GRB1100 Module 2 Green from the Ground Up Chapter 1

0:01 hello in this overview we're going to begin to utilize one of our resources embedded in this course it's called green from the ground up it's a textbook that you can purchase or it's also a pdf that's been embedded in this course so if you just go to course resources which can be found in course information tab in brightspace you will be able to read the pdf so encourage you to read the pdf and also watch and follow and listen to this powerpoint my name is larry rieger let's get started in this brief overview about chapter one we're going to learn about green building basics but on a larger scope i want you to understand that we will also be exploring other topics such as

0:48 how the house is an entire system how planning and design go into building green buildings we're going to start spending we'll spend a week just focusing on foundations and a week on framing different types of methods to do that we're going to start looking at roofs and attics as far as building more sustainably windows doors landscaping heating and air conditioning these are these are themes that we're going to be going over each week and so that's what you can look forward to as we work our way through this semester uh in this presentation we're going to be going over green building basics chapter one and so even this little image that we have on the screen is really really useful and so it's worth our time to stop and just get a broad stroke brush overlook on where we are

1:34 and what we're going to be learning about let's just look at this really simple residential home i'm going to start on the top center and i'll go clockwise alternative energy resources photovoltaic panels on a south facing roof is a is an aspect of green building using metal over asphalt shingles because metal is recyclable can last much longer than asphalt shingles going with a light color versus a dark color that light color roof will actually cut down on the cost of cooling in the summer think of a black roof and how hot it's going to get always shading using trees to shade the summer sun is a form of sustainable building or smart building using low e glass in windows is more sustainable using a light

2:21 colored exterior walls is will reduce on your cooling cost home collecting rain water using rain using water responsibly planting native plants just just in nature utilize less water and are more sustainable because you're not go you don't need to water them you don't need to use energy to pump water to your home or out of a well um properly sizing your mechanical systems that's your hot water tank your heating your cooling your air conditioner most systems in most homes are oversized because those those hvac installers do not want to call back they want you to have plenty of heat well we you know i agree we all want to have adequate heat but to some extent you're just wasting energy and the money

3:06 it costs to purchase that larger equipment and so it takes more electricity more natural gas we're adding more emissions to the environment um central dehumidification system so indoor air quality is is an outcome that we're going to be addressing pretty much in one a week just indoor air quality is really important and it leads to uh health concerns energy star appliances just reduce the cost of you know operating that that hot water tank that refrigerator that washer and dryer we always want to use low voc flooring and paint and stains large overhangs uh will will block the summer sun and again reducing

3:52 heating and cool reducing cooling needs but it also protects the house so that the house physically lasts longer um there's a little note there minimal carpet use carpet typically comes with a lot of uh it can create poor indoor air quality unless you buy very sustainable carpeting and can also trap mold and other insects always we're going to learn about high quality insulation and how that insulation can help keep the heat in the envelope um ductwork is sealed with mastic that's just talking about like the ductwork sometimes if you have a forced air system that's blowing hot air into your home uh you never want to run it in the attic like you see in that image you actually want to run it down inside the home not up in the attic and then you definitely

4:37 want to seal the attic so the air is not blowing into the cavities so when you create hot air or cool air you don't want that air going into the cavity so you want to seal up all that duct work one of the last notes there is low flow and dual flush toilets again just using less water actually saves you money think of like your bathroom sink if it has a high flow faucet you may be like oh we got lots of pressure here but think about how much hot water is getting used and then you have to you pay for the hot water you pay for the water and then you also pay to have the water heated and so um and use electricity or natural gas to heat that water so you want to go with low flow type equipment we'll learn more about all of these aspects throughout the entire semester so let's get started

5:23 so when we follow green building basic themes and ideas we are reducing our environmental impact through using less electricity less gas or natural gas less water our homes are healthier the indoor air quality is better because we're not bringing in paints that are off-gassing carpets that's off-gassing stains that are off-gassing that can all lead to cancer that are you know reducing our voc levels by building green we're usually increasing the comfort levels of those homes uh sometimes there's typically a little bit more cost up front but then in the long run you typically will see return on your investment and will save money in the long run an example of that is a net zero home we

6:09 learned a little bit about that last week in a video that we watched in that video we learned about all these aspects of going to a net creating a net zero home or net zero building and that's where you produce a lot of the electricity or all of that electricity you need up front so yeah cost money to install those pv modules but for the most part you're you're you're you're living or working in a very sustainable building that's producing all the electricity it needs on-site and so then there's less cost to operate it day-to-day green buildings smart buildings it's also called building science following building science is a way of building more durable buildings remember that overhang from one of the last slides we looked at a big overhang

6:54 will just make the home more adorable be able to withstand more of the extreme weather that's going to be coming our way and it also conserves our natural resources and things of that nature we're learning that green building is a systematic approach that covers every step of design and construction from land use and site planning to material selection energy efficiency and indoor air quality so what does that really mean like you really need to plan in advance you put your team together early before you start building you start designing that house so it's facing south so that it's ready for those pv modules with those solar thermal collectors maybe you're leaving trees on the site so that before you just cut them down

7:41 and then build you're going to use those trees to keep the house cooler in the summer you're going to start ordering materials or considering materials that have less impact on the environment and ordering them earlier instead of waiting to the last minute just running to your local hardware store and buying whatever's on the shelf and whatever's cheapest so these are all themes that you're going to be learning about throughout the semester building sustainably comes in many many different shades of green there's all different kinds of green programs this textbook that were that we're following this pdf we're following is a little bit older but it still gets right to the point and i've been substituting uh current information to keep this this course uh current but by 1999 there are 50 local green building

8:28 programs and usually what that means is there's individual states uh and communities that have their own type of building that that could be more sustainable and and you know by by 2000 uh there is the national association of uh green building guidelines and so that's the national association of home builders i happen to know that that that document is actually a little bit out date right now and though and there are even more current um guidelines and we're going to be sharing those throughout this uh this semester energy star is a green building program that we already mentioned in one of the earlier slides and something you'll learn a little bit about in this semester is lead like u.s screen building lead it's a form it's a guide to help you

9:13 build more sustainably before we move away from the discussion of green building programs it would really be important for us to visit what are some of today's leading programs and i have those listed here on this slide the first one is called the ansi ashrae u.s green building council ies standard 189.5 and so what that is that is a great green building standard that really is taking multiple agencies they all came together and created one standard and so now all of those different standards of the past have now combined into one primary standard they have this standard is for low-rise residential buildings but they have standards for hot commercial buildings

9:59 of all shapes and sizes the second type of program or standard is the passive house institute of united states there's several there's a european standard and there's a u.s standard so we'll just focus on the u.s standard for now and that's just called passivhaus and then the last is the international living future institute living building challenge that's probably one of the most stringent green building programs out there and you're building very very sustainable homes and buildings that will last a long long time i'm going to embed uh content regarding most of these topics in this course so you can get a better feel on what they are and uh just understand that this course is an intro to green building but these

10:45 standards just really take you to the next level let's make take a moment and understand why it's important to build more sustainably to build green what was the average home size in 1973 compared to 2005. in 1973 it was 1660 square feet by 2005 it was 2434 feet in square feet you can see that you know over a span of almost what 25 30 years we are actually building larger homes which means we use more natural gas more

11:31 coal to make electricity burning more oil to heat those homes uh yeah we're just getting bigger and bigger and bigger we've learned that we are living in larger homes currently and even when this pdf and textbook was written it was known as like a peak oil time where the maximum amount of oil being produced or taken on the ground was possible but but we know today that we we have kind of hit a few years ago we hit the maximum and now we're starting to come back down a little bit because of energy efficiency opportunities and the world realizing that we cannot continue to just build buildings and cars that just just use lots and lots and lots of fuel

12:16 energy efficiency has actually taken us a little bit away from that peak oil production days but we still have uh most of all of our electric is produced with fossil fuels and non-renewables only plays a very small role in uh creating um that electric that we use every day to power our refrigerators and our homes and our businesses you can see here we learned last week that buildings account for 40 of energy use that includes the energy that's being used to heat and cool as well as electricity that's being used in the building for lights and and water pumps and and all that other things that that's happening inside these buildings but it also accounts for the material that went into building that building that building and so the steel beams the

13:03 concrete that is all uh takes resources it takes uh electricity and energy and that's called embedded energy um currently we're seeing uh increased weather events that's no different um uh you know australia recently in the past years had a major fire where uh millions and millions of acres and and were burned here in the united states we're seeing large swings of drought and flooding water aquifers are are not always in some places we have too much water in other places we have water aquifers that are drying up las vegas is a good example that um building in locations where you shouldn't build you know someone decided to build in las

13:50 vegas because it was like this desert type atmosphere it was kind of unique but there should never be a city there because there is no water there water is piped hundreds and hundreds of miles away and it's draining those water aquifers that are well beyond its borders and lastly the world around us is we're just utilizing so much materials we're breaking down our natural resources and uh we need to strategize to minimize those natural resources by recycling and reusing and using less so anytime you can cape town is in south africa and it's a great example of the world around us and what's actually happening just a few years ago the town of cape

14:35 town is a large large city and it was basically out of water like they were rationing water to every single citizen living in the city uh we're used to using 40 50 60 gallons of water per day you might think well i don't use that much well you do [Music] we just every time we flush a toilet every time we take a shower a family of of two or four people just think how much water is going down the drain washing dishes running the dishwasher washing your clothes you use a lot of water in cape town they were down to just about two or three gallons per day per citizen and so um i last time i checked

15:21 that drought had changed and the water came back but that's just a sign of the things to come they were months away from running out of water in a very large city so what's one of the answers when a city like cape town is running out of water is we need to build more sustainably we need to have low flow fixtures um dual you know dual flush toilets things of that nature here's a great example uh americans make up five percent of the world's population but we use 25 percent of the world's resources and and china is one of the most one of the largest growing countries in the world if not the largest at the moment i'm not sure um

16:07 in the book hot flat and crowded thomas friedman evaluates china's growth and shows that if the chinese follow the american lifestyles resources will be used at an alarming rate increasing costs and compounding the environmental impact and so just think about if everybody in the world tried to live the way we do here in the united states uh there's just not enough trees and water to go around so we need to turn our finger around and point ourselves and do a better job live more sustainably and build more sustainably as we think about building more sustainably you know we need to understand that the house is a system as we bring things into that home it affects the environment

16:53 the way that the mechanical system moves those contaminants around affects the occupants occupants add heat to the building the envelope which is your windows and your insulation then allow heat or cold into your home and can also create condensation which now you're back to the environment and as you have your environment your environment is what you're living in if you have condensation where you don't want it like an attic or a place that is sweating your create mold the mechanical system moves that mold around the occupants it gets sick you can see this goes round and round the house is a system and here we are at our last slide of this brief overview of the house as a system i want you to

17:39 understand that science is what sustainable building relies on and today more than ever there's a there's a there's wording called building science and that's the word i use when somebody says what do you teach about larry i say i teach about building science and they usually go on to say what is that and i explain all of the things that we're learning about in this class we also understand that green building is built upon sound underlying principles and the home is a system of interrelated parts i hope this helped have a great day