A Pacific Northwest organization has the defined an environmentally sound structure as one that generates its own energy, captures and treats all of its water, operates efficiently, and is aesthetically pleasing
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Add CommentDoes the requirement that a living building "treats its own water" refer only to treating collected water, or does it also apply to waste water handling, like gray water systems and anaerobic digesters that product methane?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Corkscrew swamp of Florida there still may exist a publicly accessible working wastewater to fit-to-drink water system in the nature park shared by the Audubon society. Unlike autonomous systems in spacecraft, earth based systems have the benefit of reduced impact and even beneficial membership on an environment of our choosing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe costs of creating a Living Building are not as high as one might think... Refer to our Living Building Financial Study, completed in Spring 2009 that evaluates 9 different building types in 4 climate zones: www.ilbi.org/resources/research/financial-study
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSciAmese Cat - the program also includes black and gray water handling. For more information, download the Standardand refer to Imperatives 5 & 6: Net Zero Water and Ecological Water Flow. (www.ilbi.org >> The Standard >> 2.0)
"LBC also expects builders to source locally as many materials as possible to boost local economies and make efficient use of nearby natural resources." This is the central idea of Gandhian philosophy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't get it.Most of this stuff is simple science,some of it decades old.Rooftop waterheaters for one,and collecting rainwater for watering gardens and lawns is another.Come on ,why make things more complicated than they need to be?Why hasn't someone come up with a backyard algae growing device, I understand some species can double their volume in 24 hours using just dirt,air,rainwater,and sunlight,then the machine just wrings it out then saves the water for reuse and burns the algae for fuel,and all this could be put together in one complete system,which everyone could easily operate,only having to add soil at some point during the process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe only buildings i know that are green are the ones painted in that color. the term "green building" is a misnomer because any man-made edifice is necessarily environmentally intrusive. with a majority of the world's population already living in cities, the intrusion will expand. buildings will grow vertically as space becomes more valuable so the use of concrete and steel will increase. more and more roads will get built and we will crowd out everything that is natural. lets redefine the way our living and working spaces should be transformed for long term sustainability.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForget the tires....and we have Michael Reynolds Earthships. All of his technology can be used if you just replaced the tire walls with massive masonry inside and out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am perfectly happy to let the chips fall where they may but at the outset I am curious why it is "more green" to have, say, an on-site sewage-teatment system that one which is community- or even region-wide? That's implicit in "living building" philosophy. But where are the numbers? On what basis do we assume or state that it is better?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can concede that using natural rainfall for use on site makes sense. Or that treating storm-water run-off on-site makes sense ecologically. (It can also be a cheaper, too.)
But there are economies of scale in many human activities and I would expect to see them in waste-treatment as well.
There's another element. It would seem that the living buildings goal would limit the size of buildings. If you are going to rely on natural rainfall to supply drinking water for an apartment building, that would limit the number of apartments you can handle on a site or encourage spreading out ("sprawling") over larger areas.
It might work and be effective but color me skeptical at this point.
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