my experience w/ passivhaus.
for me it comes down to this:
the amount of energy that it takes to maintain a building completely dwarfs the energy it takes to build it.
passivhaus brings those numbers closer to parity. energy IS everything - if you can't get the consumption of energy down significantly (LEED doesn't) then it doesn't matter how you take your poison.
If you translate energy in terms of cost and even cost in terms of energy, minimizing consumption makes sense.
If you look at total occupancy of a building in terms of building gross domestic product, you can determine what the total net energy output is.
I just built a $12,000,000 building. In terms of energy (as in value that could be applied towards purchasing more energy), that building is worth 150,000,000 kilo-watt hours.
At no upfront investment, that building costs $81,024.86 or 1,012,810 kwh a month.
Including expected operating budget, that building runs $107,763.00 or or 1,347,038 kwh.
If I have 30 [business] tenants in said building, each tenant would be paying $4,777 a month or 59,718 kwh a month.
I would be making a profit of $35,561 or 444,522 kwh.
If each of the 30 tenants is running a profitable business, my building would be contributing about $859,949 or 25,798,477 kwh a month to the local economy.
Not only am I making money... but in terms of economic output, the building I am providing will reach equilibrium in 5.7 months as the building is producing more than it consumes.
Things like passive house (and LEED too) make sense because they ultimately manipulate the fundamentals of a urban cycle by producing more with less. If we include work and other "soft" outputs from a structure, structures should always produce more than they consume.
"the amount of energy that it takes to maintain a building completely dwarfs the energy it takes to build it."
Do you have numbers to support that? According to the statistics 33% of US energy is consumed by industrial sources while 39% by residential (21%)/commercial (18%) uses. Some of the biggest energy users are steel and aluminum mills and cement manufacturers. If you subtract all industries not related to architecture (agriculture, infrastructure, production of consumer goods, etc...) you still end up with a huge footprint. Then compare the number to number of new buildings constructed each year (tens of thousands?) to existing structures (4.5 million commercial buildings according to US census 2000). I would say energy used in construction is a significant user of overall energy in a life cycle of a building.
Unicorn Ghost:
Did you get your math degree at Goldman Sachs University? If you quadruple your rents does it mean the building will produce more than it consumes in less than 6 weeks? Should we tear down all libraries since they don't "produce" anything? Inquiring minds etc... :)
leed never led the way for green. it only gave a politically expedient and systematized way for green to be implemented in a way that non-technical folks could understand and appreciate: it gives a trophy!
individual practitioners have always led the way. the best green goals are those that haven't yet hit a leed checklist.
USGBC (LEED creator) is a privately owned trade organization with just under 20k member organizations. Its primary objective is to sell new products. The rest is just salad dressing.
I find it disturbing that a large percentage of LEED candidate projects are entirely covered in curtainwall. I know that curtainwall design has gotten very energy efficient over the years, but nothing still beats insulation as the most environmentally efficient product (150-1 energy saved ratio over its lifespan). Efficient cooling and heating systems are the biggest benefactors of the LEED system, even in situations where a better design would make the size of such systems redundant (operable windows for example).
But the biggest knock on LEED is that it ignores building longevity as a major factor in green design. What good is your energy window if it comes with only a 10 year warranty and breaks in 11. What good is a LEED certified facility that will be demolished in 20 years?
The industry doesn't want to make products that will last forever. It's bad business (just ask Ford Motors). Hopefully new green initiatives will replace LEED. Projects I worked on that had a genuine sustainability desires used LEED guidelines as a mere starting point, and didn't bother seeking any certifications.
I think the primary appeal of LEED to architects is the fact that you can add a suffix to your name in a large ALL CAPS font {Joe Schmo LEED(r)}. I wish I was joking.
i'll see if i can find some of the studies... passivhaus likes to trot them out occasionally.
a canadian uni did analysis and showed that after 50 years, the operating energy was over 6 times the initial embodied energy to construct.
so when you create a building that significantly reduces operating energy (e.g. passivhaus, net zero, etc) then operating energy and initial embodied energy are significantly closer.
this has been part of the failing of LEED - focusing too much on initial embodied energy of materials, and less on operating energy. when operating energy is significantly reduced, the embodied energy of construction finishes becomes much more important.
but nothing still beats insulation as the most environmentally efficient product
you can have a highly efficient building that utilizes curtain walls - e.g. the 75m passivhaus 'power tower' for energieAG by weber + hofer/kaufmann architekten (link)
holz.box, I wonder if Canadian study takes inflation into account, and if it does, whose inflation numbers it uses (US has been known to fudge the numbers in order to make the economy look better than it is). Also, cost of raw construction and energy costs have had a much different relationship 50 years ago, as I'm sure they'll be radically different 50 years from now.
Any building that makes it to it's 50th birthday without major component failures is a success onto itself. I wonder if cost or component replacement is counted in operating cost of the equation. For the purpose of this discussion it shouldn't be. I'd love to see the study if you find it. I can always be persuaded with hard data...
My argument is still over quality of build. If the curtainwall from your example (energieAG) makes it in one piece to 50 years from now, without major performance drops or exposed design flaws, it will be (by that point) 25-30 years out of warranty. A major success by any measuring stick. Otherwise it's a huge design gamble to use a single source solution for the entire shell. High efficiency curtaiwall is an expensive beast. Triple glazing comes at a massive price hike compared to double. Up to 20% of the curtaiwall cost is embedded energy cost.
Your example uses a prominent project designed by a reputable design firm. I'm sure the building will age well. But for every one of such projects there are a 100 (random number pulled from unmentionables) projects with VERY questionable build quality. Guess what: Some of these projects are LEED certified.
LEED leads the way for owners who want a "sustainable" marketing stamp on their building, be it for marketing purposes or whatever
I dont think its ever lead the way in actual green building. Those owners/buildings dont need the incentive of a LEED certification
I'd say its naive for anyone in the industry to think or expect LEED to actually produce that much better quality of buildings on its own, similar to thinking that just meeting building codes makes your building any good.
SW: leed never led the way for green. it only gave a politically expedient and systematized way for green to be implemented in a way that non-technical folks could understand and appreciate: it gives a trophy!
individual practitioners have always led the way. the best green goals are those that haven't yet hit a leed checklist.
I predict that 20 years from now all those LEED plaques on buildings will be seen as a relic and that the even higher number of LEED AP certificates will have hopefully been recycled into something more useful.
Steven is right that practitioners (and vernacular builders), not trade organizations have led the way in environmentally responsible design. However, given that developers and clients usually determine how responsible buildings will be, anything short of stringent building codes regarding energy, materials, etc will only go so far.
markid: I'm not sure green building initiatives should be part of any building code. The whole point of LEED certification is that it's an award (rather than penalty) based system. Building codes are best left alone dealing with what they know best: life safety issues.
They way LEED is written right now, it mostly favors medium scale suburban (stand alone) developments. A simple building constructed as an infill project in a highly dense urban environment, that attached directly to existing structures, is surrounded by good public transportation, and doesn't require large surface parking lots to exist, will never be able to be eligible to as many LEED points as a stand alone building in the suburban outskirts (that may incorporate all kids of wacky green systems, and can easily accommodate required climate orientations). Does any building built in Manhattan warrant a LEED certification just on the grounds of urban efficiency? I could see a good argument for that.
LEED doesn't fully address urban density as a parameter of green design, largely because it's a hard definition to make. I fear of potentially horrible consequences if a building code tried to mandate green design. Heated patio? Can't have that. Ditto to all kids of operable storefronts and building skins. Any fool knows non-operable components are much better at air tightness. etc...
mechanical codes, plumbing codes, electrical codes. You can easily get LEED points for things that are not code requirements that very easily could and should be
Plumbing codes for example
You can very easily and dumbly get LEED points for using efficient rest room fixtures (at least in the old version). If plumbing codes were more stringent, then these would be basic requirements and not something worth a plaque. And that would in turn make these efficient fixtures more affordable overall
I agree with all your points on LEED's current shortcomings, though there are many basic LEED points that should essentially be required everywhere
Ah, got it! That makes perfect sense. Keep in mind there will be lots of resistance in embedded industries towards any type of change. An article in the last issue of Wired magazine talks about waterless urinals, and how they almost never happened due to plumbing associations fight against them (the horse whip maker's argument). The compromise? Code now allows for installation of waterless urinals provided capped off water risers are still installed behind the units. Wasteful? Yes. Baby steps? Really tiny ones, in all sorts of directions.
Here in Philly, with the Comcast Tower, they had some big stink about the waterless urinals
The union saw all the work they would be missing out on, so they made a big stink over it. I think the compromise was that the waterless urinals could be used, but the entire building needed to have plumbing installed as a backup in case they wanted to switch to "traditional" urinals.
A 750 foot skyscraper had god knows how much piping added that will most likely never be used
Who knows if and when it will ever happen, though i think baby steps are being made in some areas
Uniform Plumbing Code (2009rev) specifically demands capped risers behind each waterless unit. Unions won. To be fair, they were armed with information that waterless urinal technology can lead to clogged pipes if system is not maintained properly.
Oh its not surprising at all, especially given how new the waterless urinal technology is
I dont necessarily disagree with that either, though i dont know enough about it one way or another beyond there being that type of fixture available
All of these new "sustainable" products and technologies that are coming out wont and shouldnt be accepted as standards right away. They need a certain track record to show they work as well if not better than the old standards everyone has been using forever
If i was a building owner about to use waterless urinals and someone showed me facts about how they can be problematic, maintenance wise, down the road, it definitely saves a huge potential headache down the line to just install the capped risers, regardless of it was actually in the code or not.
Yeah. Most new technology is unrefined. The problem is that there is an army of entrenched specialists ready to ambush you at any though of change, regardless of technical execution.
Remember when low flow toilets first appeared in the market? They were not terribly competent at the flushing part, and soon enough they ended up the butt (ha!) of all jokes, in news, in movies and TV. Seinfeld did an entire episode that revolved around how shitty (ha!) low flow shower heads are. This tends to linger on in the imagination of the general public. We have since caught up with all kinds of low water-low power units, but it's a slow, painful process.
The toilets I've seen in Europe (where water bills are much higher) are a few generations ahead of us. 2 button toilet!! one for number one, and two for number two! Brilliant!!!
One would hope the acceptance rate might be a bit quicker these days, what with all the push for sustainability even beginning to come from the government. So hopefully it wont be like in the past where it takes forever
I think it will gradually get quicker, but not for a little while longer
You definitely are right, it is a slow painful process
steel, i might take offense at the non-operable components are much better at air tightness
one of the things i've been introduced to via passivhaus is that wall assemblies are not as air tight as you think... most, even by decent standards are quite loose.
but yes, fixed windows tend to be more airtight than casement, casement over double hung, etc.
some of the austrian windows are friggin phenomenal when it comes to airtightness, even with lift-slides.
holz, agreed. Wall assemblies also degrade over time. Sealants become rigid, argon gas eventually escapes, vacuum space gets compromised, etc... As far as wall assemblies are concerned they are all permeable by design, except for that one thin layer of peel and stick (or troweled on, or glued on, or hot welded) rubber-ish membrane whose performance quality largely depends on how little, or how much hungover the construction crew is. Kind of like me writing this psot.
Also, the Austrian windows I've seen are awesome! Part of the reason they operate so efficiently has to do with the operation of the hardware. It's like closing down a submarine hatch!
MysteryMan, Unicorn's numbers are kind of wacky to begin with. But that part (kind of) makes sense. He took the overall cost of the building and converted that amount to number of kwh of power you could have bought instead of building anything (presumably at the current market rate, in a random US state). You got that??? Next, he divided that number by 150 months (the time when the bank repossesses the whole damn thing) and got to the numbers you just quoted. Why is that so hard to understand? Rest of the equation involves fuzzy dice, unicorn farts, and bourbon. Again, if you chose to get your degree at University of Las Vegas (Luxor campus), this would all have made sense to you.
btw. The building used in his example was Auschwitz, only presented as a Florida time share!
Our city is trying to put together a green code and is collecting data on energy consumption vs cost of building vs green design- it's a hopeless tangled mess- nobody can quantify anything, utilities, owner, builders.
I bet they will use that as an excuse not to develop a aggressive energy saving model but will back there heals up once the building association and architects whine.
Who ever says that architects should know how to build a lower energy building has not been in touch with very many architects or for that mater buildings.
When I approached an local commercial architect about LEED he thought that the expensive equipment he would have to specify would be prone to breaking down all the time because it is "complicated". WTF is that?
Jul 17, 10 12:34 pm ·
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Is LEED Still Leading the Way for Green Building?
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification system has proven to be enormously successful at pushing commercial buildings to reduce their environmental footprint. However the New York Times featured an important story on the under-performance of some of these buildings and has just published an opinion piece by Alec Applebaum in which he suggests that governments add-long term energy management initiatives to a LEED building in order to keep the project from “going gray after its grand opening.” Is the LEED system dropping the ball on energy efficiency?
Read more: Is LEED Still Leading the Way for Green Building? | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
http://goo.gl/A1zK
or http://inhabitat.com/2010/05/24/is-leed-still-leading-the-way-for-green-building/
We would like to to hear from professionals about how LEED is working.
this is the new mountain to climb
http://greenlineblog.com/2008/01/passive-house-passiv-haus-building-standard/
you'll find a number of people disagree with that sentiment. i certainly don't agree with that, especially if you only take into account the PEI of materials. most LEED buildings aren't seeing significant reductions in energy loads.
my $0.02 is that passivhaus will overtake LEED for performance and respect rather quickly, as it's a faster and proven way toward net zero over the long run.
frankly, i'm as interested in TABS (thermally activated building systems) and seasonal thermal storage as a method of reducing CO2.
Passivehouse has a simple powerful ideal- kw per sqr ft per year, but is a one size fits all that cannot adapt to larger commercial projects. It will certainly take over LEED Homes, but LEED is about IEQ, Materials, Connectivity etc as well, very real green building issues that passivehouse ignores. Pick your green poison, energy is big but not everything.
passivhaus doesn't ignore issues of IEQ... it just doesn't reward architects/developers for doing things they should already be doing.
passivhaus can be (and has been) adapted to larger commercial projects, towers, schools, libraries, etc.
what tends to happen is those that care enough to eliminate thermal bridging and loss of BTUs tend to care just as much (if not more) about where materials are sourced from, quality of light inside, etc. at least that's been my experience w/ passivhaus.
for me it comes down to this:
the amount of energy that it takes to maintain a building completely dwarfs the energy it takes to build it.
passivhaus brings those numbers closer to parity. energy IS everything - if you can't get the consumption of energy down significantly (LEED doesn't) then it doesn't matter how you take your poison.
I agree with holz.
If you translate energy in terms of cost and even cost in terms of energy, minimizing consumption makes sense.
If you look at total occupancy of a building in terms of building gross domestic product, you can determine what the total net energy output is.
I just built a $12,000,000 building. In terms of energy (as in value that could be applied towards purchasing more energy), that building is worth 150,000,000 kilo-watt hours.
At no upfront investment, that building costs $81,024.86 or 1,012,810 kwh a month.
Including expected operating budget, that building runs $107,763.00 or or 1,347,038 kwh.
If I have 30 [business] tenants in said building, each tenant would be paying $4,777 a month or 59,718 kwh a month.
I would be making a profit of $35,561 or 444,522 kwh.
If each of the 30 tenants is running a profitable business, my building would be contributing about $859,949 or 25,798,477 kwh a month to the local economy.
Not only am I making money... but in terms of economic output, the building I am providing will reach equilibrium in 5.7 months as the building is producing more than it consumes.
Things like passive house (and LEED too) make sense because they ultimately manipulate the fundamentals of a urban cycle by producing more with less. If we include work and other "soft" outputs from a structure, structures should always produce more than they consume.
"would be making a profit of $35,561 or 444,522 kwh."
if the building is 100% leased i assume
There's no reason Passive House couldn't be an optional compliance path for the energy efficiency requirements of LEED.
Leed is a joke.
holz.box:
"the amount of energy that it takes to maintain a building completely dwarfs the energy it takes to build it."
Do you have numbers to support that? According to the statistics 33% of US energy is consumed by industrial sources while 39% by residential (21%)/commercial (18%) uses. Some of the biggest energy users are steel and aluminum mills and cement manufacturers. If you subtract all industries not related to architecture (agriculture, infrastructure, production of consumer goods, etc...) you still end up with a huge footprint. Then compare the number to number of new buildings constructed each year (tens of thousands?) to existing structures (4.5 million commercial buildings according to US census 2000). I would say energy used in construction is a significant user of overall energy in a life cycle of a building.
Unicorn Ghost:
Did you get your math degree at Goldman Sachs University? If you quadruple your rents does it mean the building will produce more than it consumes in less than 6 weeks? Should we tear down all libraries since they don't "produce" anything? Inquiring minds etc... :)
leed never led the way for green. it only gave a politically expedient and systematized way for green to be implemented in a way that non-technical folks could understand and appreciate: it gives a trophy!
individual practitioners have always led the way. the best green goals are those that haven't yet hit a leed checklist.
USGBC (LEED creator) is a privately owned trade organization with just under 20k member organizations. Its primary objective is to sell new products. The rest is just salad dressing.
I find it disturbing that a large percentage of LEED candidate projects are entirely covered in curtainwall. I know that curtainwall design has gotten very energy efficient over the years, but nothing still beats insulation as the most environmentally efficient product (150-1 energy saved ratio over its lifespan). Efficient cooling and heating systems are the biggest benefactors of the LEED system, even in situations where a better design would make the size of such systems redundant (operable windows for example).
But the biggest knock on LEED is that it ignores building longevity as a major factor in green design. What good is your energy window if it comes with only a 10 year warranty and breaks in 11. What good is a LEED certified facility that will be demolished in 20 years?
The industry doesn't want to make products that will last forever. It's bad business (just ask Ford Motors). Hopefully new green initiatives will replace LEED. Projects I worked on that had a genuine sustainability desires used LEED guidelines as a mere starting point, and didn't bother seeking any certifications.
I think the primary appeal of LEED to architects is the fact that you can add a suffix to your name in a large ALL CAPS font {Joe Schmo LEED(r)}. I wish I was joking.
i'll see if i can find some of the studies... passivhaus likes to trot them out occasionally.
a canadian uni did analysis and showed that after 50 years, the operating energy was over 6 times the initial embodied energy to construct.
so when you create a building that significantly reduces operating energy (e.g. passivhaus, net zero, etc) then operating energy and initial embodied energy are significantly closer.
this has been part of the failing of LEED - focusing too much on initial embodied energy of materials, and less on operating energy. when operating energy is significantly reduced, the embodied energy of construction finishes becomes much more important.
you can have a highly efficient building that utilizes curtain walls - e.g. the 75m passivhaus 'power tower' for energieAG by weber + hofer/kaufmann architekten (link)
holz.box, I wonder if Canadian study takes inflation into account, and if it does, whose inflation numbers it uses (US has been known to fudge the numbers in order to make the economy look better than it is). Also, cost of raw construction and energy costs have had a much different relationship 50 years ago, as I'm sure they'll be radically different 50 years from now.
Any building that makes it to it's 50th birthday without major component failures is a success onto itself. I wonder if cost or component replacement is counted in operating cost of the equation. For the purpose of this discussion it shouldn't be. I'd love to see the study if you find it. I can always be persuaded with hard data...
My argument is still over quality of build. If the curtainwall from your example (energieAG) makes it in one piece to 50 years from now, without major performance drops or exposed design flaws, it will be (by that point) 25-30 years out of warranty. A major success by any measuring stick. Otherwise it's a huge design gamble to use a single source solution for the entire shell. High efficiency curtaiwall is an expensive beast. Triple glazing comes at a massive price hike compared to double. Up to 20% of the curtaiwall cost is embedded energy cost.
Your example uses a prominent project designed by a reputable design firm. I'm sure the building will age well. But for every one of such projects there are a 100 (random number pulled from unmentionables) projects with VERY questionable build quality. Guess what: Some of these projects are LEED certified.
LEED leads the way for owners who want a "sustainable" marketing stamp on their building, be it for marketing purposes or whatever
I dont think its ever lead the way in actual green building. Those owners/buildings dont need the incentive of a LEED certification
I'd say its naive for anyone in the industry to think or expect LEED to actually produce that much better quality of buildings on its own, similar to thinking that just meeting building codes makes your building any good.
SW: leed never led the way for green. it only gave a politically expedient and systematized way for green to be implemented in a way that non-technical folks could understand and appreciate: it gives a trophy!
individual practitioners have always led the way. the best green goals are those that haven't yet hit a leed checklist.
I predict that 20 years from now all those LEED plaques on buildings will be seen as a relic and that the even higher number of LEED AP certificates will have hopefully been recycled into something more useful.
Steven is right that practitioners (and vernacular builders), not trade organizations have led the way in environmentally responsible design. However, given that developers and clients usually determine how responsible buildings will be, anything short of stringent building codes regarding energy, materials, etc will only go so far.
I think that would be everyone's goal really
If more and more sustainable aspects were code requirements, things like LEED would be unnecessary
I think we are slowly on the path towards that. Very slowly, but still
markid: I'm not sure green building initiatives should be part of any building code. The whole point of LEED certification is that it's an award (rather than penalty) based system. Building codes are best left alone dealing with what they know best: life safety issues.
They way LEED is written right now, it mostly favors medium scale suburban (stand alone) developments. A simple building constructed as an infill project in a highly dense urban environment, that attached directly to existing structures, is surrounded by good public transportation, and doesn't require large surface parking lots to exist, will never be able to be eligible to as many LEED points as a stand alone building in the suburban outskirts (that may incorporate all kids of wacky green systems, and can easily accommodate required climate orientations). Does any building built in Manhattan warrant a LEED certification just on the grounds of urban efficiency? I could see a good argument for that.
LEED doesn't fully address urban density as a parameter of green design, largely because it's a hard definition to make. I fear of potentially horrible consequences if a building code tried to mandate green design. Heated patio? Can't have that. Ditto to all kids of operable storefronts and building skins. Any fool knows non-operable components are much better at air tightness. etc...
I didnt say building codes, just codes in general
mechanical codes, plumbing codes, electrical codes. You can easily get LEED points for things that are not code requirements that very easily could and should be
Plumbing codes for example
You can very easily and dumbly get LEED points for using efficient rest room fixtures (at least in the old version). If plumbing codes were more stringent, then these would be basic requirements and not something worth a plaque. And that would in turn make these efficient fixtures more affordable overall
I agree with all your points on LEED's current shortcomings, though there are many basic LEED points that should essentially be required everywhere
Ah, got it! That makes perfect sense. Keep in mind there will be lots of resistance in embedded industries towards any type of change. An article in the last issue of Wired magazine talks about waterless urinals, and how they almost never happened due to plumbing associations fight against them (the horse whip maker's argument). The compromise? Code now allows for installation of waterless urinals provided capped off water risers are still installed behind the units. Wasteful? Yes. Baby steps? Really tiny ones, in all sorts of directions.
haha oh yes, they are all baby steps at most
Here in Philly, with the Comcast Tower, they had some big stink about the waterless urinals
The union saw all the work they would be missing out on, so they made a big stink over it. I think the compromise was that the waterless urinals could be used, but the entire building needed to have plumbing installed as a backup in case they wanted to switch to "traditional" urinals.
A 750 foot skyscraper had god knows how much piping added that will most likely never be used
Who knows if and when it will ever happen, though i think baby steps are being made in some areas
Uniform Plumbing Code (2009rev) specifically demands capped risers behind each waterless unit. Unions won. To be fair, they were armed with information that waterless urinal technology can lead to clogged pipes if system is not maintained properly.
Oh its not surprising at all, especially given how new the waterless urinal technology is
I dont necessarily disagree with that either, though i dont know enough about it one way or another beyond there being that type of fixture available
All of these new "sustainable" products and technologies that are coming out wont and shouldnt be accepted as standards right away. They need a certain track record to show they work as well if not better than the old standards everyone has been using forever
If i was a building owner about to use waterless urinals and someone showed me facts about how they can be problematic, maintenance wise, down the road, it definitely saves a huge potential headache down the line to just install the capped risers, regardless of it was actually in the code or not.
Yeah. Most new technology is unrefined. The problem is that there is an army of entrenched specialists ready to ambush you at any though of change, regardless of technical execution.
Remember when low flow toilets first appeared in the market? They were not terribly competent at the flushing part, and soon enough they ended up the butt (ha!) of all jokes, in news, in movies and TV. Seinfeld did an entire episode that revolved around how shitty (ha!) low flow shower heads are. This tends to linger on in the imagination of the general public. We have since caught up with all kinds of low water-low power units, but it's a slow, painful process.
The toilets I've seen in Europe (where water bills are much higher) are a few generations ahead of us. 2 button toilet!! one for number one, and two for number two! Brilliant!!!
yeah i agree
One would hope the acceptance rate might be a bit quicker these days, what with all the push for sustainability even beginning to come from the government. So hopefully it wont be like in the past where it takes forever
I think it will gradually get quicker, but not for a little while longer
You definitely are right, it is a slow painful process
steel, i might take offense at the non-operable components are much better at air tightness
one of the things i've been introduced to via passivhaus is that wall assemblies are not as air tight as you think... most, even by decent standards are quite loose.
but yes, fixed windows tend to be more airtight than casement, casement over double hung, etc.
some of the austrian windows are friggin phenomenal when it comes to airtightness, even with lift-slides.
holz, agreed. Wall assemblies also degrade over time. Sealants become rigid, argon gas eventually escapes, vacuum space gets compromised, etc... As far as wall assemblies are concerned they are all permeable by design, except for that one thin layer of peel and stick (or troweled on, or glued on, or hot welded) rubber-ish membrane whose performance quality largely depends on how little, or how much hungover the construction crew is. Kind of like me writing this psot.
Also, the Austrian windows I've seen are awesome! Part of the reason they operate so efficiently has to do with the operation of the hardware. It's like closing down a submarine hatch!
"...At no upfront investment, that building costs $81,024.86 or 1,012,810 kwh a month."
ARE YOU kidding? Your utility cost is almost $1M per year? +-19% of your initial outlay...PER year?.
Please tell me this is a factory, or some kind of med-heavy industrial facility.
If this is residential, or retail/commercial...you've got problems that need to be addressed.
MysteryMan, Unicorn's numbers are kind of wacky to begin with. But that part (kind of) makes sense. He took the overall cost of the building and converted that amount to number of kwh of power you could have bought instead of building anything (presumably at the current market rate, in a random US state). You got that??? Next, he divided that number by 150 months (the time when the bank repossesses the whole damn thing) and got to the numbers you just quoted. Why is that so hard to understand? Rest of the equation involves fuzzy dice, unicorn farts, and bourbon. Again, if you chose to get your degree at University of Las Vegas (Luxor campus), this would all have made sense to you.
btw. The building used in his example was Auschwitz, only presented as a Florida time share!
Our city is trying to put together a green code and is collecting data on energy consumption vs cost of building vs green design- it's a hopeless tangled mess- nobody can quantify anything, utilities, owner, builders.
I bet they will use that as an excuse not to develop a aggressive energy saving model but will back there heals up once the building association and architects whine.
Who ever says that architects should know how to build a lower energy building has not been in touch with very many architects or for that mater buildings.
When I approached an local commercial architect about LEED he thought that the expensive equipment he would have to specify would be prone to breaking down all the time because it is "complicated". WTF is that?
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