Phase-change materials (PCMs)

I attended a charrette for a new net zero development a little while ago and one of the hot items discussed was Phase-change materials (PCMs).  For those who are not familiar with the term “charrette”, here is a definition and a site you can visit to learn more.

charrette is defined as an intensive workshop in which various stakeholders and experts are brought together to address a particular design issue, from a single building to an entire campus, installation, or park. (http://www.wbdg.org/resources/charrettes.php)

This technology has been around for a little while but not widely used in North America.  I’ve heard that companies like National Gypsum that manufactures ThermalCORE  maybe offering their product at Home Depot or other hardware stores in the near future.

The idea behind PCMs is to help with temperature fluctuations and allow for heating or cooling to be done off peak hours.  How exactly is this achieve you may ask?  Here is a brief run down on what takes place and some site you can check out for more information.

BASF - Micronal microcapsules for interior temperature control
National Gypsum that manufactures ThermalCORE

This image is from BioPCM and illustrates how the material works.  If used in a home during the summer, as your house heats up the material absorbs heat (melts) and thereby helps to cool off the room.  During the night your house cools down (you can run an AC unit during off peak hours) and the cooling of your house is absorbed by the material (solidifies).  It is suggested that air conditioning costs can be cut by roughly 20%.

Note that PCM is not a replacement for standard insulation.

So what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Advantage:

• Helps with the extreme swings in temperature fluctuation found in buildings
• Can be used in retrofits or new construction
• Some products are made from more sustainable material
• Life of many products is reasonable, approx 15-20 years.

Disadvantage:

• Haven’t found any information on cold climate use
• Life of the product is generally associated to the number of freeze thaw cycles.  Could be an issue in colder climates
• Most energy savings data presented on conserving air conditioning costs.
• Expensive compared to traditional material (should note some literature claims a 5 year pay back)

Thermography for Buildings

I thought I’d mention the valuable benefit of thermal cameras or thermography in assessing heat loss in buildings. 

Flir Heat Loss Flir Heat Loss Image

*Images from Flir

Although purchasing or renting thermal cameras are expensive, I have always felt that the information they provide can be extremely useful.  In one instance we used a camera to assess ceiling insulation that a contractor put in a retrofit building.  We were able to quickly determine that the insulation was not adequately disturbed in the ceiling because we could see cold spots.  Not only did it save us money from a heating perspective but we also used the images to get the contractor to do the job correctly.  Other times we’ve used thermography to find wet insulation. The image below is from Flir and it shows an example of what you'd find when looking for compromised insulation.

Flir

Check out Flir’s site for some of the ways thermography can be applied.

As industry moves to having more LEED or BOMA building homes, I’d like to see thermography play a bigger role.  I’d even go so far as propose that all new homes come with a thermography audit and imaging records.  Image if you find water in your basement or a water stain on the ceiling, how big of a problem do you have on your hands?  You could compare current images with past images to get a perspective on what needs to be done.  Major renovations of course would also benefit.  See if that new sunroom addition has cause points for heat loss.

Let me know if you’ve found thermography as a useful tool for building assessments.

Waste Toilet Paper Ruler

As promised, here is a ruler that you can use to approximate the waste from those partial rolls of toilet paper that get thrown out.

If you use it, please post what your findings and if it has helped you make a decision on changing the type of toilet paper you use.  I'd also like to suggest contacting your paper vendor for their version of the ruler.  http://www.gp.com/

Chemical Free Cleaning

If you have visited our site (WaysToSustain), we have put the spotlight on the use of the Activeion cleaning product.  This company has released new information about the disinfection properties against the H1N1 virus (see here). If you’re not familiar with the product, I suggest visiting our site or their site directly (www.activeion.com) before reading further. 

www.activeion.com

I’m excited by this news because many vendors have tried to push harsher chemicals to disinfect because they did not believe disinfectants could be environmentally friendly.

However, there are a few things I’m still trying to get answered and I’m waiting to hear back from Activeion distributors for clarification.  Here are two issues that concern me the most:

-  What is the proper maintenance program for one of these units?
-  What kind of monitoring system needs to be in place to ensure it functions as designed from month to month or year to year?

Although a home owner wouldn’t immediately recognize these issues, a company with an Environmental Management System would need to address it.  The monitoring and measuring element of ISO 14001 would lead this charge.

When I learn more I’ll post it but in the mean time if anyone has developed procedures for the use of the Activeion system, I’d be interested in learning more.

Coreless Toilet Paper

I have always found it interesting that new environmentally sustainable products usually become available for residential or commercial use at different times rather than at the same time.  For example, I’ve had a few vendors promote their new coreless toilet paper.  This means there is no cardboard role in the center of the toilet paper.  From a business point of view this can mean huge savings.  Think about how often you’ve used a public bathroom and found a roll of toilet paper sitting on top of the dispenser.  Usually this was put there because the custodian came in to check the roll and replace what was needed while leaving behind that partial roll that wouldn’t last until the next bathroom check.  Now, how often do you think that partial roll gets used having been moved to the top of the dispenser?  Have you ever used that roll?  Anyone familiar with custodial work will admit to usually finding it in the garbage or stuffed in a toilet after a flood.  Not only is the flood unfortunate but the amount left on the roll could easily be equivalent to fulfilling the needs of 10-15 more people.  Add this up over the year and all the public bathrooms in a building (think about an office tower), and you have a huge wasted toilet paper.  We haven’t even gotten into looking at all the cardboard wasted with each roll.  This coreless toilet paper will save you not only all of that waste but you also gain extra tissue in the center of the roll.  Compare the images below that are an example of a cordless product and a normal cardboard center.

Coreless

Standard Toilet Roll

I’m awaiting for a ruler that can be used to estimate the waste left on a cardboard roll and once I receive it I’ll post a picture of it.

Now you tell me, wouldn’t you rather have the coreless roll than the cardboard one in your home?  Before some of you ask, yes the roll is perforated so no need to tear the tissue like the old big rolls you’d find in some bathrooms.

Old Big Rolls

Often someone comes to me all excited about the latest thing in energy efficiency and they’re hoping I’ve never heard of it before.  Why you may ask?  I guess it is a sense of accomplishment to be able to stump the environmental guy.  Very seldom does it turn out that they found something new but rather something old given a new catchy name.  However sometimes these situations make you rethink the old, and get you motivated to try something different.

I had one of these the other day.  The above average snow fall this winter prompted this person to tell me about this great new energy savings system that utilizes snow storage.  There is plenty of potential with snow storage so I was eager to hear about this new system.  The person went on to explain that this new system is called “Cool Energy” and it involved snow storage next to buildings but that is all they knew about it.  Where do I even begin?  Try searching for “Cool Energy” in Google or Bing and see how many different products you get.  The next problem is the description of the system.  What exactly do they mean by snow storage next to a building? 

After further discussion with this person and some digging, I came up with three possible links to this “Cool Energy”.

First is actually more commonly referred to as the “Igloo Principle” than “Cool Energy”.  The “Igloo Principle” pretty much describes itself.  You pile snow around a building so the insulating affects of the snow lowers your heating costs.  Unless you know what you’re doing I wouldn’t recommend trying this approach.  There are many factors you have to consider when the snow melts in the spring and you don’t want water running into your building (home).  However if done right you will notice savings on your heating costs.

Second is a company called Cool Energy Inc.  Their technology is interesting and has merit but I don’t see any relation to snow storage as it was described to me.

The third and probably most probable correlation is an article from Japan (www.hkd.meti.go.jp/hokne/c_energy4e/ce4_e.pdf).  The name of the article is Cool Energy but it contains case examples of the utilization of snow and ice cryogenic energy.  It is a good read for anyone interested in what can be done with large amounts of snow including the first point mentioned here. 

Let me step back for a moment and explain that the last few years I’ve worked on trying to melt large amounts after the winter.  Some cities are left with huge mountains of snow that don’t melt away by the end of the summer.  In these cases, some storage sites have been built next in areas where excess heat is a by product and this is used to melt the snow.  After reading the article it got me thinking about some up coming LEED Gold projects might make good use of this approach since they are located in a large storage yards.  A system could be constructed similar to the one mentioned for the Snow Science Museum.

If anyone else has had experience with using snow storage, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll share any success I might have with getting one of these systems built.

Welcome to the WaysToSustain blog

Hello, I’m Mark Bowling and I help run the site WaysToSustain.com.  After being in the environmental field for over 15 years I’ve found that most people think being environmentally friendly or sustainable is simply a do or don’t decision.  I thought that I’d use this blog to share some of the daily issues I face and the rational that is usually involved in trying to make sustainable or “Green” decisions. You'd be surprised at how much consideration goes into business, policy, and strategies.

Now you might be thinking there can’t be that many different issues.  Here is a quick peek at some of the issues I hope to cover is some upcoming blogs.

• What is more sustainable, hand dryer or paper towels? 
• Why is that old gas station property still sitting empty? 
• Why is that old grocery store stilling empty? 
• Why are low flow toilets not used every where?
  

I’ll also share my opinions about products for home use or commercial use that I find interesting or useful.

If at any time you have a question or would like to provide feedback, feel free to post a comment or drop me a line and I’ll try to get back to you promptly.

Thanks for dropping by and I look forward to sharing with you.