GreenClips.54 08.28.96 UK GREEN BUILDING OF THE YEAR The HVCA [Heating and Ventilating Contractors' Association] and The Independent on Sunday newspaper named a 6,000 square-meter administration and student building at Linacre College in Oxford the 1996 Green Building of the Year. Judges last June selected the design by ECD Architects' David Turrent for its holistic, all-embracing response to environmental, energy, and social issues. At the start the team decided to achieve an "Excellent" BREEAM rating. The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method guided decisions on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, use of natural and recycled materials, water economy, and low energy lighting. An embodied energy analysis by Davis Langdon and Everest Consultancy recommended a structural masonry design with timber roof, and cellulose fiber insulation. The team avoided materials with high embodied energy like plastics, polymer foams, and ferrous metals. Other energy and environmental measures include condensing gas boilers and toilets that use filtered rainwater from the main roof and graywater from wash basins and showers. Known for environmental research, Linacre College hosts the annual Linacre lectures on environmental issues. - Building COMMERCIAL BIPV APPLICATIONS CATCHING ON IN US The $22.5 million Aquatic Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology is famous as the 1996 Olympic swimming venue. It's not so widely known for its solar electric rooftop system - the world's largest. The 340 kWp photovoltaic (PV) rooftop consists of 2,856 120-volt photovoltaic modules that save $26,000 annually in electrical costs. The Aquatic Center illustrates growing US interest in building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems that have enjoyed more financial and political support in Europe. Commercial buildings are attractive candidates for PV power because their daily electrical load profile corresponds closely with a PV system's output. Roof applications like sawtooth roof monitors, skylights, and roof panels generate the most photovoltaic output, but BIPV curtain walls can also be effective. Solarex, the largest US producer of PV modules, has joined Kawneer to produce PowerWall, a pre-engineered solar curtain wall cladding. For optimal PV efficiency in curtain wall applications, designers should consider vertical sawtooth or accordion designs. - Building Design & Construction, August 1996, p. 52, by Hugh Cook. OLD-GROWTH LOGS RAISED FROM LAKE SUPERIOR Aboard his 25-foot cruiser Island Explorer, Scott Mitchen raises sunken old-growth logs from 60-foot deep Lake Superior waters. Thousands of oak, pine, maple, hemlock, basswood, and birch logs likely lie on the bottom of Lake Superior where they sank waiting for milling onshore. The lake's low oxygen content and frigid temperatures have preserved them for a century. A large red oak log cut today is worth as much as $400. Milled, its raw lumber sells for more than $1000. Shaved into veneer its value climbs to four times that, higher yet for better quality wood. Mitchen has raised more than $1 million from private investors to renovate an old lumber mill in Ashland, Wisconsin to house a sawmill and space for woodworking craftsmen and artisans. Meanwhile, Bacon Veneer Ltd. of Calgary has processed about 200 logs raised by Mitchen including red oak used for paneling in a recent renovation of the Calgary Saddledome. - The Washington Post, August 14,1996, p. 1, by William Souder. RECYCLED GLASS TILE Maria Ruano's Bedrock Industries in Seattle is one of a handful of companies that manufactures glass tile from discarded glass. Ruano uses glass from restaurants, recyclers, and a tempering plant to make about 1,000 square feet of tile a month. At Seattle's Pratt and Larson tile showroom, Ruano's products sell for about $19 a square foot. For more information contact Bedrock Industries, 206.781.7025. Oceanside Glasstile also manufactures recycled glass tile in Carlsbad, California, 619.434.0051. - This Old House, July/August 1996, p. 25, by Claudia Glenn Dowling. 3M'S XL PERMIT TALKS WITH EPA STALL After months of negotiations over a Project XL permit, talks between the 3MCo. and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have stalled. While the law requires many separate permits for air, water, and solid and hazardous waste, the EPA's new XL - for "eXcellence in Leadership" - program allows a company to negotiate one pollution permit covering all operations. The EPA intends the experimental XL permits to be less prescriptive and more flexible but in return expects companies to meet standards beyond what current environmental law requires. 3M wants an XL permit to replace 20 permits issued for adhesive and magnetic-tape manufacturing at its Hutchinson, Minnesota plant. And the company has agreed to achieve "superior environmental performance" by putting a cap on solvent and other hazardous air emissions well below what the law now requires. Just which technical issues have led to the current impasse in negotiations isn't clear. But Peder Larson, the acting commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, says the EPA insisted on "prescriptive permit conditions, which render the experimental nature of XL moot". Carol Wiessner, a lawyer for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, says that the XL permits are not for everyone and certainly not for companies that have "bad track records" of environmental protection. But, she says, 3M has demonstrated leadership in pollution reduction and was one of the best candidates in the nation to tryout a new system. -Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 28, 1996, p. B6, by Tom Meersman. RIDERS FLEEING PUBLIC TRANSIT Riders are fleeing the nation's largest public transportation systems in droves says a study released this month from the University of California-Los Angeles' School of Public Policy and Social Research. The ten largest US transit systems lost one passenger for every eight they kept between 1989 and 1993, in part because of budget shortfalls and service cuts. Chicago lost the most riders, 21.5 percent, followed by New York City, 18 percent, and Philadelphia, 10.3 percent. Steve Heminger of the San Francisco Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission says declining driving costs over the past 30 years contributed to the decrease in riders. And more families have moved to the suburbs, he says, where transit is not always an easy choice. But while the big city transit systems lost ground, the study found that smaller urban and suburban transit systems made gains in riders and services, though not nearly enough to offset the losses of the big systems. The report's co-author Brian Taylor explains that the smaller systems receive disproportionate aid since the government disburses public transit funds based on each area's population rather than its number of transit users. -The San Francisco Examiner, August 20, 1996, p. A1, by Erin McCormick.