Northwest Developers Vie To Construct "World's Greenest" Buildings
TRANSCRIPT
VANCOUVER, B.C. – Developers in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C. are striving to build the "greenest" commercial buildings in the world. These mid-rise structures will generate their own power, collect their water from the sky and compost sewage on site. But being the greenest comes with compromises.
----------------------------------
The buzzword here is "living building." Seattle architect Jason McLennan coined the phrase to describe ultra-green construction.
It led to the Living Building Challenge. A qualifying structure needs to generate as much energy as it uses, capture its own water and send no wastewater into the sewer.
In other words, be pretty much self-sufficient. Easier said than done.
Jason McLennan: "The bigger the project gets, the more you realize that all of our systems have not been designed to support truly regenerative building."
Jason McLennan heads the International Living Future Institute. The green building group has certified a handful of small, one story buildings as truly sustainable. But now ambitious Northwest developers are aiming bigger... taller... showier.
For example, the next time you visit Vancouver, B.C., you may want to take in an architectural showpiece scheduled to open this summer.
Construction superintendent Clarke Peters leads the way into the visitor center nearing completion at the VanDusen Botanical Garden.
Clarke Peters: "We have six roof petals – they're called – different petals that are actually supposed to emulate the shape of an orchid. That's what the building geometry is based on, the shape of a flower."
The 20,000 square foot building features solar hot water and a geothermal heat exchanger. Peters says the toilets flush into a chemical free septic system that uses plants for filtration.
Clarke Peters: "The plants in the percolation field are going to be the best fed plants in the garden, heh, heh.
how to build a cistern - News
"Our cistern's contaminated" by flood water, he explained. "(The water) is fine for showers, but you wouldn't want to drink it." Golden Oak Cove and a neighbouring subdivision have about two dozen houses in total, tucked away north of the Trans-Canada.
The undulating roof at Vancouver's botanical garden drains into a huge rainwater cistern designed to make the facility water independent. That was the plan at least, but Peters says the health department insisted the visitor center connect to a city
The project proposal includes a 2500-gallon cistern at the school's garden at Southeast 34th Avenue and Taylor Street that will collect rainwater to water the garden throughout the year. Heidi McNamee, chair of the Sunnyside Parent-Teacher-Student
Work involves design and executive projects for the 25,0000m3/h plant, including pumping and drainage systems, a water intake, and a cistern, as well as construction of plant's first phase, which will give it a capacity to treat 6250m3/h of water.
The sound was caused by a problem with our water system; our cistern wasn't filling, and we had no water. While I waited for a reasonable hour to call for help, I contemplated making my morning coffee. Without running water, the small carafe of water
How To Build a Rain Cistern | Green Life Style Magazine
This is nice. Here in my house we have done the same. Not all tech as this one but one far more simple. One common 500L tank on the floor and the tube above it. We open the tank to fill it. When filled we put some vegetable oil above it to prevent mosquitos and close it. Then we reconnect the tube to the normal flush tubes. We use that water for watering the garden.
how to build a cistern - Bookshelf
A Christmas carol in prose, being a ghost story of Christmas
I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a ...Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
The author offers his view of how the economy really works, examining issues from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing, offering a very different view ...How to Win Friends and Influence People
The first hardcover release since 1981, a newly packaged edition of the multimillion-copy-selling icon of motivational books.A mercy
In exchange for a bad debt, an Anglo-Dutch trader takes on Florens, a young slave girl, who feels abandoned by her slave mother and who searches for love--first ...A Confederacy of Dunces
The novel astonishes with its inventiveness; it lives in the play of its voices. A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.Directory Information Directory
Dancing Rabbit: How to Build a Rainwater Catchment Cistern
Perhaps I'll have an update in a future issue as to how effective ... Having never built a cistern before and being unable to find any literature to speak of ...
How to Build an Underground Cistern | DoItYourself.com
An underground cistern is a structure that allows water to flow away from a building's foundation and your home.
How to Build a Water Cistern | eHow.com
How to Build a Water Cistern. A water cistern is usually a secondary water source used for irrigation or some other specific purpose.Building a water cistern can be ...
How to Build a Cistern | Bloglines Answers
You can build a simple cistern with either plastic, wood or a metal container. Position the container where rainwater will run from the gut ... view more.
Dancing Rabbit: Newsletter: Summer '00
How to Build a Rainwater Catchment Cistern. by Kurt Kessner. A more detailed version of this article, including diagrams and photos, is also available. ...