 Vortex Fine Filters by Wisy, offered in the U.S. by Rainwater Management Solutions, passively filter debris in rainwater collected from drains and downspouts. An offset input on the top of the unit spins draining water around a self-cleaning stainless steel mesh filter; 90-something percent of the water is filtered and exits to holding tanks or more processing. (The rest goes somewhere else.) A first-flush occurs by design at each rainfall. (Until they pointed it out to me at this booth, I hadn't realized that the convention center we're in was the first in the U.S. to use siphonic drainage — another thing I like.) | ||
 Big Belly Solar compacting public trash cans and recycling kiosks. I saw these things last year, maybe even the year before, and they're still a favorite. The real savings they can offer aren't immediately apparent under the glare of novelty. They increase capacity by five times over ordinary receptacles of the same size; and they signal wirelessly for pick-up when full, further reducing — by lots — the emissions generated and energy expended for pickups. The standard black side panels and hopper cover are made from 80-100% post-consumer recycled ABS. The exterior is 85% recycled galvanized steel (which is about normal for steel anyway). | ||
 Tournesol VGM modular green wall planting system. No PVC! Their grid is 100% recycled polypro, with a steel mounting system. The soil depth... er, thickness... is a choice of either 4.5 or 8.5 inches — unusually generous for living wall systems, and great for the plants. This is a brand-new product that they rolled out at this show; it's not even on their website yet. |
Yesterday, the president of 
 | At the Selux booth, I'm told that these will be introduced to the market shortly, intended for grid intertie. |
 | Their standalone PV area lighting has been on the market for some time. |
Rock-filled drainage channels between parking rows drain to a large detention area beside the lot.
Stream it if you aren't here. (You'll have to set up a username and password.)
About ten minutes before show time, the room (seriously, they tell me there's seating for 10,000) was about a quarter full, but people were pouring in. Ten minutes after start time, they still are. No biggie — if history is an indication, Desmond won't mount the stage until after a lot of self-congratulatory remarks from a handful of green building industry types.
This year, they're serving breakfast right in the hall so people can take it to their seats. I think that's a good idea. It's also a good way to marshall the crowd into filling the front of the room first. (Has anybody heard preliminary registration numbers for this year's event?)
I'll be watching the plenary from the press room, the same stream that I linked to above. And I fully expect to be mocked for that. My wife's cousin took a semester at sea, and Desmond joined them for a leg. I figure hearing her talk about that is closer than I'll ever get to him. And for this address, I don't feel like I need to be in the room to get just as elevated as the throng.
I'll update this post below as thing progress.
By Peter Yost and Allyson Wendt, posted live from Greenbuild.
It's common knowledge that green building is anything but affordable. Or is it? You would have had a pretty hard time convincing the 100 or so folks at the USGBC's Affordable Housing Summit. They are convinced that green is actually affordable, both in terms of investment and operations budgets.
Heather Clark — from one of the largest property owners of housing in the U.S., Winn Development — stated that water efficiency improvements alone in 76 of their properties cost only $376,000 and saved them over $1.2 M in the first year! In this case, they were paying the water bills, but even if the retrofits had benefited the tenants directly, saving money is still saving money. And saving water is saving water.
I (Peter) have to confess that if I hear the term net present value one more time in the context of green building, I may pass out.
Posted live from Greenbuild.
Our BuildingGreen after-party starts in about a half-hour, and I'm the designated greeter/bouncer; about 300 people are expected. (It was decided to have our after-party on the first night, which I think was a darned good idea.) So probably no more posts from here tonight (from me anyway) unless I find some active brain cells and wifi.
UPDATE - three pics after the jump...
Posted live from Greenbuild.
We're fans of TimberSIL. We're such big fans that we named it a Top-10 product in 2004. And now, despite efforts by the chemically treated wood industry to have it classified as a pesticide (as well as a nearly disastrous situation with a licensee a while ago), they've received some news that should turn the tide.
It's a few minutes before the expo floor opens at Greenbuild, and Karen Slimak, the environmental chemist who invented TimberSIL, has given BuildingGreen the scoop. It hasn't been announced anywhere else yet — so here's a world debut for you:
After a four-year assessment, despite the aggressive lobbying of traditional wood treatment chemical companies which led to an unusually thorough investigation, the EPA has determined TimberSIL to be a nontoxic physical barrier product exempt from pesticide regulations. What's more, this is the first time the EPA has ever expressly stated that any product of this sort qualifies as a barrier product — though it had determined that such a thing could potentially exist within its regulations over two decades ago. Evidently somebody at the EPA 20 years back had some foresight.
Specifically, TimberSIL is the first material to qualify for the 40 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Section 152.1 Barrier Exemption which defines such products as "intended to exclude pests only by providing a physical barrier against pest access." Additionally, a letter signed by Frank T. Sanders, director of the Antimicrobial Division of the Office of Pesticide Programs of the EPA, states that "the product has no toxic mode of action."
In other words, TimberSIL is everything its proponents have claimed it is all along.
Congratulations!
We humans number about 6.5 billion. How many trees are there? NASA has been taking satellite pictures of the Earth's forests for years and sharing them with ecologists who have figured out an algorithm for calculating worldwide tree totals based on patterns of sunlight.
The result of that research is a worldwide tree census, as of 2005, of 400,246,300,201, or 400 billion. Now, do the math -- that's 61 trees per person -- a figure that professor Nalini Nadkarni of the Evergreen State College in Washington seems to have been the first to calculate.
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