Archive for the ‘Features’ Category
Posted on January 16th, 2012
By Brian R Murphy | GreenSpec Founder | www.greenspec.co.uk
The interior design profession is coming around to the idea that refurbishment jobs need to take into account the environmental impact these projects have and to address this, The Green Register is holding a seminal one day conference in London on 9th February to address some of the more pressing issues interior designers have to face. But what are these issues?
Since interior finishes are removed and replaced frequently, the building-fabric-only needs to be competent or every refit would require building regulations applications, associated design and application fees and increasing energy performance requirements would make refit progressively more expensive. Issues that need to be addressed by the building include: G value/solar gains/thermal mass /U value/decrement delay/wind and airtightness/thermal breaks/weather tightness/vapour permeability/internal surface temperatures etc.
No tenant/purchaser would want to buy into inadequate property that needs them to complete it as part of the fit out and tenant agreement. The Tenant would quite rightly expect a competent building. If building running/heating/ventilating/cooling are part of their landlord agreement there is no incentive to reduce costs unless they see a financial return for a consumption reduction. Carpets may be insulating but they will have an effect on the ground floor only and they also hide thermal mass that can have an effect on the overall energy demands. The same two points apply to suspended ceiling, not the ground floor, but the roof.
The interior finishes can have variable properties that help of hinder regulating internal conditions and comfort conditions hence affecting heat/vent/coolth requirements. The same finishes with the wrong choice of materials can affect indoor air quality and the need for ventilation which drive up energy costs. Issues of concern include: material ingredients/ binders/ adhesives/ VOCs/ off-gassing/ indoor air quality/ moisture mass/ thermal mass/ acoustic mass etc.
Increasing internal insulation of historic buildings by wall coverings can lead to condensation, mould, asthma, rot, toxic mould, frost damage. In my limited past experience the level of technical expertise in IDs (who often have to rely on manufacturers reps to tell them what they need to choose and specify) is below Architects who themselves can still be inadequate in these matters, so I would be worried about this too. Issues to be address here include vapour permeability/ capillary action/ continuity/ gap avoidance/ moisture transport.
The RICS ‘Ska rating’ assessment process addresses refit better than any of the BREEAM tools – it focuses on building fabric and the materials that both IDs and Architects specify. But I think it follows the conventional approach (competent building, complimentary interiors) More importantly it addresses reuse of existing interior materials and reuse of reclaimed rather than sending perfectly sound materials to landfill.
Re-education of the designers in all disciplines on environmental issues is paramount, coordinated design is essential and respect of each other and each other’s contribution would help a lot. The Green Register’s one day conference will help ID’s to arm themselves with the knowledge they want and need to inform themselves and their clients about the choices they can make with fit-out, refit and refurbishment projects.
http://www.greenregister.org.uk/events.php?p=1&id=219#event219
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78130374/The-Challenges-of-Eco-Interior-Refit-A03-130112-BRM
Posted on January 3rd, 2012
by Cath Hassell of ech2o consultants
I was in Delft recently with my partner where, as usual, we ordered tap water with our evening meal. It was pleasant enough, no discernable chlorine taste, but it certainly wasn’t worth the three Euros sixty that appeared on the bill! This slightly surreal experience was closely followed by a visit to Bruges where the restaurants and cafes refused point blank to serve tap water at all. So I decided to investigate the bottled water industry in more detail, and to ask whether we, as construction professionals, can reduce the amount of bottled water consumed in the UK.
Value of the bottled water market
It is an industry that has grown rapidly in the past 25 years, with global consumption in 2010 at 225 billion litres and a worldwide market worth £52 billion pounds a year. [1] It is a staggering fact that the world spends over six times as much per year on bottled water than it does on water supply and sanitation.[2] Despite a slight downturn in sales in the last few years in the US (due to pressure from both environmentalists and municipal water suppliers) it is still the world’s fastest growing consumer beverage, and likely to remain so as increasing sales in China more than make up for any decrease in the States. Whilst consumption of bottled water per head in the UK is low compared to many European countries at 38 litres per head, it has also risen rapidly since the 1980’s. In 2009, 2.1 billion litres of bottled water were bought and the bottled water market in the UK is estimated to be worth between £1.4-2 billion.[3]
The decline in drinking tap water
So why is the number of people drinking tap water in the UK declining? As with most countries it is due to three main factors: a fear about the quality of tap water, preferences of taste, and convenience.
We don’t need to drink bottled water in the UK because our tap water is unsafe; in fact, the tests that tap water is subjected to before it reaches our taps are more stringent than those required for bottled water. The “Story of Bottled Water” (from the same people that produced the “Story of Stuff”) and available at http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/ explains how the bottled water industry in the US systematically set out to persuade consumers that tap water was essentially unsafe, and did so very successfully. In the UK the British Soft Drinks Association has been accused of doing the same thing, though they have denied it.
The taste issue is more subjective. Certainly there are areas in the UK where tap water is heavily chlorinated and unpalatable. However, filtering the tap water or allowing it to stand before drinking solves that problem, both at a far lower monetary and environmental cost than drinking bottled water. Depending where in the UK you live, tap water costs between 0.2 and 0.5 p per litre directly from the tap. Filtering at point of use will double the price at worst.
The environmental impact of bottled water v tap water
There are several environmental issues that are of concern when bottled water replaces tap water. Excessive withdrawal of natural mineral or spring water to produce bottled water can threaten local streams and groundwater, transporting the water to the consumer results in a far higher carbon load than delivering to a tap; the manufacture and disposal of billions of plastic bottles causes pollution, litter and fills landfill sites.
The carbon load of mains water in the UK is, on average 0.35kg CO2 for every m3 of tap water delivered to the tap. Compare that to the carbon load of trucking bottles of water around the UK, a heavy and bulky commodity. To exacerbate the situation, of the 2.1 billion litres of water we drink every year, only 1.6 billion are UK-produced, meaning that 24% of the bottled water we consume in the UK is imported.[4] Whilst most of our imported water is from France, bottled water from Turkey and Fiji and even bottled rainwater from Australia (Cloud Juice) is available in our shops.
To reduce bulk and weight most bottled water is now sold in plastic rather than glass bottles, which brings extra environmental problems. Most plastic water bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is recyclable but research in the US has shown that less than 20% are recycled, with the bulk of the remainder going to landfill. Whilst figures are not easily available for the UK, the figures are likely to be similar. In both Sweden and Germany there is a substantial deposit on plastic bottles at point of sale and therefore recycling rates are far higher, but there seems little political will to introduce such a system in the UK in the near future. Because so much bottled water is consumed outside of the home environment, many empty bottles are disposed of in street bins where recycling rates are far lower than from home bins. Even recycling does not completely solve the problem as only 4% of PET bottles are recycled back into new bottles; most are merely downcycled.
Design solutions
At first sight this does not seem an issue that those of us who work in the building industry can affect. But when we design kitchens we can specify a separate filtered water tap outlet and in the commercial sector we can design in water fountains or space and water connections for chilled water units fed directly from the mains water supply.
[2] $100 billion a year to $15 billion a year
Posted on April 15th, 2011
by Cath Hassell of ech2o consultants
Language is important; it is one of the things that define us as human. As the environmental building industry expands, new systems, processes and products are introduced and new words start to become common currency. I am interested (and often surprised) by the way technical terms become misused by building professionals as well as the general public.
Rainwater and greywater
Rainwater and greywater (two completely different types of water, with differing requirements for treatment and storage) are increasingly referred to as greywater. So much so I now routinely ask whether the speaker really means greywater, regardless of the conviction with which they state the word. Rainwater is obviously rain that has fallen out of the sky, which in a conventional building is discharged to a surface water sewer, combined sewer, or a soakaway; if it is stored for use back in the building it is still rainwater, until it is used. Once it is used it becomes either foul water (if used to flush WCs or urinals) or waste water if used for washing clothes. If wastewater from a bath, basin or shower is collected for re-use it becomes greywater. If greywater is used to flush WCs it becomes foul water. If it is used in washing machines it becomes waste water (but would not circulate through the greywater recycling system again as waste water from washing machines has too many detergents in it to be considered as suitable for greywater recycling). Simples!
Greywater and “blackwater”
When I first heard the term greywater used for waste water (back in 1997) I naively assumed it to be a reference to the appearance of the water due to the effect of scum formation, and the colour wastewater becomes after it begins to biologically decompose. But then I started to hear the term “blackwater” to describe water from toilets. “Blackwater” categorically does not describe the appearance of foul water either in the sewers or whilst undergoing treatment at a sewage treatment plant. It is an example of using the term black to describe something that has negative connotations, rather than an actual description (such as blackboard). We have a perfectly adequate term to describe water from toilets, which is foul water, and in the 21st Century our language should be smarter than this.
Sewage treatment for direct or indirect re-use
Now the term “blackwater treatment”[i] is being used in the UK to describe the on-site treatment of sewage in an eco town or on an eco development, where the effluent is used back in the development for certain non-potable purposes. Although this is a different process to normal sewage treatment in so far as the sewage effluent is treated beyond normal secondary and tertiary treatment, (and the effluent may meet drinking water standards), the technology is not new, is not confined to just “eco” developments, and has a technical term that describes it perfectly, which is sewage treatment for direct re-use. In the US, home of the term “blackwater”[ii], such treatment and distribution schemes, of which there are an increasing number, are now being referred to as simply “water re-use” systems.
~ Direct re-use: the planned and deliberate use of treated sewage. At its most extreme, the sewage effluent is cleaned to potable water standard and injected directly into the mains supplying a town or city. However at present most direct re-use systems clean the sewage effluent so that it is considered fit for purpose for irrigation, WC flushing and urinal flushing, and supply a secondary network of distribution pipework for this water as well as a mains supply network. A separate distribution network is very costly. Therefore it makes economic sense for sewage treatment re-use to be directly into the mains. From 1985 to 1992 the City of Denver, USA, ran a large scale trial of direct re-use and found that water quality parameters were equal to or better than the city’s drinking water. However, public perception about direct re-use for potable water supplies is still mostly negative, and is holding back large scale take-up of this process.
~ Indirect re-use: water that is taken from a river, lake or aquifer that has received sewage or sewage effluent. Much of the water we use in our buildings in the UK could be classified as indirect re-use, i.e. effluent from one town’s sewage treatment plant is discharged into a river, taken out from the same river further downstream, to be cleaned and supplied to the next town. Hence the saying that every glass of water we drink has passed through seven other people’s kidneys first. With planned indirect water re-use the sewage effluent is discharged immediately upstream of the water treatment plant or used to recharge aquifers. Indirect re-use of sewage effluent is beginning to be used far more around the world as water demand increases and the water suppliers need a guaranteed supply.
In the UK the most high profile example of a sewage treatment plant with direct re-use is on the Olympic site. Whilst I have seen some publications refer to it by its technical term I have also seen it referred to as a “blackwater” sewage treatment facility and a “blackwater” treatment system. It is sewage treatment with direct re-use for non potable purposes. It is a highly technical solution; let’s call it by its correct technical name.
[i] The term isn’t even used correctly as “blackwater” treatment plants deal with both foul and waste water (i.e. “blackwater” and greywater).
[ii]The first reference I could find to it was in a US patent applied for in 1974 where water was divided into “white water” (drinking water) and “black water” (sewage from the building).
This article was first published in Green Building Magazine, Spring 2011.
Posted on May 17th, 2010
There was cause for a small celebration on Friday 7th May when Caroline Lucas became the first Green Party MP in the UK. Lucas is not new to politics having been a Green MEP for the last ten years but she does not sound hopeful that the Lib Dem/Conservative Coalition will produce the changes necessary to seriously address the environmental problems we face, saying of the Coalition ‘We could have had a new politics. This is isn’t it’. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on March 18th, 2010
All is Explained by TGR Trainer David O’Rorke
What is the Code for Sustainable Homes?
It’s an environmental assessment for the design and construction process of new homes, including both apartments and houses. It looks at a range of issues, split into the following categories: energy, water, materials, surface water run off, waste, pollution, health & wellbeing, management and land use & ecology. Credits are awarded for meeting the criteria of each issue and the total credit score is translated to an overall percentage. Depending on the percentage achieved, a rating is achieved, ranging from Code for Sustainable Homes levels 1 to 6. Though be warned that there are mandatory requirements that must be met to achieve each level of the Code. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on October 22nd, 2009
I have just finished a round of eight half day CPD sessions on sustainable construction for the RIBA around the UK and noticed some common themes arising from audience comments: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on September 7th, 2009
Practical advice on making green building work from TGR member Simon Lewis, the Green House Project
The Green House Project is a Bristol-based building consultancy and member of The Green Register of Construction Professionals. They run workshops to teach industry professionals the basic principles of building science whilst showing them how to use simple tools and perform simple tasks. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 7th, 2009
Guest blog by Robert Borruso, TGR Expert Trainer
The profile of renewable technologies has been growing relentlessly over the past few years, spurred on by countless government initiatives and regulation. Some planning authorities now even insist that a proportion of all the energy used in any new development comes from renewables sources as a planning condition. With the latest targets for UK CO2e emission levels set at 34% below 1990 levels by 2020, and with the government’s own delivery plan containing plans to cut CO2 emissions from the power sector by 50%, you could start to tentatively believe that the promise being made since the early 90s by some green groups that with the right support for the technology the UK could lead the world in low carbon energy production, might now at last be coming true. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 27th, 2009
It pains me to say this and even more to write it down but ‘Thrifty Dave’ (aka David Cameron) is correct in that the way forward through the economic gloom is to become more thrifty, although quite how the Tories intend to achieve this is not clear, least of all to themselves. We cannot ‘grow our way out of a recession’ as darling Alistair stated last week in the Budget report and at the G20 meeting held in London a few weeks ago our great leaders went even further by closing their eyes and throwing inconceivable amounts of money at the problem, perhaps hoping that the sheer number of bank notes would patch up the gaping hole in the economy. Read the rest of this entry »
