This morning we had another discussion about the Sustainable House book and afterwards we headed over to Michael Mobbs’ house for our tour. Being able to see firsthand what I was reading about helped put everything into perspective. He emphasized in his book that, even with all the improvements that he did to his house, he didn’t want to have to change his lifestyle dramatically in order to live there. He said many times that, one day, he wants to be able to sell this house and he knows that if you have to include an instruction manual to live there, then it won’t ever sell. From the minute I stepped into his house, it looked like an ordinary house. The kitchen had a lot of natural sunlight through the windows, the living room had a TV, and it didn’t stink. I paid particular attention to the smell when I walked in because there are a lot of horror stories about buildings that use wastewater re-use systems and they stink, real bad. For the readers out there that are unfamiliar with this project, here are a few key details:
· The potable water comes entirely from rainwater captured from the roof. There have only been three times in the past 14 years that he has had to use his neighbors hose to top off his rainwater harvesting tank. This water is general tap water and is suitable to drink. There are a series of filters and UV lights to ensure the water quality.
· The wastewater is captured and re-used in a “closed system”. This means that the water coming from the showers, sinks, clothes and dish washers, and toilets are captured, filtered and treated to a level sufficient to safely use for flushing toilets, watering the garden and washing clothes.
· The house was retrofitted with PV panels on the roof and that produced more than enough power to feed the house during the day. Whatever surplus electricity was left over after the household consumption was feed back in to the City power grid, which they were credited for. Since PV panels were the only means of producing energy, they obviously couldn’t use them at night. So they were forced to stay connected to the City grid in order to power the house at night.
Throughout the tour, he discussed the challenges that he faced throughout the whole research, design and construction. Michael said that he spend four years on research, about 15 month for design/approval and three months for construction. While going through the whole approval process, he had a hard time with the council because this type of design and construction was so uncommon. He had to educate the public officials along the way and had to provide a lot of supporting data for the safety of the rainwater and waste systems. Even while we were sitting at lunch having discussions, he urged each of us to educate as many people as we could, so that this sort of living is not such a stigma. I mentioned to him the challenges that I’m facing on my project back in the states that is for a VA mental health facility and that the reviewers are very opposed to new methods and technologies because they don’t have a long enough track record of success. He urged me to discuss with them the benefits of gardening on the mental psyche of the people that will be occupying my project. I agree with him whole-heartedly, especially after hearing his story, but in my experience in working with the federal government, you will have an extremely hard time convincing them to use a radical design on a specific project, and considering the fact that most of the projects are on a set project schedule, there isn’t enough time to present your case effectively and to provide sufficient data to backup what you would like to do.
Overall, I like the idea of what he’s doing and I think that certain aspects of his house should be used as much as possible (especially the PV panels). However, I think that getting this to get full traction in the state, there will need to be a HUGE push for education. So many people are ignorant to the ways in which these systems can benefit them financially, while at the same time benefiting their community and environment.
On the way back from the Sustainable House, we stopped by a development called Central Park that we saw earlier that morning. Its slated to be a huge $2 billion village with 11 buildings with 1,600 apartments, shops, cafes restaurants and a 6,400 sqm park. It turned out that they are planning to incorporate a few sustainable elements into the project. The main building is going to consist of a green façade (something I’ve never seen before) and will use mirror to reflect the sunlight from the solar panels to a pool deck that would otherwise be shaded between two building. Quite ingenious. The woman we spoke with was more of a real estate agent and not too familiar with the in depth design aspects, so she couldn’t answer our questions about some of the sustainable features of the site (other than the obvious ones).
No comments:
Post a Comment