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More and more new commercial buildings are going geothermal as a viable means to reduce energy costs. The 40,000 square foot Central Iowa Shelter & Services building, currently under construction south of downtown Des Moines, features a geothermal system. The mechanical engineer for the project, Alan Langley of Alvine Engineering, says “the trend in Iowa is more buildings are using geothermal systems, in fact about 80% of the schools we design use geothermal systems. Offices and healthcare are good candidates also.” 

Alan also adds “the trend started in Iowa when the utility companies started to provide hefty rebates for energy conserving systems like geothermal”. Basically, the utilities pay companies to lower their energy usage rather than bring on a new power plant costing millions of dollars.

A commercial system costs $16-$20 per square foot so the cost for a geothermal system for a 10,000 square foot building would be $160,000 to $200,000. The payback is typically 5 to 7 years and from day one heating and cooling costs should be reduced by 35%-45%.

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A geothermal system takes advantage of the earth’s constant temperature. The diagram shows the earth’s temperature near the surface in Iowa to be about 52 degrees. Therefore, the temperature of water when circulated through a closed system of vertical or horizontal loops nears a constant 52 degrees. The loop is tapped into by mechanical equipment which either transfers heat to the loop during the summer or takes heat from the loop during the winter.

An amazing result of the loop is the potential transfer of energy within a building during the winter. The interior zones of a large office building many times require year round cooling while the perimeter usually requires heating. Mechanical equipment removes heat from the interior zone and transfers the heat to the loop. Mechanical equipment at the exterior zone reverses the process and removes the heat from the loop and provides heat where it is needed. Now that is being green!!!

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I have always enjoyed a daylight filled room and the warmth of the sun in the winter.  One of the first things people ask for when I am designing their dream home is lots of windows.  I translate that to mean “give me south facing windows so I can be warmed by the sun as I have my coffee and watch the snow fall.”

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Yet it amazes me, when I see the McMansions in the suburbs of America, how few pay any attention to the direction of the sun.   The shadow cast on this behemoth suggests the large blank wall could face south.  What a shame!  The owners are robbed of one of the easiest sustainable design principles; passive solar energy by just letting the sun shine in and heat the space during the winter.   This is an example of using a stock plan with no attention to the orientation of the house. 

The best orientation for a house is with windows to the south since it is easiest to shade glass during the summer and let it shine in during the winter.  The next best is east so you get light in the morning and not the beastly sun in the summer afternoons.  Since the back of the house typically has the most windows, that means 75% of homes do not have the best orientation and 50% are a disaster (since homes have an equal chance of facing any one of the four directions).

Finally, I was looking to move to the country and was amazed time after time how a new home was built on 10 acres and still faced the street.  Certainly with that much land one could have oriented the house to take advantage of the sun.  I saw many huge windowless walls facing south…must have been the walk-in closet.

Next home, think about the benefits of the sun on your pocket book and state of mind!

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In the 60′s and 70′s, many big corporations like GE, Principal, and US West installed miles of demountable walls rather than building walls out of metal studs and gypsum board. I worked with a system used at the US West building in Des Moines. It matched the typical demountable wall system….beige with a vertical joint every 4 feet and doors where you needed them. To jazz it up you could provide a side light next to the door. Yippee!!!

Problem was they were just plain ugly. The walls were not used much after the 80’s because workers’ expectations of the work environment increased.

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Along comes the green movement and demountable walls are being considered again. The difference this time is they look cool and can adapt to almost any style. The walls no longer have the look of 4 foot wide monolithic panels. Systems come in a wide array of wood, metal, glass, and painted finishes. You can even get sliding doors to your office. Surfaces can also be equipped with white boards so you can write on the walls.

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The demountable wall is more expensive than building walls from scratch but you can take them apart and reconfigure. While a typical painted 8 foot office partition costs $60 per foot and a demountable wall costs close to $75 per foot, it’s still worth it even if you just move them once. A new layout can also be done quicker with the demountable walls and makes less of a mess. That’s very sustainable.

Companies like Dirtt and Teknion are leading the way with innovative design. Ken Kahrs of Koch Brothers in Des Moines sells Teknion and says the demand for demountable walls continues to rise. Ken also says 50% of the cost can be written off and the remainder depreciated over 7 years rather than 30 years for a stud wall.

So, when it comes to sustainable design and construction consider demountable walls.

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Panel systems to provide some privacy and acoustics for the office worker came about in the late sixties by companies like Westinghouse and Hermann Miller.  You’ve seen the typical six foot tall monolithic panel in many movies as an endless sea of gray where one could easily get lost.  Sometimes one color was used throughout…like turquoise!!

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For years, I encouraged using lower panels so you could see others and not be penned in, but everyone seemed to want no interaction with others.  Then along comes sustainable design and LEED where your design gets points for providing daylight and views for most office workers.  With a wave of the sustainable wand, shorter panels are now being used.

Two credits within the Indoor Environmental Quality of LEED deal with daylight and views to the outside.   Daylight requirements have several approaches, but basically the credit is achieved when all occupied spaces have a level of at least 25 foot candles in 75% of the space.  If daylight provides 25 foot candles to 90% of the space, 2 credits are achieved.  Obviously tall furniture panels block daylight from penetrating the space and providing the required foot candles.

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Views requirements are the main driver of shorter furniture panels.  One credit is achieved when 90% of all occupants in a space have a direct line of sight to the outdoors between 30 and 90 inches above the floor.  Furniture panels can use glass to meet this requirement if a taller panel is needed.

What does this mean for office workers?  They are more connected to the outdoors and natural cycles.  In the old days of tall cubes everywhere, you could actually lose touch with the time of day or whether it was raining so you could run outside and close your car windows.

Access to natural daylight maintains our circadian rhythms.  I have never heard my clients say they have too many windows.  On the contrary, I have ripped holes in many walls to provide light into what was a cave.

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The early 1980’s is when I met my first carpet tile.  Now nearly every job I do is carpet tile.   People replace carpet tile not because it wears out but because it “uglies” out!  The stuff won’t die.  I even know of a university dining hall where they cleaned the carpet tile by running it through the commercial dishwasher.  YIKES!!

The manufacture of carpet is not very sustainable since it is made of nylon which is made from petroleum.  In addition, the backing of carpet tile is also petroleum based.  It took a visionary and founder of Interface carpet, Ray Anderson, to question the long term sustainability of carpet tile.  After reading The Ecology of Commerce, Ray transformed his business from a linear model where carpet is made, used, and goes to the landfill, to a circular model.  The carpet goes from manufacture, used, and back to manufacture without any petroleum needed.

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This sustainable paradigm required innovation.  There were no machines to take old carpet tile and separate the yarn from the backing so Interface built machines.  Nylon manufacturers partnered and figured out how to take harvested yarn and turn it into liquid nylon and spin new yarn.  As a result of this kind of thinking, last year over 350 million pounds of post-consumer carpet was diverted from the landfills and over 80% was recycled.  

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Now recycling centers are sprouting up to get the recycled product back to manufacturers.  Many times the cost of recycling is cheaper than landfill fees.  In fact, companies like Interface are working with municipalities to increase landfill fees for carpet to ensure the circular model does not run out of product.

What’s in the future?  Already Interface uses no virgin raw materials in the manufacture of the carpet tile backing.  Their 2020 goal is to use no virgin raw materials in any part of the entire carpet tile, just recycled or bio based material.

Sustainable design is really about changing our paradigms and asking pretty simple questions.  Ray Anderson asked if there was another way for his business to make a product and not contribute to depleting a virgin material like petroleum.  He found a way and Interface is now the leading carpet company in the world.

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I remember long ago when I was refinishing woodwork and would get dizzy. I did not know I was feeling the effect of a high amount of VOC’s in the air. The varnish was comprised of Volatile Organic Compounds (usually carbon) and VOC’s were released into the air as varnish dried.

Today an important part of the green movement and LEED certification uses low VOC paints. Federal regulations cap the VOC content in paint at 250 grams per liter for flat finishes and 380 grams per liter for all other finishes.  LEED requires flat finish paints at 50g/l and others at 150g/l. Paint meeting these requirements is often referred to as “Green Seal Certified” paint.  You can also beat LEED requirements with zero VOC paint (really not zero but anything under 5 g/l).  Then there are “true zero VOC” paints to differentiate from zero VOC paints.  Confused yet?

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The catch is, the base white color can be “green seal certified”, zero VOC, or true zero VOC but as soon as you add a colorant the VOC’s could go through the roof.  Be careful when you pay extra for zero VOC that you are getting what you paid for.  Zero VOC paints cost more because others use a less expensive petroleum base.

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I called my friend Gordon Sterk, owner of Johnston Ace Hardware, who sells Benjamin Moore paints to get the scoop and found Natura by Benjamin Moore is a true zero VOC including the colorant.  The paint costs $69 per gallon and is available in an infinite number of colors.  Benjamin Moore also has several “Green Seal Certified” paints that cost between $39 and $59 per gallon.  Home Depot has a similar paint called FreshAire Choice but only comes in 65 colors and costs about $40 per gallon.

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A company has come up with a shelving system which hangs planters on the wall to bring live plants into your office or home. The breathe wall exchanges air with the surroundings and filters the air. The plants more or less inhale bad air and exhale good air.

A nice idea since when I go into a home or office without one green Indoor plant I get this sterile creepy feeling. And while plastic plants sometimes fool you, I am talking about live plants which grow and you have to water. 

Studies show sixwise.com indoor plants can improve indoor air quality by removing 87% of air toxins in 24 hours. Recommendations are to provide 15-18 good sized (that’s 6-8 inch pots) in the average 1,800 square foot house to help with air quality.  My keen mathematical mind comes up with a plant per 100 square feet so each room should have one or two plants. That’s a lot of plants!!

One researcher recommended to a company to have every employee within 45 feet of a plant. A much lesser density than one per 100 square foot but apparently still beneficial to the morale of workers. Another facet of plants is it just makes people happy and feeling good.

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Palms and ferns are one of the best plants because they are used to relative low light levels at the bottom of the rain forest so they can grow in most places.  The plants also help stabilize the humidity in spaces which is good to fight colds and keep your nasal membranes feeling good in the winter.

A white roof performs better in two areas over the typical dark colored roof.  It reduces the surface temperature and cools the surroundings.

A white surface reflects sunlight before it can be absorbed and transformed into heat energy.  In the process the surface temperature is reduced by as much as 30 degrees.  The lower surface temperature reduces air conditioning and provides anywhere from 5-40% in electrical savings.  Seems the big factor is how much insulation is on the roof.  The thicker the insulation the less impact surface temperature makes on the interior temperatures of the building.  So if you have hardly any insulation on your roof you could paint it white and save some cash.  If you have 5-6 inches of insulation you probably won’t notice a difference.

The other attribute of a white roof is it reduces the amount of heat re-radiated back to the surroundings.  The phenomenon known as the heat island effect is best seen in cities like Phoenix where is does not cool down during the evening like the surrounding countryside.  So much heat energy has been absorbed by all the dark surfaces that it continues to heat the air even after the sun goes down.  Some areas of the country can experience 10 degrees difference but probably not Iowa.

I don’t think the time will come when the Iowa roofscape looks like those cities from Indiana Jones movies with the minarets and desert in the background.  The cities with all white roofs are most likely never white from snow.  But I wonder how long it will be before white roofs are a permanent part of Iowa’s landscape.

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Every once and a while a new product comes along and my immediate response is “WAY COOL!”   While many manufacturers of “green” products have done little other than repackage their old product, Solatube International broke into the North America market in 1991 with a truly remarkable product to bring natural daylight into the inner parts of buildings. 

I have used skylights in the past to bring natural daylight into buildings.  Skylights flood interior spaces with daylight and therefore reduce the need for using light fixtures.  That’s a good green thing!!  The tendency is to use skylights to light lobbies and atriums but not work spaces because of non-consistent light levels and glare. 

I was asked once to help a bank with a skylight issue in the boardroom.  The skylight was over the end of the boardroom table and the sunlight was so intense no one would sit under the skylight.  Of course as the sun moved across the sky, the direct sunlight would move down the line from one chair to another causing people to constantly move to another chair.

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Tubular Daylighting Devices funnel daylight through a tube and get the light to where it is needed.  The amazing thing is now natural sunlight can be directed to work areas not on the top floor of a building but deep within the bowels of the building.  The inside of the tubes are specular so daylight can be reflected up to 50 feet with several 90 degree bends.  That’s amazing!

The Solatube system is also manufactured to provide a more consistent light level throughout the day.  During the morning when the sun is low in the sky the refractors gather all the light available and send it down the tube.  When the sun is high in the sky some of the light is reflected so not all the daylight available is sent down the tube and the interior senses a more uniform illumination consistency than a typical skylight.  One device can remove the need for lights in a conference room.

Look for them at the upcoming Central Iowa Shelter & Services.  Three devices will be used to bring natural daylight into interior corridors and reduce utility costs forever.

Wellmark beats the water consumption of the typical office building by using more efficient toilets and urinals than you normally see.  The toilets, for example, have a dual flushing buttons with two choices; number one and number two for you know what.  Even with all that, it still takes nearly 8,000 gallons per day for the 2,400 full time equivalent employees to flush.

The other means to reduce water consumption is the unique water reclamation system.  The system has two basic components; one for flushing and one for lawn irrigation.  Water comes from roof drains, condensate from air conditioning equipment, and water beneath the surface collected in foundation drainage tiles.  The water is piped to pre-filters on the way to a 52,000 gallon flushing cistern.  Overflow from the pre-filters and flushing cistern is routed to the 60,000 gallon irrigation cistern.

Water in the flushing cistern then travels into the building where it is pumped through several stages of treatment before discharging to a 3,000 gallon day tank.  Treatment steps include additional filtering to remove sediment and clarify water, UV lights to kill bacteria and an ozone system to kill additional bacteria and remove odors from the water.  The day tank holds all the water that will be sent to the toilets and urinals.  Additional domestic water can supplement the reclaim water should there be a need.  

Water in the irrigation cistern goes through a similar treatment process on its way to the irrigation day tank with the exception of the ozone treatment.

Dave Southwell, executive vice president of Wellmark, says the system is working as intended and Wellmark is committed to saving natural resources.                     

When you look at the payback for water reclamation systems it doesn’t make sense unless you make a commitment to be good stewards of the environment like Wellmark. The reason the payback takes a really long time is the cost of water in the Midwest is so low compared to other parts of the country.  Other parts of the country pay nearly six times more for water than in Iowa and rationing is sometimes necessary.

Just imagine if everyone cared as deeply as Wellmark! The Des Moines Waterworks would treat less water and there would be much less flooding because buildings would hold on to their water for use later rather than send it all down the storm sewer.