Building Green Homes

As I posted about earlier this week we can save energy and money by switching to district heating, but there are other things that we can be doing to make our buildings more efficient. These things will save energy and may even save money on the construction cost of a building. The first step is to plan a building with knowledge of the outside environment. As an example, you wouldn't want to place big glass windows facing the afternoon sun. Buildings should also include passive sources for heating, cooling, and ventilation like operable windows, window shapes, and shutters. Many office building currently do not do this. Interesting enough, heating and moving air directly around a building is very inefficient. A better way to heat and cool buildings is through radiant heating sources like pumping chilled or heated water around a building. This ties in perfectly with district heating that uses water.

With these simple changes to the way we build, we could get very close to 0 emissions buildings. Pretty exciting stuff. For more information check out Rumsey Engineers website.

The Woodwards Cross

I work in Chinatown, so I’ve been watching the progress of the Woodward’s Development. The City of Vancouver has a good site on the project. Anyway, I wanted to point out a more spiritual side of the project. To my surprise, I found out the architect seems to have embedded a Christian cross in the design. It’s very obvious if you compare it to the rest of the building’s architecture on Hastings Street.

What looks different?

Yes, it's a Christian cross.

It’s good to know that religious symbols are still very much a part of urban design. In fact, church’s used to be the finest example of architecture in many older cities.

Big Time TOD in New Westminster

If you take the SkyTrain, you will have noticed over the past year or so that there is a massive development being integrated with the New Westminster SkyTrain station. The residential component is called "Azure at Plaza88" and consists of three high-rise residential towers. But beyond the tower, according to the New Westminster News Leader, there will be 200,000 square feet of commercial development. That's about the size of a Wal-Mart Supercentre.

Retailers that have recently secured long term leases include Safeway, Shoppers Drug Mart, the Royal Bank of Canada and CIBC.

In the press release issued Wednesday, the newest tenant, Landmark Cinemas of Canada, says it will build a state-of-the-art, 35,000 square foot, 10-screen multiplex cinema in Plaza 88.

The $350 million transit-linked retail-residential centre was developed by Plaza 88 Developments. Located at Eighth and Columbia streets, across from the New Westminster Quay, the master plan includes three residential towers with 600 condominium units. The developers are building out the 200,000 square feet of retail space, which is slated to open in 2011.

“This development is the way of the future with nothing like this in North America, where elevated rapid transit is fully integrated with major shopping and a large residential complex,” said Ken Hardie, spokesperson for TransLink.

If you are living in this development, you might not even need to step outside. Very exciting and scary.

District Heating and Cooling Part 2

The largest source of CO2 emissions for the average BC household is from transportation. The second largest is from heating and cooling. Imagine not having to use any “new” energy to heat and cool our homes. Imagine what sort of large scale positive impact we could have on our environment.

LiveSmart BC

This is where district heating and cooling comes in. One of the great things about district heating is that it uses “waste energy” to provide useful energy. Industry, sewerage, power generation, and waste-to-end plants all create heat as a by-product. Right now, we send all this heat into the air; wasting it. Take, for example, your normal fossil-fuel power plant. Only about 40% of the input energy is turned into electricity. By connecting the plant to a district heating system, 50% of the energy output can be redirected to heating. The plant jumps from 40% efficiency to 90%! District heating also saves money and electricity. According to BC Hydro, half of a home’s energy bill is spent on heating and cooling. Imagine the saving you would see on your Hydro bill with district heating. BC Hydro wouldn’t be running out of electricity if we switch to district heating.

It is great to see that Township of Langley Council, spearheaded by Councillor Jordan Bateman, is seriously looking at creating heating districts. Check out the following slides.

District Energy in the Township of Langley

View more presentations from jgabateman.

The Township would have access to geoexchange (which uses the relatively stable ground temperature to regulate heating and cooling), biofuels, sewage, and even heat from ice making at the Langley Events Centre as sources. Let’s take this one step further. Metro Vancouver is looking at Waste-to-Energy as a solution to our garbage issue. Why not make these combined electrical and district heating plants? District heating should be a major part in reducing our CO2 footprint in Metro Vancouver.

District Heating and Cooling Part 1