Green Garage Sustainability Labs

Citizen Science seeking the Truth in Urban Sustainability .

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LIVE Trash Audit Report

The Green Garage in Midtown Detroit has a Community “BYO” Lunch every Friday, where anyone interested can come mingle with other people interested in sustainability. There is a small presentation at the end of the lunch hour, and recently (May 1, 2015), we decided to hold a LIVE trash audit as part of the lunch show. We were lucky that we actually had the Trash Fairy make an appearance to help us properly conduct the audit so that we could determine just how well we are doing in general on our quest to get trash and recyclable items into the right place. 

Here are some highlights from the audit, giving us an indication of the things that we are doing well and areas where we could make improvements:

Safety First - broken glass found loose in trash bag needs to be wrapped so it does not cut through bag and potentially injure someone handling the trash; razor blade should be placed in metal recyclables instead of trash.

Recyclables - not many mistakes here; plastic grocery bags have recycle symbol so should be in plastic recycle bin.

Discarded office type papers and mail should be in paper bin; cardboard boxes and clean packing paper should be in cardboard/brown paper bin.

Remember, all clean metal is also recyclable.

Comment on Starbucks Hot Cups - not to pick on Starbucks, but they are so huge, some changes here could make a significant impact on this globally, so we suggest some ideas on approaching use of Starbucks hot cups as they are currently just regular trash; ask locally and/or email corporate and ask them to use compostable cups for hot beverages; bring your own clean reusable cup into Starbucks; or, at a bare minimum, at least take off cardboard sleeve and recycle it along with the plastic recyclable lid.

Compost Bin - mostly correct here also; if an item has a plastic recycle symbol (any number) and also is indicated as compostable (like coffee lids), it is better to put items in the recycle bin for plastic rather than compost; this is a tough bin to categorize stuff for, but GG’ers are doing pretty well.

Food Waste Compost - as a reminder, no animal products, meats, fats, oils or food that has them on it is allowed in the small, stainless steel compost container. Spent flowers are, though.

Water or Waste - one other challenging call to make with recyclable items is if a potentially recyclable container has food left in it, can it be cleaned enough to recycle; first question is if the food waste should even go down the drain or not (avoid putting fats and oils down drains); second question is how much water will it take to get the item clean enough to recycle; sometimes the least harmful alternative is to throw the item into the trash.

Conclusion - So, overall, not many recycling mistakes found during this audit; just a few tweaks that will improve our efforts in reducing, reusing, and recycling for our three wishes that the Trash Fairy granted us, provided we are willing to continue to do our part!! For more information on this Trash Audit, go here.

The Sustainability Labs meets the first Friday of the month at 1:30 p.m., following the Community Lunch at the Green Garage. For more info, go here.

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The EPA designated January as Radon Action Month, and the State of Michigan joined in the campaign last year, trying to get the word out about the dangers of radon and what can be done about it. Above is a link to our blog on this topic from last year, with easy to understand info on what you can do to protect yourself and your family. Please read!!

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Demystifying RADON: Here's to your Long-Term Health

The EPA designated January as Radon Action Month, and the State of Michigan joined in the campaign this year, trying to get the word out about the dangers of radon and what can be done about it. But even with that elevated effort, I think there may be plenty of us still out there that are mystified by radon. What the heck is it?  Where does it come from? Why should we care?

In an effort to make information available that will adequately inform you without making your head hurt (too much!), we have collected some links that should help answer these questions and also provide you with a resource to easily get test kits to check out your own situation (at a reduced cost for Michigan residents).  Here are the links:

A Citizen's Guide to Radon can be found at  http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html 

Link to EPA general information is http://www.epa.gov/radon/nram/

Link to the State of Michigan program overview  is http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3310_4105_4196-11722--,00.html

Here's where you can order test kits at reduced rates in cooperation with the State of Michigan  http://www.radon.com/sub/mi/ 

The history and potential of finding radon if you are in Michigan is highlighted at http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3310_4105_4196-10497--,00.html 

Resources - links to further info on radon from the State of Michigan http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3310_4105_4196-127015--,00.html 

Please take a few minutes to learn more about radon, then order your test kit. The test is easy, doesn't cost too much, and doesn't take a lot of time, but it could make a big difference in you and your family's long-term health.

Click here to learn more about the Green Garage and Sustainability Labs.

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The EPA has designated January as National Radon Action Month. Get informed and get your home tested today!! It could save someone you love.

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Couldn't resist passing this on regarding the Detroit Zoo's efforts toward a sustainable future. Please follow the link above to take a look at what they are doing.  

Two things really impressed me in the article. First, the zoo folks really appear to be looking at the world impact and ramifications for the future, not just bottom line impact. Even though some of their green initiatives negatively impact their revenue stream, they are still going for the sustainable choices and finding ways to offset the loss in those areas so that they can make things better for the future ultimately. Not everyone is willing to do that type of work (yet), so it is inspiring to hear of in a place as unique and challenging as a zoo.  If they can do it...

The second thing that impressed me is that they seem to understand that this is an on-going, long-term commitment to be sustainable, not a one-time exercise in energy efficiency improvements to produce some measure of savings. They understand and articulate that now that they have taken care of the "easy" items that did not really impact operations much, that now they must dig deeper and evolve to be truly "green".  I'm happy to have supported the zoo and plan to continue to do so with this type of responsible leadership seemingly creating a bright future for our community.

Nice work, Detroit Zoo!

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Here's a humorous and interesting perspective on the root of GREEN.

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GG Rainwater Rubber Ducky Derby - First Friday Rain

We have a great rainwater collection system on our future roof garden at the Green Garage. The system collects rainwater from the large, barrel roof with a small dam that directs the water to a collector, then sends it across the roof garden through a series of gutters where it ends up in a large storage tank on the lower flat roof. From the tank, the rainwater is piped down to our gardens, and with the tank being overhead, the water is under pressure down below so that we can just hook up a hose and water our plants when needed without using city water.

In order to study the rate of water collection and have some fun in the process, the Labs has decided to host a Rubber Ducky Derby the first Friday afternoon that we have rain at the garage during one of our normal Labs Sessions, which are Fridays from 1:30 p.m. to around 3:30 p.m. It's really all in fun, but we are pretending to also get some data on how fast the water is flowing while we are having the fun, and in process, we may actually find some interesting observations on how fast our tanks fill up.

This video is a preliminary time trial for the Green Garage Rubber Ducky Derby where a couple of our MADD scientists brought their entries into the derby in to test the "track". Take a look!

Part of our real rainwater experiment is to monitor how much water our plants take and to develop a sense of what really works in an urban environment like ours when we want to avoid using city water for any watering needs. The Labs are collaborating with the Garden Group to help figure this out. The Garden Group will then inform the Urban Sustainability Library so that we have information and hopefully some good recommendations when people inquire about what native Michigan plants are good in an urban area like Detroit.

For more information, visit www.greengaragedetroit.com.

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Absorption chiller using solar down to 4.5 tons of cooling with commercial and residential applications mentioned.

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ventilation_filters by The Green Garage on Flickr.

GREEN GARAGE VENTILATION SYSTEM FILTERS What a difference 2 weeks makes! The filter on the far left is a brand new, clean MERV 8 filter. The middle filter is from our exhaust air stream in our energy recovery unit (used to protect the energy recovery wheel from any dust and dirt that might be in the exhaust stream), and the far right filter is from our outside air intake air stream in the energy recovery unit, both after 2 weeks of operating 9.5 hours per day, Monday through Friday. In terms of typical filter cleanliness, these filters are really not too bad. But we found it rather surprising and a little disturbing at how dirty the outside air filter was after only 2 weeks of part time operation. After all, this is our source for "fresh" air for our indoor environment!

One of the largest sources of outside pollution is burning fuel; in automobiles, homes, and industry. While we have come a long way towards reducing emissions and improving our outside air quality, I think this photo is a good reminder that we still have much room for improvement. So whatever little (or big) things we can do to reduce our fuel burning impact, whether directly or indirectly, we can help make it better.

Click here to learn more about pollution sources and indoor air quality. 

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Green Garage Drifting Through End of Winter Temp Changes

The Chicago Tribune article linked to the title above speaks about the debate various people in charge of the comfort systems in buildings are having with the unseasonably warm end of winter/beginning of spring we had recently. They are having to decide if they should start up their cooling systems early and risk having to shut them down or protect them if we get a drop to freezing temps again or let people suffer through the record warm temps. It's a tough call, and even the Farmer's Almanac appears to be less helpful than perhaps a Magic 8 Ball at this point.

The cool thing that we learned about the Green Garage in Midtown Detroit during this time period, however, is that with our super insulation, tightly sealed exterior, and building volume and mass (long span bow truss roof with open interior), we appear to be able to just "drift" between these extreme temperature swings upward (at least so far!), keeping our thermal storage tanks in heating mode for now to provide heating on those cooler days and nights as we work our way towards summer and the full on cooling season.

Above is a chart showing the temperatures in the three main zones of the Green Garage floating up and down between the heating and cooling set points for our indoor comfort zones without any use of our radiant floor heating or cooling system between March 14th and 28th. We did have our ventilation system running during the occupied hours of this time period, but it only provides tempered air, not really suitable for contributing much to the heating and cooling of the building in its current mode of operation.

This illustrates yet one more reason why it is so beneficial to start with the exterior envelope and passive strategies (super insulation, great windows, minimize thermal bridging, seal and test against infiltration) when designing and constructing a new building or a major renovation as we strive for a more sustainable future.

The Green Garage features the following envelope parameters:

Walls - R-45; cellulose & polyisocyanurate (polyiso)

Roof - R-115; R-65 in Annex; cellulose & polyiso; structural panels of layered insulation; roof 18" thick

Floor - R-10 under radiant floor portions; polyiso

Windows - Cardinal Glass 366 put into Kelly Windows using FSC wood; 66% visible light is let through while blocking 73% heat gain of light spectrum

Sealed cracks with spray foam insulation and inspected/tested for infiltration at various points of wall construction; final blower door result 0.10 air changes per hour natural ventilation

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Thank you to all who attended Worm-A-Palooza 2012!! It was fun learning more about those little squirmy creatures that help us super compost. Click on the title of this blog entry to access the link to the presentation that Marsha Rosso provided to our Labs group for reference and use. Feel free to download from Google Docs, if you like. A big thank you to Marsha for making this available and for sharing her research and learning with the Labs. Please note: no worms were harmed during the Worm-A-Palooza 2012 activities.

    We also did a bit more research on the question of what worms are causing harm to forests, and the short answer is that there appears to be research being done and reported now that should help clarify this issue in the very near future, but it is still a bit confusing, as we found during our Session. We hope to  be able to summarize the issue in a future post once the dust settles a bit on the research being done in Minnesota. For now, the best advice we found in our review of literature available was to keep your composting (and fishing!) worms local to your own use, and do not put them in a place where they could spread to forests in the Great Lakes Region. Even though there appear to be only certain types of earthworms that are causing the decimation, until the research is clear, it may be better to err on the side of caution and refrain from spreading any worms to the Great Lakes Region forests. The University of Minnesota appears to be the "go to" source for the best compilation of information so far with their "Great Lakes Worm Watch".

Go to http://www.nrri.umn.edu/worms/ for more information from the University of Minnesota.

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The Scale of the Universe - Interactive Flash Animation Credit & Copyright: Cary & Michael Huang

The link is to an interactive program that lets you zoom in and out in powers of ten and see the scale of the universe from the large (the visible universe) to the small (quantum foam).  The program is a lot of fun and very interactive. 

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Received link to this from Joe; really puts things in perspective!

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WormAPalooza Flyer on Flickr.

WORM-A-PALOOZA Friday!!

Please join us for a great Labs Session on Friday, with a special "Food for Thought" segment (he-he-he)!!

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The Mystery of the Frozen Solar Panels (Hopefully Solved!)

During a cold snap in Detroit the last part of 2011/first part of 2012, at some point, it appears that three of our solar thermal panels on the roof of the Green Garage froze, all around the 18" mark up from the bottom. We first realized this when one of our keen observers noted that the panel system was on, the solar panel core temp was around 130 degrees F, but the water exiting the panels was still at only 65 degrees F. Further investigation lead to discovery of the leaks and prompt activation of the Labs version of the Geek Squad to try to trace back to what might have happened to cause the incident.

Using our trend log data, we were able to rule out a few potential causes,but could not find a 100% irrefutable root cause through the temperature controls system. True to Murphy's law, some of the trend data was not available for the time period in question. Our last nagging suspicion was that perhaps one of our Pex lines had a problem that it did not allow the water to fully drain back to our tanks when the solar system turned off. So we pulled out the borescope and ladders and tried to get inside our insulated tank room to see if the air gap between the top of our tanks and where our solar panel water supply and drain lines empty into the tanks was intact. It was not easy, but we were able to get the camera in to see that the supply line was in fact long enough that it probably was in contact with the water in the tank prior to the leaks occurring. Our theory is that this may have impeded full drainback of the system, similar to putting your thumb over the end of a straw with water in it.

So, we removed a portion of plywood and insulation over the tank opening and got in there to cut the line back to match the drain line. Then we tested the system by starting and stopping it a couple of times, each off cycle opening a drain valve in the supply line to confirm the water was properly draining. We also went up on the roof and thermal imaged the panels to be sure they were not retaining water.

We have not had a repeat of the weather conditions where the problem occurred yet, but in continued daily checks, we have been at least confirming that the drainback system is effectively functioning now, so we've checked that item off from our list of things to worry about. Now, if we could just get a little more sun in Detroit...

Click here to see full details on the panel leaks and investigation into what happened.

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With businesses finally starting to move into the newly renovated Green Garage, we have started a new experiment to study what plug loads will look like for each of the businesses in residence. This study is intended to develop a profile for each business to help determine their share of the electrical usage charges, but it is our hope that this information will also be enlightening to all of us to raise awareness for what the cost is for using our office equipment, both in terms of dollar cost and cost to our environment. Maybe together we can help each other find the most efficient computers or ways to use our technology so that we can reduce our impact overall. Please click on the title of this blog (link) to have a look at how we are approaching this, and if you have any input, we are all ears!!

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At the Green Garage, we are working on using predictive temperature controls to "sail" our building into the future instead of traditional reactive controls, where the building goes out of tolerance and then the systems respond after the fact to bring it back. While we are in our "Beta period", learning how the building and comfort systems respond to various inside and outside conditions, we are doing this manually by watching the weather and then setting the system operation and setpoints to head the building where we think it needs to be based on weather forecasts and anticipated interior building loading. As we learn the building patterns, we hope to then explore ways to use these observations to try to program our systems to accomplish the predictive nature of the controls automatically in the future. We are finding that for a super insulated building with highly integrated sources of energy (renewable and high efficiency), this really is not just a "nice feature", but more of a necessity as it takes time to affect change on the mass of the building and the mass storage of the system (water in thermal storage tanks).

The article referenced in this blog (click on title to follow link to article) goes even a little deeper into the nature of controls and talks about how our old standby method of controlling a component using PID loops (proportional / integral / derivative) no longer will serve us in a world of integrated systems and optimization for energy efficiency as we embrace new systems and concepts in the HVAC world. PID loops are too independent and limited in many cases, it would seem, to be able to recognize how the various components in today's subsystems need to be controlled relative to one another to come up with the most efficient overall combination of operations for the entire system. The author of the article calls this "Relational Control", and this is definitely an area that we are finding we need to address as well at the Green Garage to continue our quest to be near net-zero energy. There are so many components in the overall system with so many variables, it will take a decent computer algorithm to figure out in real time where each associated component should be controlled so that it doesn't fight other associated components or cause them to operate at inefficient points.

As part of this development, we will begin looking at component and subsystem optimization as experiments in the Sustainability Labs so that we can understand and help further this evolution of the temperature controls industry. With our Web-based controls, we will be able to open this up in our Online Labs and have any interested virtual Labs geeks participate. So if you are interested in the Labs but aren't able to make it down to the Green Garage on Fridays, here's a way that you can become a MADD (Make A Difference Daily) scientist too!!

Please click on the title of this Blog to go to "It's Time to Replace PID With Relational Control" by Tom Hartman, P.E. to learn more.

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Trash Audit: The Best Laid Plans...

What happens when you are in a community of kind, generous people that support each other unconditionally? When someone drops the ball, there's always someone else right there to back them up. How this manifested itself on our first Trash Audit Day is that one of our good samaritan's thought someone forgot to put the garbage out curbside for collection and, seeing it still in the building mid-morning on Friday, wheeled it out to the curb just in time to be picked up.

So, imagine our surprise when we went to do our trash audit on our carefully saved garbage from the past week and found the can at the curb...empty! Always quick on our feet, the Labs group huddled up and decided to rename the activity Recycling Audit Day instead of trash audit, and we went ahead and performed an audit on our recycling streams.

As we went through each bin, we began to realize how much there was to learn from each stream of recyclables, and we were actually glad that we didn't have the regular trash in addition to the recyclables as it took up all our allotted time just to do the recycle bins sorting.  Here is a pictorial index of what we found in our first recycling audit. We're getting clarification on a few items that we weren't sure what to do with, so we have more learning to do!

     Next scheduled trash audit is November 18, 2011 at 1:30 p.m. at the Green Garage in Detroit, MI....provided we have some trash!!