Homes Getting Greener

      

More than 300 building professionals gathered Wednesday at the second annual Salt Lake Sustainable Building Conference, along with Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon. They discussed new advances in technology and the implementation of green processes and materials.

Green building incorporates everything from using recycled materials and natural lighting to solar panels and wind-generated power and drought-tolerant landscaping in new construction.

Tree House
Joe Prudden, Architect
According to Dream Green Homes, this home could be close to a “zero energy home” by being designed for passive solar heating and passive cooling.

Earth-Sheltered Atrium Home
Ferid Abbasher, Architect

This home is fascinating. Due to the oval shape of the inner atrium (the courtyard), the living room, the kitchen and dining and the bedrooms all face maximum sunlight, sometimes from the south, at other times from the east and the west; this allows passive solar heating for these spaces. Masonry walls and foundations are made of recycled concrete blocks with recycled paper fillings. Recycled glass is used or floor insulation.

 

Surface water can easily be utilized in this EcoHouse design
to reduce the domestic water consumption expenses. Being
earth-sheltered, the water tank is protected from extremely
low or high temperatures. The earth falls around the tank
are profiled in such a way as to funnel the rainwater into the tank.

The collected water is then thoroughly treated for domestic consumption using the state-of-the-art StormTreat System™ produced by StormTreat Systems, Inc. Rainwater is treated by 100% biological means and is 100% safe for domestic use.

         

One company leading the way in Utah is Kennecott Land, which owns hundreds of thousands of acres along the west bench of the Salt Lake valley and will be developing over 20,000 homes over the next 25 years. In October, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded Kennecott Land a “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” Silver rating for the Daybreak Elementary School and Community Center, which uses a ground-source heating and cooling system and is estimated to save roughly 25 cents per square foot. Peter McMahon, president of Kennecott Land, which owns Daybreak in South Jordan, said while other homebuilders may incorporate some green building aspects, Kennecott Land likely does more. “We capture all of our stormwater,” McMahon said. “We use the lake as both an amenity and in irrigation. We do a lot of natural landscaping. We do a whole variety of environmental management things.”

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