Green Round Table

This seems like a cool company, maybe the type that I'd be interested in working at.

Behold my room

Passive House

In Germany and some other parts of Europe, they have started building "passive houses," houses which take almost no energy to heat due to careful design in ventilation and insulation. Plus, it does not cost much more to build. However, it is unclear if such houses would work to stay cool as well. Otherwise, it will not be very useful in most of the US, not even Boston. The article also mentions that many things such as the glass for the windows are not available in the US. I wonder if there is some patent barrier on it or something or maybe it's simply not made in the US.

Perhaps these people would be good for our talk.

Sustainable Architecture

Jenny Hu's cousin is a sustainable architect. Don't know if she's any good, but her group's website is really awesome.

The company is called Levitas.

Summer Time

On the top of the Solaire in Battery Park City in New York. (Photo Copyright © birdw0rks/Simon Bird and the Albanese Organization.

This summer I'm working on two projects: surveying people's thermal comfort with LEED coordinator Emma Leonard and designing green roofs with Leon Glicksman from Building Technology (Yang organized the BPP this spring and he was one of the speakers!). I'm excited, I get to put some test beds up on building 1 and tentatively I'll be monitoring things like temperature and moisture differences. I get calculate 2.005 like heat transfer problems since the plants act as insulation. The survey is for the new grad dorm N35 so it can get certified as environmentally sustainable by the US Green Building Council. Leon Glicksman said there were plans in the past to make every new dorm have green roofs, but that plan seems to have fallen through. I get to find out how practical green roofs are and in what situations. Some of the advantages of green roofs are stormwater management and reduction of urban islands and heating loads. hooray!

Best Windows

Vision Wall found a way to make glass that is a very effective insulator! Hopefully, we will see them in buildings everywhere.

Kill A Watts

Watt the Hell

It's a device that measures how much power your appliances use.

Hm, you can get them for about $23.