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24 Hours of Reality

  • 1.  24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-16-2011 08:34 AM
    This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Technology in Architectural Practice and Committee on the Environment .
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    Here we go!! the Lemmings are calling...follow Al Gore!!!!!!!!
    Built my house in 1979, was to take solar panels, perfect orientation, proper slope roof, just waiting for solar to be affordable, last year PV panels were $43,000 my cost $14,000, would last 15 years before needing replacememt, my electric bill is less than $100 a month, work it out, not economically feasible YET.
    As far as Mr. Gore, IT"S THE SUN, Check with CERN about high cloud formation and global cooling.
    What works is proper insulating, orientation, sealing, I heat 5200 sq.ft. in my house, worst bill last winter $120, and I finally added A/C last year, cost me $10 per month to run.
    I am for the environment, not fake carbon credits to make others rich and do nothing for the environment, but you can pollute and buy credits............
    Sorry but it's the SUN, stupid.
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    Richard Forsythe AIA
    4-Most Group
    Butler PA
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  • 2.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-19-2011 10:12 AM

    Richard

    Just don't get your point!  Are you trying to tell us it's important to insulate our homes or trying to make a political point.

    Improved insulation is always better. Add an air barrier and cut infiltration even better. The Canadians have been doing this for a long time. 

    Now if we want to discuss politics perhaps the we should discuss why Ronald Ray-gun removed the solar panels from the White House. It was certainly was a symbolic gesture which basically set the tone that it better to consume energy than to save it. Regan was not a supporter of renewable energy. He supported the US Oil and Energy interests.

    Maybe you and I would all have access to cheaper solar panels because the country would have a solar industry instead of China having one.

    On a more ironic note isn't it interesting that the conservatives in the US are the least interested in conserving anything be it fuel or your tax dollars.  The only thing they want to conserve is their own tax bill.

    But I that's just an Inconvenient truth.

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    David DeFilippo AIA
    Tsoi/Kobus Associates
    Milton MA
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  • 3.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-20-2011 10:07 AM
    My sense is that the frustration expressed by Richard has more to do with the general lack of a true "scientific" understanding of the issues, which, admittedly, is widespread (including this writer, although I know enough to have a sense of what I don't know); and which, admittedly, allows a smooth-talking politician with money to burn like Al Gore fill the void with slickly-produced, convincing, political-educational material. 
    But the void gets filled from the other side as well ("Drill, Baby, Drill!") It would be nice for us over-educated types to be able to call the shots and dictate behavior, and make policy (didn't Plato say something about that, back in the day?) but, alas, that is not our fate. However, we can influence it. And with some degree of organization and effort we do. Let's let Al be Al, and just be glad we don't have to try and figure out how to work with Michele. :)

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    James Carr AIA
    James Carr, AIA architecture & design
    Brookline MA
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  • 4.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-21-2011 09:27 AM
    I'm not accusing anyone here, but I'm just saying...There will always be extremist right wingers that will go to any extent to demonize Al Gore. These are the people who hate the EPA, but will be the squeakiest wheel if their well water was contaminated by drilling or fracking. Look Ma the water is on fire! These people love to plant seeds of hate rather the sow the seeds of productivity or common sense. Like him or not, he has used his celebrity/ political clout to promote sustainability and I don't see many others bringing that much attention to the cause. No matter who you are, either you want to save a buck or you want to save a tree. Everyone has a stake in sustainability. You're an American, it's your right to be a skeptic and be vocal about your lack of common sense and one day you may be able air your dirty laundry on TV in the most Springer like way. Common sense is no longer an American ideal. This is a country that takes great pride in greed, ignorance, blind belief, historic recreation, self destruction, and unadulterated gluttony. Intelligence, innovation, creativity, progressiveness, any sort of change, are all bad words now. The media is fascinated with rural people full of ignorance and hate. These train wrecks have become the face of America. What an embarrassment we've become.

    Why do we always assume sustainability initiatives are ONLY about green gadgets? Insulation, air sealing, windows are always a big part of them. Yes, solar panels are still mostly unaffordable for many in the country, especially if you think they're a silver bullet and plan to do nothing else. This is why solar panels and other expensive gadgets are always a part of the initiatives. The point is to increase demand with incentives to boost manufacturing and the costs will come down. Solar companies have short lives and that much death keeps panels expensive. Unfortunately, dirty energy providers are doing everything they can to eliminate demand, competition, and ensure high costs.

    I know most will glaze over and are tired of hearing it, but green building is only hindered because of our flawed Appraisal system. I get a lot of houses built because of my understanding of value. When you or your client goes to the bank to get a loan on your new cool green home, they will have your project appraised to determine the loan amount. Unless the average home builder in your area is building as green as you want to, then your value will come in well below what it costs to install all of this stuff. Aside from windows and doors, the envelope is the cheapest and most effective component to invest your green dollars. Gadgets should be the icing on the cake, not the primary strategy. 

    If the Lot and the Structure were considered separate line items, then one could pay the fluid market value for the Lot, isolating the mystery of the value of the Location. Then you could build anything you want. The Structure itself would no longer have to be compared to unlike "comparable" Structures that just happen to have sold recently, just happen to be in the same 1 mile radius, and just happens to have the same area and config of beds and baths. This often has us comparing apples and oranges. If everyone built the same exact house (and I know they try), then the system of averaging makes sense, but how can everyone be in the middle? If your houses consistently sell for significantly more, then your Appraisals will always be pulled down to the middle. This means your appraised value for the next job is always lower than your sales history. I have yet to have one of my spec houses appraise (initial business loan to start project) anywhere close to the final sale. If you spend the least amount of money and consistently sell low, then schmucks like me will bring your value up to the middle for doing absolutely nothing. This is when you begin to understand how the system is geared for a race to the bottom and why 99% of all houses are what they are. When everyone around you is a bottom feeder, then you will be punished for being successful. This is why green building is so hard. It costs more per sf and our system can't recognize this on the individual basis. Even with more green checklist items to add to the appraisal, you're still a product of an average of everyone else. We need a system that recognizes the individual companies for their own sales, so their value is based on the most predictable future sale, their own! This is how every commodity is valued and this is how companies can brand their products and create inherent value based on reputation like Armani or Wonder Bread. This is why decent Architecture is so difficult to get built. Our Profession would explode if buildings were valued like any other man-made product with a profit motive geared to reward success rather than punish it.

    God made the land and it should be reflective of the recent sales of the community of properties. The Tax Assessor already establishes lot values per area in many places. The house is a site assembled product made by a company with a business model. It's the House that people buy and the House makes the difference in value between one Lot and another in the same Location. We have Modular Houses, trailer parks, RVs, shipping container homes. Architecture can be portable, so why can't we value the building as a separate commodity from the land it happens to sit on? A BMW is taxable property and I can park it in the ghetto or in Beverly Hills and it's still worth the same amount. When you average the sales of a Community of Competitors, then it is impossible for the market to determine which company is doing a better job. How do you know who is building BMWs and who is building Hondas when the appraiser averages them all? Those building the cheapest house, should be appraised at the value they actually create by their own sales, not by boosting their value with the handiwork of others. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your house eventually sells for. In order get started, you have to get a loan first and before you get that loan, you have to get an appraisal. This is that step most of us forget about in the middle of design and why some of our most fantastic houses never get built. Imagine if all that changed?


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    Eric Rawlings AIA
    Owner
    Rawlings Design, Inc.
    Decatur GA
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  • 5.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-22-2011 10:21 AM

    The Muldavin Company, Inc. (www.GreenBuildingFC.com)



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    Paul Kane AIA
    Freeport ME
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  • 6.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-23-2011 01:13 PM
    Drop the politics! Regardless of whether one believes that climate change is affected by human behavior or not we as thinking, able human beings and as design professionals have the moral and legal responsibility to act in the best interest of human beings. (The law sets minimum standards with codes, etc. but does not speak to excellence). I extend that thinking to include that doing my best to support LIFE is acting in the best interest of human beings. I know that by taking actions that reduce pollution (including CO2 and other green house gasses) I and the projects I am involved with do more to enhance life. Regardless of cause - global warming has a very high probability to affect life so negatively in scale and intensity in ways we have never known as human beings. I try to keep this in mind and act accordingly. I do not do this perfectly but continuously practice to do better. That is why Daniel Hellmuth and I started our business together almost 9 years ago. Since then we have been involved in over 30 LEED projects, were the architect for the Living Learning Center, tied for first building in the world to achieve Living Building Challenge certification and help our clients achieve even a higher level of performance than they might think possible. And by the way I most definitely believe that human actions are the major cause of climate change and a host of pollutions and environmental damage that have done much to detract from life and detract from our financial well being. Cheers, Ralph Bicknese AIA Hellmuth & Bicknese Architects, LLC Maplewood MO -------------------------------------------
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  • 7.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-26-2011 07:29 AM
    Beautifully said Ralph. We do have an obligation to protect life. Keep up the good work.

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    Alan Scott FAIA
    Principal
    Green Building Services, Inc.
    Portland OR
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  • 8.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-27-2011 10:39 AM
    I stole this cartoon from the web, although I freely credit its creator, Joel Pett.
    I think this says it all.....



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    Elizabeth del Monte FAIA
    Principal
    The Beck Group
    Dallas TX
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  • 9.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-21-2011 09:34 AM
    Richard, I looked up "global cooling" under CERN, but did not see anything on the subject.

    The climate-change deniers come in three basic varieties: those paid by fossil fuel companies to deny that global warming is a serious human-caused problem; those scientists, a very small minority, who have looked at the data and concluded for different reasons that the rapid and extensive increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution is not a major threat to the planet's livability; and, finally, those conservatives who simply refuse to accept the reality of climate change because they hate the solution - more government regulation and intervention.

    The net effect of all their writings, though, has been to muddy the question of whether there is any certainty that humans are causing dangerous climate change and to leave the impression that any assertion that human actions are changing the climate is merely a political opinion, not a scientific fact.  Because Al Gore, a liberal politician, had become the most prominent voice for the threat of climate change, it was easy for the climate-change deniers and skeptics to insinuate that this was not a debate between science and politics, but between politics and politics.

    Even when the earth went from glacial to interglacial periods, we know that the total change in CO2 - from high to low - was no more than 120 parts per million(ppm).  It would go from 180ppm to 300ppm and back again to 180ppm - and a 6-degree-Celsius temperature change would go along with it.  For the last 10,000 years it has been stable at around 280ppm and our climate has been pretty stable. That all started to change with the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last fifty years where it has shot up from 280ppm to 384ppm where it has not been for some twenty million years.  At the speed we are going, we are looking conservatively at another 100ppm in the next fifty years.  This extra CO2 is not coming from the oceans as some skeptics claim.  It is coming from humans burning fossil fuels and from deforestation.  We know this because carbon can be dated, and the carbon in the carbon dioxide that is produced from burning fossil fuels is of a different age than the CO2 that is contained in the oceans.

    It is a scientific fact that CO2 in the atmosphere will make the earth warmer.  Now with China and India wanting to be more like us (addicted to oil and consuming roughly 25% of global output) we can only expect even more CO2 to be added to the atmosphere at a rapid rate.  If we act now we can make the changes needed to keep the earth as a livable place, and stimulate our economy -  not add to Saudi Arabia's economy, which is being used to fight against us around the world.  Remember where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from? Even if I am wrong, we will still have an earth that is better off than it is today.  


    What we need is a more ethic of conservation, a sense of responsibility, a sense of stewardship, for the natural world.  A ethic that says we have a responsibility to preserve the earth's resources and natural wonders in and of themselves, because they constitute the very web of life on which all living creatures on this planet depend.  There is a major difference between doing that which you have a right to do and doing what is right to do.  You cannot fool Mother Nature.  She is not political.  She is only chemistry, biology, and physics.

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    Edward Cazayoux, FAIA
    Principal/architect
    EnvironMental Design
    Breaux Bridge, LA
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  • 10.  Re: Richard Forsythe's post

    Posted 09-19-2011 07:13 PM
    I don't often rise to the bait, and at the risk of starting a flame war.... 

    It seems to me question this is about "and" rather than "or"....

    Kudos for designing and building what sounds like a superinsulated home with a real and realistic recognition of
    site and sun. These are good things, as was planning for hoped for photovoltaics. Would that more folks had done that while building 30 years ago. We'd perhaps be in better shape now.  

    (I must confess I am far less excited about a 5200 square foot house but I don't know your needs and that is your call and your responsibility.)

    At the same time, and all your achievements recognized, they don't justify ad hominem attacks or change the reality of climate change science. Calling Al Gore, and those who may agree with him in whole or part, names doesn't seem useful in addressing our situation. And cherry picking data makes for bad science, bad (though sometimes winning) politics, and bad (though sometimes rewarded and awarded) architecture.

    I truly wish we had cheaper photovoltaics, though good, or even great, efficiency design (buildings, engineering systems, and appliances) may be as valuable, or more valuable in many cases. It is at the very least complementary.

    (A few perhaps rhetorical questions....Was there a premium to build your house over standard construction in 1979? If so, how much? Of course that additional cost needs to be figured into any payback analysis. It sounds as if the house all electric. True? Do you use any auxilary systems for heat (wood, pellets, etc.)? Do you use solar hot water? If not , what is your heat source? 

    Never trust an architect on numbers, but worst case seems to be 12 months x $130 or $1560/yr.  $1560/5200 sf = $0.30/sf/yr.) If you are truly heating and cooling a house, regardless of size and including domestic hot water and lighting for 30 cents a square foot a year, bravo.

    But payback is a seperate question.  It is function of cost construction cost but also utility cost. We have provided structural, long term economic subsidies to oil and coal and natural gas for years. If we were to remove them, or have never had them, your electricity, which is presumably from the grid, would be considerably more expensive. This off course would shorten your payback proportionally. And that sets aside the socialized downstream costs of the operation of the various power sources which turn into costs on the body politic but might also be argued belong to the utility and its customers. Or we could subsidize photovoltaics, etc as new technologies (as we did oil andcoal and gas) and allow mature profitable technologies support themselves. And of course paybacks shorten as utility costs rise. 
     
    I confess that none of these arguments are new. But I find the polemic frustrating.

    So hurrah for doing good and using less. Hurrah for caring about the issue. Hurrah for, though it may pain you and be unintentional, addressing the very issues raised by Mr. Gore.  But solving part of a problem, however elegant and effective the solution doesn't make other parts go away.
     
    We answer the questions we ask.

    Regards

    Marc

    Marc Shaw AIA
    Arlington VA
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  • 11.  Re: Richard Forsythe's post

    Posted 09-20-2011 05:44 PM

    Thanks Marc for a sensible and civil response, and a lot to think about. Richard being in PA may be in a 'sweet spot' in terms of utility bills -- close to cheap electric power with a seasonal temperature range that is not too extreme. Where I am in Arizona (where we do have plenty of subsidized artificially cheap electric power) solar is starting to be competitive on $ alone. Would Richard change his tune if he started seeing a check instead of a bill from his power provider? Solar energy advanced in Germany when utilities were required to buy back excess power from consumers at the going market rate.

    But is that to be our only measure? This is not only about COST but VALUES.

    I value clean air and water, American jobs and workplaces free of toxic materials -- so I don't want to buy Chinese solar panels (i.e. cheaper PV) even if their lower cost might make the lifecycle energy cost/savings more attractive. Maybe Richard would be fine with that if he believes in 'the market' so cheapest is best and competition should be encouraged -- maybe he doesn't care how much the Chinese goverment is subsidizing that market (dramatically more than the US is).

    Now if I were Richard (or maybe more correctly, if Richard was me), as soon as the cost of solar was approaching electricity (seems to be about where it is right now) I would have those panels up on the roof. Why? Because that aligns with what I value -- such as cleaner air, less cost (and guilt) if I do want to increase my energy use (to add a swimming pool, for instance) and freedom from the volatility of the energy market or the tyranny of the utilities (anyone remember Enron?). I used to live in Minnesota, where winter brought extreme temperatures and my 90 yr old boiler used natural gas. Gas was much lower cost than electricity until suddenly it wasn't. My bills ranged from $50 in the summer to over $400 in January, and one year a crisis in the Northeast caused my January bill to triple -- I was not happy being at the mercy of the gas company.

    I don't care what anyone 'believes' about climate change, because our beliefs won't change the reality. And I acknowledge that even understanding what the reality is might be challenging -- science is imperfect at predicting the future and even with the benefit of hindsight we might never know all the complexities of human impact on this planet (even though there is no doubt that we are having an impact). But I do think that political loyalties aside, architects (of all people) should be able to see beyond the lowest cost to the greater value. We are professionals with a responsibility to act in the public interest and as I see it we have to be advocates for environmental responsibility. Where we need more research to define what that is, we should push the scientists accordingly. But while Richard is obviously free to do what he wishes with his own house, it's disappointing to hear an architect regurgitating the arguements which are used by too many developers, contractors, clients, and the general public to justifiy chosing the status quo even when innovation and good design is offering us a better way.

    Marc, to -- "We answer the questions we ask" -- I would add "You get what you pay for".

    respectfully,

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    Carolyn Krall AIA
    Senior Associate
    Ayers/Saint/Gross Architects & Planners
    Gilbert AZ
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    Carolyn Krall AIA
    Senior Associate
    Ayers/Saint/Gross Architects & Planners
    Gilbert AZ
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  • 12.  RE:24 Hours of Reality

    Posted 09-21-2011 09:21 PM
    Yes, Richard is correct on some planet, somewhere.....but not on this Mama Earth, this reality.

    I question whether I can live with myself to allow the known facts related to Climate Change, to continue to exist without countering its effects, while our grandchildren inherit the dire madness given them ?

    * 100,000,000 then, with tobacco, * 1,000,000,000 +, now, with Climate Change, be it a hurricane, a dust storm, a raging fire, a monstrous tornado, a winter blizzard, an unending heat wave, an unexpected flood, or other climate related events..... don't fall for the denial....it could be deadly
    (* numbers are noting people of the human species)
    For those denying the facts that human acts cause Climate Change, ask how does one demonstrate the following is untrue:

    1. Human acts cause Climate Change; fact.

    2. Countering Climate Change requires rewriting legislation to the existing laws, fact.

    3.....otherwise these events, ie. Texas summer, are to be common place, (labeled 'the new normal') about the world, soon, fact.

    Many resources available for education for those who need it on the matter.

    Michael Scarmack AIA
    Earth_Architect
    Scarmack Architecture ':-)
    Lancaster OH USA



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