Category Archives: Living Building Challenge

Summary

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I started the living building challenge because it appeared to model what I was trying to do in my life.  Milieu Conception is my way of documenting and communicating my progress as I develop a living model of sustainability through living, design, research, building and education.  The model will be a relatively cohesive amalgamation of modern living layered onto basic proven sustainable technology.

The base for this project will be my primary residence, a quarter acre of land situated in Aloha Oregon with an existing 1970s construction 1100 square foot ranch home with attached two car garage.  The home and property has had some minor alterations and additions to it since I moved in as part of my research into sustainability.  I have dismantled some of the alterations and additions.  Those that remain include a 60′ x 8′ greenhouse/sunroom attached to the home on the south side, a 65 bed garden, grey water aquifer recharge system, two pear trees, two apple trees, walnut tree, and plum tree.

The project will consist of three distinct phases, each with a progressive goal towards sustainability and achieving living building pedals.

Phase 1 will be a “stop gap” phase used to prep the home for subsequent phases through energy reduction measures, modeling of phase 3 systems, reduced consumption, increase occupant capacity, develop rain water system, extend grey water system, install solar PV system, install solar hot water heating system, remove natural gas, remodel garage for occupancy, construct fence, expand garden/develop food system, develop waste handling system, solar light tubes in all livable spaces, develop bioswell/pond, correct drainage, remove/shorten driveway, and functionally divide home into two functionally separate living areas.

Phase 2 will be a monitoring and tweaking phase where I collect real data to determine the final design for phase 3.

Phase 3 in concept will be a full realization of all the theory, research and practical sustainable concepts applicable to the site.  The roof will be raised on the north side to create a full south facing roof with increased solar PV system – increase in PV will be determined on status of feed in tariff.  In addition, the roof pitch will be adjusted to be optimal for solar max solar gain.  The increased roof area on north side will allow for a 1/2 second story to be added over the north half of the house.  Basement with cellar, central heat plant, storage, and other will be developed below existing home and garage.  Greenhouse/sunroom expanded in width and to match new roof pitch.  All systems from phase 1 will be refined and developed for ideal utilization. Cobb walls constructed on exterior of building to increase insulation of building and add natural passive attributes unique to cobb structures.  Develop compressed air and other energy storage mechanisms.  Install methane digesters and waste processing system with bio return cycle.

Making progress….

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So I am making progress on things, slowly but surely.  I have got a small portion of the narrative down on paper and have been developing how to visually display the design as it pertains to the narrative and the different phases.  I can honestly say it is a challenge to develop this narrative and design documents – it is the compilation of years of research and work on my part, functionally combining the systems and practices I have been working on.  I get so excited sometimes watching things come together and at the same time reminding myself to keep focused since this is all going to take some time to realize.  I like the way I am doing this, it feels right – I am putting a lot of time and thought into the design, I want to make sure I have covered all the bases and have zero’d in on the best possible design – I can’t wait for it to be public and then get feedback for tweaking and further refinement.  I feel I have a good layout for my narrative and visual representations, I am going to do a hybrid of sort – Have the narrative with textual details on the systems, functionality, background, intent, etc.  I will have a 2D CAD representation for each section of the narrative with additional information and finally I am thinking of using pictures with notes and sketches over laid to show how things are to change.  Finally I want to get an artists rendition of the final completed work as my cover.  Parts of the narrative are going to be an aside to the living building challenge since they don’t necessarily pertain to the structure but more to the operation and livability.

Outside of developing my narrative I moved forward with the next stages of the grey water system.  I have the main trunk lines in for the upper and lower gardens, now I just need to get the soaker hoses in place for each bed.  These are 1/4″ diameter soaker hoses coming off the main 1/2″ trunk lines running downhill from the upper garden.  I hope to get a work party together here soon so I can bust down the remainder of the fence material I have and build four appropriately sized grey water containers for the upper garden and get those plumbed in and functioning.  For now I am still working off of city water.

I have put a great deal of thought into my transportation – I originally bought the VW Vanagon to convert to a compressed air vehicle.  I’m still going to do that, but I am realizing more now than ever it is going to be more of a show piece and serve for long travel – in the interim I need something light and more robust for town travel.  I am back to working on my three wheeled concept car/bike that I developed plans for several years back.  I am putting a little tweak on it in regards to construction and style – I will start developing some solicitation material here soon so I can hopefully get the parts and pieces donated from scrap – my budget is going to be low.  Also in regards to the VW Vanagon or my Airbus, I am working on a possible inline series pneumatic drive system that would hopefully deliver more HP, better performance, regenerative braking and better efficiency… Time will tell, it’s still just theory and numbers at this point…

I am still working on getting good at doing my blogging, hard for a perfectionist like me to let you see the inner workings when its not done….

Design – Reality first

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Okay, so I haven’t posted in a while and for several very good reasons.  For one I have had some life changes with my working situation that has thrown me off a bit – I am starting to get back on top of that and getting back to moving forward with this.  Second, it is spring and lots of planting and garden work needs to be done – I have been busy trying to get things prep’d and ready.  Third, I have been stumbling on the design aspect of the living building challenge and that is what I want to talk about today.

So I have been going at this with the standard commercial design process in mind – concept – schematic design -design development – construction ready.  In this standard process the idea starts out fuzzy and get’s refined to reality.  I have come to the reality that this process is severely flawed and doesn’t create a sustainable balanced product.  So I am rethinking the process and going to go at this a little differently – I seem to do things differently from others anyways so why not the design process.

I have noticed that one of my key elements that I need to address before proceeding with the design is my energy budget.  Where am I going to pull my energy and resources from, what is my theoretical maximum limit and what safety or fluctuation factor am I going to have.  This is important, it determines how and what types of systems I have in the building.  Of course I am going to stick with my base premise of making sure the base living systems are simple and manual at the very least with powered convenience layered on top as available and supported by my power budget.

Also, I need to develop a resource budget – for things such as water, material for the methane generator, light, garden, etc.  These play into how the structure gets designed.  If I have limited heating resources then I need to boost my envelope performance until I can break the basic minimum with fluctuation factor.  If I have limited water storage capacity then I need to design for water conservation – for example I have been toying with a simple shower water filtration system that would allow for a minimal amount of water to be used by recirculating it through a simple sand filter – this would also help to conserve energy as it would minimize the amount of heat needed to bring it up to temperature since we are not heating fresh but just reheating.

One thing I have going for me is that I am doing this in three stages – the first stage will be to compare the operation of conventional and non-conventional sustainable techniques.  So I don’t need to have all of this accomplished by the first stage since I will be doing minimal changes to the existing structure.  The second stage will be to evaluate the operational characteristics, make some functional changes as needed to run smoothly and fit real life.  Third stage where I need to have all my information ready and complete will be the final push – that’s where I take what has been working, what has proven itself and match it to my budgets to finish the structure and create a sustainable living environment.

So back to the drawing board in a sense, time to rethink the process.  The whole owner – designer – builder relationship just isn’t ever going to be feasible or reasonable in designing sustainable homes.  I have read about the integration already, but it is going to have to be a whole team effort with everyone putting in effort.  The engineers and architects will be there to help define system limits and the contractor there to define functional construct ability limits, the owner helping to make decisions on what he prefers.  The engineers will most definitely need to take a stronger stance, actually embrace the role of protecting the public as they should and inform the owner and other team members what basic systems need to be in place, sustainable, and simple – water, air, heat/cool, shelter, etc – basic Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

When considering energy and resource budgets, I am further convinced as to the inadequacy and ignorance of our standard commercial construction practices.  They lack the diversity and robustness to be sustainable and functional for a progressive world, they are a drain and blight on our community and future – these buildings should be stopped from being constructed, existing structures should have to be converted to support themselves, and the design community be reeducated to develop naturally adaptive self sustaining buildings that are a positive attribute to the community and the natural surroundings.

My design is going to take a bit longer than I expected, but I think I will have a better chance of reaching a realistic goal than I would if I just tried to rush through it like all the other standard construction projects out there.  I know this was long, had a little ranting in it, but in the end I hope you got a little out of it and wish me luck as I continue forward.

Rainwater collection

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I ran across a great site tonight, it uses google maps and a simple roof tracing tool to give you a conservative estimate on how much rain water you could collect within a year.

My home came up to be able to collect 30,000 gallons just from rain water off my roof.

Last year my water usage was ~ 38,000 gallons with my garden doubling my overall usage.  Meaning my overall yearly can be cut almost in half by just reusing greywater as my primary watering method for the garden.

What is exciting about this is that as I balance my water usage with my supply I see that I am going to be able to have a surplus of available water, which I will discuss how I plan to achieve this – those of you doing the math right now realize that is about: qty 120 of 250 gallon containers, qty 545 of 55 gallon drums.  Astounding yes I know, how to contain all of this, staggering concept and yet I will get into how this is achievable as we get into the grey water and rain collection systems later in the year.  Have fun with this for now.

Website: http://www.braewater.com/calculator

Site water collection estimate - 30,000 gallons