The next thing to tackle was designing a working environment
that matched the level of sustainability of our parts. We live
and work in one of the hottest areas of the United States, the
northern end of the Sacramento Valley, where temperatures average
in the 100°s for 10 weeks per year. How do you create a
comfortable environment for humans to work given these conditions?
Heat/Cooling environment within buildings
Oh how desperately we wanted to build out new buildings underground.
Dig a big hole and bury the first floor entirely in the earth,
cover the roof with grass and plants. We looked for a way
to do this and it was unbelievably expensive. We still fantasize
about doing this someday, although it brings with it a host
of very real problems to solve, it is the ultimate way to
build energy efficient buildings.
What we compromised with was an above ground
building with a exterior shell system that made sense for
our extremely hot environment where the sun is pounding on
us all day long in the summer time. Despite our architects
protests (the building looks like it is "floating away", was
one of them) we went with a very light colored steel roof
to help reflect the heat and a fiber cement panel wall system.
The fiber cement panels are held about an inch off of the
actual water proofing material by vertically oriented steel
risers, air is free to flow between the cement panels and
the actual wall of the building. The cement panels act like
a shade structure for the walls of the building. This reduces
our heating costs and allowed us to use less wall insulation
(lowering our costs of construction and material usage). We
needed less powerful air conditioners and we use less energy.
We also set our thermostats at 82°F inside the building.
It is amazing that people are willing to blow so much money
and energy by setting the AC to 77°. This just makes it
necessary to build more power plants and burn more coal or
oil.
The next thing to tackle was designing a working environment
that matched the level of sustainability of our parts. We live
and work in one of the hottest areas of the United States, the
northern end of the Sacramento Valley, where temperatures average
in the 100°s for 10 weeks per year. How do you create a
comfortable environment for humans to work given these conditions?
