Hidden Villa
Events
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Report by Cliff Thompson,
Appropriate Technology Evangelist, Paths of Native Africa,
Webmaster, Friends of African Outlet SIG 

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Sustainable Building Seminar: 
Size Matters
Reducing the Environmental Impact of Big Houses
Friday, September 10, 2004
9 a.m.-3 p.m.


Co-sponsored by 
County of San Mateo RecycleWorks 
and 
Hidden Villa Farm & Wilderness Preserve

Virtual Hidden Villa

Sustainable Buildings Tour

A sign pointed the way to the Hostel where seminar presenters would give their talks in the main room. Before the talks began, Sustainable Home Principal Kirsten Flynn conducted a tour of Hidden Villa sustainable buildings such as the Hostel and Wolken Education Center, taking a look at the ways appropriate technology, renewable energy and sustainable building practices were integrated and implemented in the structures. 

The Hostel's hillside location proved challenging for a passive solar east-west axis orientation for solar heating, so alternately a geothermal loop heat exchanger system was implemented, with a water tank roughly 6 ft. underground,  where the temperature is a relatively stable approximately 55°, from which tank water interacts with a heat exchanger system of interleaved coils of water tubing, which raises the water temperature another 15°, before final storage in both "water heater like" tanks and under-floor heating system containers. The building also features a metal roof, recycled cellulose wall insulation, walls of rammed earth and Agriboard, and a Fly Ash Concrete floor. 

The Wolken Education Center was designed by architects "Arken Tilt", who also designed the Real Goods/Solar Living Institute "Solar Living Center". The Wolken exterior wall paint is color-coded to indicate wall construction type, purple for stick frame and pink for straw bale. Interior rooms are brightly lit by skylights.  Thermal Mass is implemented  via several black water tanks under the windowsills of the south wall, which tanks take about 6-8 hours during the day to reach maximum temperature, after which the heat is slowly released during the evening. Roof suspension is handled by a scissors truss, floors are covered in Terragreen tiles and the building utilizes wood that is all Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified. The kitchen features an optimally insulating Sun Frost refrigerator (photo) as well as a  Pedal Powered Generator Exercycle. The rooftop features a grid-tied solar power array feeding a standard photovoltaic (PV) circuit, as well as a solar hot water heater and an "as-not-yet-code-approved" rainwater gray water cistern toilet flush system.  Inside the main room is a poster rack containing nicely illustrated diagrams of various Sustainable Building topics with the following titles: "Water", "Passive Cooling", "Aesthetics", "Electricity", "Solar Heating", "Sustainability", "Equipment" and "Natural Lighting". Kirsten ended the tour recommending keeping a lookout for sustainability-oriented home ideas resource Sunset magazine's next "Sunset Idea House", slated to appear at Sunset's Publishing Garden Headquarters in Menlo Park in summer 2005.

Update 10/11/05: There are actually 2 Sunset House Idea Houses referenced in the Sustainable Building Seminar...

(1) Exhibited in May at Sunset's annual "Celebration" Weekend in Menlo Park,  a modular kit home called the "Breeze House" (architect). The kit home walls contain all necessary embedded utility plumbing/piping/cabling, with various room configurations available, and the whole house can be shipped by flatbed truck (in pieces that fit within the width of a highway lane), then dropped on & hooked up to a site's concrete foundation & utility connections

(2) Open for viewing in October in Palo Alto, a pair of identical homes (one "cut-away")  called the "Green-Built Idea House"). A visit produced pictures of the house (front, side), cut-away framework features (engineered wood, radiant barrier, tight ducting, insulation), & garage utility devices (utility wall, tank-less water heater, built-in central vacuum (notes), satellite computer irrigation, solid state landscape lighting). The homes can be visited via shuttle from the Sunset House Menlo Park parking lot (directions), while Sunset's web site offers information on additional Idea Houses

Presenters

After the tour, presenters gave talks on the following topics, as highlighted and described from quotes excerpted from the seminar brochure:

• Overview: Hammond Fine Homes Inc. LEED Accredited Professional Builder & Developer Bruce Hammond's talk covered "Why should we care about reducing the environmental impacts of large houses? What's in it for the environment and what's in it for you?". Presenting a cogent argument and concern for reduction of the impact of large new-home construction on Earth's resources, Bruce recommended a number of useful tools including the "Green Point's Checklist" (list on PDF pg. 4) and "LEED for Homes" (Spring 2005)
  
  

• "Introduction to Integrated Design": Andrea Traber Architecture + Sustainability Principal Andrea Traber's topic answered the question "What are the benefits of thinking of your home as a system of interdependent parts? How can homeowners, architects and builders work as a team to ensure high performance for new construction and remodels?". Andrea emphasized lowering use of energy and water, noting that solar photovoltaic costs were typically paid off an 8-10 years, providing the utility for free after that, with Californians further enjoying a government rebate. Resource-reducing approaches recommended included use of dual flush toilets, and architecting tall airflow towers/columns in home design can reduce and even remove the need for air-conditioning.  Andrea also recommended checking out the sustainable building modeling software "Energy10"
  
  

• "Top 10 Priorities": "Good Green Homes" Author Jennifer Roberts' talk addressed the query "Ready to go green but don't know where to start? We've distilled the wide world of green building down to 10 key concepts." Jennifer recommended some great sources of Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified wood were  Berkeley's "Truitt and  White" and Salinas' "Hayward Lumber". Jennifer also discussed in detail the topics in her  handout "Top 10 Green Priorities for Your Home"
  
  

• "City Initiatives, Incentives and Resources": County of San Mateo RecycleWorks Green Building Program Manager Jill Boone's presentation covered "An overview of local programs and resources for creating better homes and healthier communities." Jill recommended a number of useful resources from the site, such as the "San Mateo Countywide Sustainable Buildings Guide", and mentioned a number of ongoing green building programs in San Mateo, San Jose and Marin.  Jill also offered a great list of regional resources including "Build It Green",  "Green Resource Center" and their program "Ask an Expert", and "GreenHomeGuide"
  
  

• "Great Examples of Green Homes I, II, III": Presented by Bruce, Andrea and Jennifer respectively, photo tours of a number of sustainable model homes were presented, with Jennifer's taken from her book. During the tour a number of additional sustainable building techniques were discussed, including "Hydronic Heating", "Venturi Effect" and use of pigmented plaster to avoid painting. Also introduced were  resources like the "Colorado Built Green Checklist", the government Energy Star website (which offers features like "sort appliance by energy use"), and the green building design software "Green Building Advisor". One of the Silicon Valley homes profiled, in Belmont, by architect "Andrken Tilt", can be visited in person during the upcoming October 2, 2004 RecycleWorks "Solar Home and Building Tour"
  
  

• Q&A: During the session, attendee Catherine Ballantyne noted that utility PG&E's  San Francisco Pacific Energy Center facility at 951 Howard St. offers "Daylighting and shading analysis of physical building models to optimize envelope design" using their sunlight simulator "Heliodon".  I asked about whatever became of seemingly promising earlier efforts at efficient design such as the Disneyland Tommorowland "Monsanto House of the Future" and later, Buckminster Fuller's (Sustainability page) designs for the Dymaxion House and Geodesic Domes, and was advised to check out the "Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems"
  
  

• Handouts: A hefty information packet containing a collection of very informative documents and brochures was handed out, a selection of which are highlighted below, with titles expressed as links where there's a corresponding web page:
  

  • Build It Green (in partnership with Green Resource Center) brochure
    

  • Whole House Building Supply brochure
    

  • RecycleWorks: "Energy-Efficient Windows for Your Home" and "Solar Electricity and Solar Hot Water for Your Home" brochures, "Construction Site Recycling" pamphlet and the 60 page "San Mateo Countywide Sustainable Buildings Guide", which contains a comprehensive "San Mateo Countywide Sustainable Buildings Checklist", all of whose points are fully expanded in the Guide's chapters, which provide illustrations and detailed instructions. On the web site there are downloadable PDFs of the entire Guide and just the Checklist, (Guide.PDF, Checklist.PDF) and many other documents, from their web page on Publications and Electronic Guides
    

  • SF Environment Department of the Environment City and County of San Francisco: "New-home Construction Green Building Guidelines" and "Home Remodeling Green Building Guidelines" booklets, whose web links also offer downloadable PDFs of the entire booklet and individual chapters from their web page on Green Building Tools 
    

  • Northern California Solar Energy Association "Solar Energy Resource Guide (SERG) 4th edition September 2003" offers well-written and excellently illustrated primer articles on Solar topics (PV, Passive, Hot Water) and resource lists (Glossary, Resources, Business Members, Providers). The value of the material is impressive, as for example, a scan of the Resources Class section turns up a listing for on-line Solar PV Training and Certification from SõL Energy's Solar on-Line. On the SERG web site there is an  11 MB downloadable PDF of the entire 50+ page Guide (SERG.PDF)
    

  • Eco Design Resources "Environmental Home Improvement Showroom" brochure
    

  • Salon.com article "Great big green monster mansions"
    

  • Presentation Center web page "Welcoming Center and Dining Facility"
    

  • Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE) "Renewable Energy Mitigation Program (REMP)" (REMP.PDF) brochure
    

  • Portola Valley Design Guidelines "Planting Concepts" chapter excerpt pages 17-29 (online viewer)
    

  • Local Government Documents: 
    

    • Marin County Ordinance No. 3356 "...adopting energy efficiency standards for single family dwellings greater than 3,500 square feet of conditioned floor area" (Ordinance_3356.pdf); also, web site for County of Marin "Building Energy Efficient Structures Today (BEST)"
      

    • Belmont City Code Water Conservation Sec. 25.5-21.-28. (WaterConservation.PDF (pgs.3-5))
      

    • Redwood City "Water Conservation Policy & Guidelines"
      

When the Seminar ended, it was pretty clear a very valuable set of resources had been distilled out of the terrain, by the Professional skill and expertise of the Presenters, and offered as a robust overview and summary of contacts and sources for integrating and implementing the spectrum of Sustainable Building technologies. The Seminar being delivered over 6 hours in a representative sustainable building, the Hidden Villa Hostel, while the temperature outside soared to the high 90°'s, the comfortable and airy environment within this building, achieved without the use of any air-conditioners, was proof and testament to the efficacy of Sustainable Building methodologies.