Underground rainwater storage, electric, gas, geothermal wells, thermal water storage insulated to R-80, domestic water well, just like the veins and arteries and nervous system for the entire campus to function in a holistic energy system. Each part of the system is designed to do more than just one thing. Typically the well guy does his thing and the rainwater capture guy does their thing and the geothermal guy does their thing and the aerobic on site waste water system does their thing but in a Holistic Energy System design, the geothermal is integrated to use the domestic water being pupmed out the ground and the heat exchanger opens up the 20,000 gallons of underground water storage and the aerobic waste water treatment ties into the geothermal system as it pumps and treats water from tank to tank before returning it to the earth. And the highly insulated thermal storage tank allows us to shift heating and cooling capacity from off peak times to support and enhance onpweak energy usage time of day.
More on Holistic Energy Systems but they can be applied to communities and cities to use resources they are already have spent capital and energy on to reduce their load and carbon foot print.
Catherine and I will be speaking on renewable energy and energy efficiency and its applications in the design of The Green Leaf Inn. They have over 1,250 people registered to attend this three day event. We are speaking on Wed the 25th in the afternoon.
It will be a great opportunity to network with a lot of people active in the Renewable and sustainable fields.
http://www.renewableenergysummit.org/
Catherine and I spoke on going green, renewable energy and developing our net zero energy hotel at the Women’s Resource Fair in Lake Geneva and The Smart Growth and Going Green sponsored by the Walworth County Realtors Association. The realtors show was great for some contacts since we are planning on condo-teling or selling the hotel rooms to investors including a fractional ownership in the wind turbine, solar, CHP unit etc for the income and tax benefits through real esatte brokers. Of course we are looking at using realtors that have their green certification.
March 25th we are presenting at the Renewable Energy Summit up in Milwaukee. More info at the Renew Wisconsin website.
As we have been working through designs and plans, we actually came to the realization that we could become the first Lodging that was built and designed to be producing as much green energy as we use on site on an annualized basis.
I just purchased a book of case studies that was about High Performance Lodging and how some properties have taken going green to a new level. The Green Leaf Inn blows them all away and sets the new standard- Our own Earth, Wind, Fire and Water designation for Sustainability.
We met today with Focus on Energy and one of their partners regarding the energy incentives for maximizing the efficiency of the construction of the Inn. Chris Hackner, the new construction project manager for Focus was their with Jon Evans who is with Sustainable Enginering Group LLC in Madison. Jon will be taking our basic design parameter to crunch numbers to model what our buildings would consume in energy if we just built to the WI minimum energy standards and then compares that to an optimal design to find the planned specs and what will it cost to upgrade and more importantly what will we save in operations.
We are excited and hope to have that data back around mid January 2009 to review and share. Then it is time to start to reveiw product and system offerings and start to get proposals from manufacturers, suppliers and vendors.
Later we will also have to do modeling to apply for Green Globes, Energy Star and EPAct. We hope to show the entire process of modeling and commissioning to demonstrate that you have to do follow up testing and modeling to make sure the design is performing as designed. Our energy consukting group is in a lot of new and old buildings that are not functioning the way they should.
Building energy efficiency into a new building is a piece of cake…except you better have an energy person verifying certain measures are being done behind walls that will be closed, or you could end up disappointed. So I am not worried about the new buildings being planned.
However- we wanted to enhance the efficiency of the current home. This means taking 4 bedrooms and converting them into two suites, and taking a large loft and converting it into one suite. Of course, we have existing pipe runs, plumbing, heating ducts etc., to try and work around to control costs. But converting the HVAC, hot water heat and grey water storage and resuse will take some creative planning so we do not have to gut the whole building. We also want to add in some daylighting in a couple of rooms without adding heat gain.
The old part of the home was 2×6 wall construction so it was pretty tight. When we did our large room addition, we continued the use of 2×6 walls and redid the entire structure with dual glazed low-e glass windows and patio doors.
Fortunately, we were going through the Walworth County Builders Assn home show and met a certified home energy auditor. Tom Krawczyk has received his certification (as well as Energy Star certification to work with builders) and provided a comprehensive home energy audit service including a pressurizing blower door to calculate air leakage and savings opportunities and an infra red camera that could look for hot and cold spots in the closed up walls. Perfect, since I did not want to do unnecessary deconstruction of the existing home if it was not needed. Without these tools and a few others Tom brought, you really don’t know where the problems are because they are behind closed doors.
We got a discount coupon from Focus on Energy and set up an appointment for the audit. By that time, we had revised our plans to also create video content of the entire design, planning, product reviews, and installation of the sustainable building and green energy systems. Tom said that would be great. Needless to say, a 1-day audit turned into 3 days of videotaping since you end up shooting a bunch 2 or 3 times between dogs barking and phone calls. But we finished the audit and just had to wait for the completed report and meet to review it together.
We have a ton of video to process and edit and put into content for the website- any interested college students looking for an internship with an interest in green building and energy- call me!
Underground rainwater storage, electric, gas, geothermal wells, thermal water storage insulated to R-80, domestic water well, just like the veins and arteries and nervous system for the entire campus to function in a holistic energy system. Each part of the system is designed to do more than just one thing. Typically the well guy does his thing and the rainwater capture guy does their thing and the geothermal guy does their thing and the aerobic on site waste water system does their thing but in a Holistic Energy System design, the geothermal is integrated to use the domestic water being pupmed out the ground and the heat exchanger opens up the 20,000 gallons of underground water storage and the aerobic waste water treatment ties into the geothermal system as it pumps and treats water from tank to tank before returning it to the earth. And the highly insulated thermal storage tank allows us to shift heating and cooling capacity from off peak times to support and enhance onpweak energy usage time of day.