The Green Garage

Frozen Solar Panel Incident - Problem Solving at the Green Garage

Throughout the construction phase of our work, we've been exceedingly lucky in remaining somewhat trouble-free when it came to our systems. Interestingly enough, most of the glitches have, in one way or another, involved water. If you own a home, you probably understand how water issues can be quite frustrating to solve. In our case, we've have some leaks from our water storage tanks (not ususual considering the fact that we bought them used) and we have sprung a couple of leaks in the pex tubes under our floors (always related to screwing the boards back down). But these issues have been long resolved and are in fact quite minor compared with what we faced this past week.

Tom was working one morning at the building and somehow had the intuition that something might not be right with the heating system, and decided to get online and look at the numbers for the solar panels. He discovered that although the panels themselves read 195F degrees, the water coming out of them read 64F degrees. Clearly something was wrong. Joe got onto the roof and discovered that in fact they were leaking water. Two of the panels appeared damaged.

Panels with evidence of water damage

We were, of course, puzzled by the problem. The panels had been up and running for a number of months now without a glitch. Joe put in calls to the manufacturer and to others at the Green Garage who might give us some insight. Tom also developed a page on our wiki (appropriately called Frozen Solar Panel Incident) with questions and possible scenarios.

The manufacturer suggested, not surprisingly and perhaps quite appropriately, that we replace the damaged panels with new ones. We decided, instead, to attempt to repair the damaged panels. So the next day a team got on the roof, found 3 damaged panels (instead of 2), took them down and disassembled them. They called in a representative from Expert Mechanical (who has worked with us to set up this system) and he brazed (repaired) the holes and cracks in the copper tubing.

Brazing the holes and cracks in the panels

The panels were reassembled and returned to the roof. All three panels were repaired in three hours.  At this point we saw that they ran and drained properly. No issues. The cause was a mystery.

Laurie and Joe scoping the tanks

The answer didn't come until a couple of days later. Tom had asked Laurie Catey and the Sustainability Labs crew to take this on during their regular Friday session. The group spent most of Friday afternoon talking through possible scenarios, and finally got up on top of the tanks to conduct some hands-on investigation. Joe had begun to suspect a problem with water levels in the tanks, and so Laurie decided to send a small scope with camera down into the tanks to see if this was the case. Sure enough, she found the source of the problem. We think the problem was they didn't drain fully because the end of the solar panel return line was in the water.  The design called for it to be above the water line to let air in the return line allowing it to drain. The probe found that the return pipe was only 0.5 - 1.0 inch above the water line.  Given that we regularly lose some water (tiny tank leak) and we lost water during the panel leak, it is highly probable that in the near past that pipe was submerged in the water. With the return line in the water, the water on the solar panel supply side drained down only to the point where the suction (vacuum) from above was as strong and the weight of the returning water (the head).  This caused the panels to drain to about 2 feet from the bottom of the panel...which is where the panel tubing fractures occurred.  As Joe said, the problem is as if you put your finger on the top of the straw and then lifted it out of your drink ... all the water stays in the straw...the vacuum holds it up.  Lift your finger and air comes in and the water falls out.

So Joe has cut the drain pipe, making it shorter, so this should not occur again. When we got the panels running again, the temperature of the 5,000 gallons of water in the tanks rose 7 degrees in one day!

The reason I'm reporting on this in such detail is not that you will ever need this specific knowledge - I doubt most of you have this sort of heating system in your homes. There is a larger issue, and it has to do with transparency and openness in solving problems. Often when systems go wrong, mechanical or otherwise, organizations tend to become inward-focused. Knowledge of the problem is not offered to the public or the larger working community until a solution has been found. In our case, we immediately put word out to an extended network and communicated the issue on our site and social networking. In the end, it was a combination of responses and skill-sets that provided the solution.

Sustainability work can be messy, and things will not always go according to plan. Some of the things we are doing are, to say the least, unusual, and so the learning curve is steep. When we committed to a continuous commissioning of this building, I think we understood that we were developing a problem-solving methodology that was also going to be non-traditional. The real beauty of this is that it's working!

Trash Audit

A couple of weeks ago we performed our first audit of the trash in our building. You may recall that a month ago we were ready to audit the trash, but someone in the building, obviously an overachiever, took the trash out early that morning. We were lucky enough to nail down the trash this time, however, and we were set to go.

The procedure basically encompassed emptying the trash onto a tarp and sifting through it to determine real trash vs. incorrectly placed items. We put everything into piles - paper, glass, metal, etc. Then we photographed all of the piles and recycled what we could before putting the trash into its correct bin. Laurie Catey, our chief labs scientist (and mechanical engineer by trade) developed an awesome Trash Audit Google Doc Workbook that I encourage you to look through. Make sure you open all of the tabs at the bottom, and you'll find the very scientific and detailed approach Laurie takes to her work. You'll find a description of the purpose of the audit (awareness and eventual reduction in trash output), our procedures, results, analysis, pictorial summary, and finally our to-do's before the next audit.

Here's a look at our incorrect trash streams by number. Metal ranked higher mainly because of the presence of some rogue screws that bumped the numbers up even though their presence was tiny in size.

We learned a number of things. First, we seem to be doing pretty well overall in trash output, but there's room for improvement. We need to get a container for bottlecaps. We are concerned about the use of compostable paper cups, as they need a compost pile that gets to at least 160 degrees, and most home composters don't achieve that temperature. So we need to discuss this with Matt at Recycle Here and get his thoughts. And we need to do a small seminar on trash and recycling at the Green Garage before the next audit, and then see if the results come up a bit improved. Our overall goal is to not only reduce trash output but to also reduce the amount of materials that we are recycling, but the first step is awareness....and that's where we are now.

Recycling Audit at the Green Garage

Last Friday we held the first audit of the materials we have in our recycling bins. We were also scheduled to hold our first trash audit that day, and had every detail figured out...except for the one tiny detail that entailed our trash being taken out that morning by well-meaning cleaners. Ah, well.

The purpose of these audits is ultimately to reduce the amount of trash and recycling exiting the building. We also want to determine if materials are being placed in the correct stream.

As it turns out, there was plenty to examine in our recycling audit. We spread out a tarp in the 3-season room, brought in all of our recycling bins, emptied them out and began sorting. Our mixed paper bin looked like this when emptied:

We found all kinds of erroneously plaed items, like this envelope (Want to know what's wrong? The plastic insert had to be removed.)

When we finished with the paper items, we had 4 piles. Clockwise, from botom left: good, glossy (has to be separate), bad, and questionable items. We are heading over to Recycle Here, where we do our recycling, next Wednesday to meet with Matt Naimi and talk over some of these questionable items.

Here's what the plastics recycling bin looked like when emptied:

Believe it or not, much of this was incorrectly placed. A big mistake is leaving bottlecaps on bottles and leaving liquid in them. Bottlecaps cannot be recycled at Recycle Here (We will be harvesting ours and taking them to Aveda. They use them in their products.). Bottles need to be rinsed out. Plastic bags can't be recycled unless they have a number on them. The group of small plastic pieces to the right are old plastic casters from our DPS chairs, and since they don't have a number, they can't be recycled.

Here's how the glass recycling bin contents looked:

And no, we don't drink that much. We pick up bottles off the sidewalk and recycle them inside. You can see a similar problem as with the plastics - bottles with caps still on that haven't been rinsed. But for the most part, people correctly placed glass in the right container, as opposed to plastics, which are more complex.

Another easy item to audit was the styrofoam bin (yes, we can recycle styrofoam, although we discourage its use). It wasn't hard to find the one incorrectly placed item.

You would think that the analysis of the contents of the metal recycling bin would have been just as simple, but we found some issues. First, we have been using a particular stain for our desks and tables, and the metal tins were put into the bin without rinsing. We are unclear as to whether or not to throw them out or rinse them all out and add pollutants to our water. It doesn't seem like a good choice, and we'll talk with Matt about it. In addition, the paint can needed the lid removed (although interestingly, the paint inside the can, when dried, was fine to remain).

When we finished with our recycling audit, we turned to our refrigerator to see if any items needed to be thrown out. We were pretty clean, except for a fermenting yogurt parfait.

Laurie Catey of the Green Garage Sustainability Labs wrote up the results of the audit, including the following chart that graphs the amount of recyclables we are sending out per cubic foot:

You can see that we are recycling more cardboard and metal than other items, understandable considering the fact that we are finishing up construction work in the building.

Laurie also drew up this correct usage chart, looking at the percentage of correctly placed items in the various bins.

We have some work to do in the realm of plastics, but otherwise we're doing pretty well.

So overall here's what we learned:

1. Make sure you have notified everyone before a trash audit so they don't take the trash out!
2. Measuring recycling items by volume rather than weight is appropriate, as many recycling items weigh too little.
3. We have 2 sets of bins, one in the kitchen and one in the annex. The usage of the bins appears more accurate in the kitchen than the annex.
4. We have a lot of items that have an unclear destination, so we have gathered them up and we'll talk with Matt.
5. This is a far more complex process than we originally thought. Again, worth a conversation with Matt.

Next up, on the 18th of November, is our trash audit. We'll be conducting these audits periodically, continuing to measure, with the hope that the volume of products leaving the building continues to shrink.

Blower Door Test

We are finally done with construction and we're proud of the fact that we've been able to transform an old Model T showroom into a net-zero energy building. Or is it? We haven't really proven anything yet until the energy usage numbers come in. All of our energy modeling testing shows that our building is so efficient and tight that our estimate to heat it is $300 per year. But the proof is in the numbers that will follow.

One group who will be following the building's performance closely is the sustainability labs group. They call themselves the "truth window" into the Green Garage. They will be monitoring 3 areas: waste, water and the building comfort systems. Last week the labs group ran their first test: a blower door test. This is a test of a building's envelope, determining the effectiveness of the seal. The process involves placing a fan in the doorway of a building, and turning it on to achieve a pressure differential between the inside and the outside. It puts a number on the amount of leakage coming from the building.

Last Thursday was the designated day for the test, and Laurie Catey, Chief Labs Scientist, showed up early to prep the building for the test, appropriately dressed for the occasion.

Because we tested the historic and annex sections of our building separately, we first had to tightly seal any openings between the two buildings. This took about an hour.

Once we were sealed up, Ken of Kenco Insulation Company set up the doorway fan in the annex.

While the fan was running, a number of tests took place. Laurie watched the numbers to see how many cfm (cubic feet per minute) of air was being exhausted from the building.

Ken took his thermal imaging tool around to see if he could detect leaks.

Mike McCarty went around with the smoke stick, looking for leaks at doorways and windows.

Much of the data still has to be analyzed, but early indicators are that the building is performing well. The recommended minimal ACH natural infltration is 0.35, according to ASHRAE standards, and we came in at 0.09 ACH natural infiltration, indicating that the building sealing has been very successful at preventing negative heat loss or heat gain on the building. The one area where there was some leakage was our garage door in the annex, and we bought the most well insulated door we could get.

Next month's experiment involves the trash output of the building. We'll be getting together on November 4th at 1:30, rubber gloves in hand, to weigh and take apart our trash. We'll be charting the weight of our trash on a regular basis, and will determine how well we are reducing what is going out of the building. Ah, the glamorous life of the Green Garage Labs Scientists!

 

Why It's Important To Study a Foreign Language To Be Sustainable

As you know, we are inches away from obtaining our certificate of occupancy. We have a few niggling details to work through, and we will be good to go. One of these minor details has to do with the computerized controls for our heating and cooling system. As you may recall, we have solar panels connected to large water storage tanks, and pex tubing coming from those tanks runs under our floors, providing radiant heating and cooling. Our back-up is an Altherma heat pump. All of this runs on programming that is currently being tested. Yesterday I heard from Jeff, one of our heating and cooling specialists, that he has finally figured out why we can't seem to get the cooling programming to work. Apparently the heating/cooling board that Mitsubishi sent wasn't really a heating/cooling board at all -- it was just a heating board. He discovered this after repeated attempts to get the board to respond to cooling commands and getting nothing. How could this happen?

He surmises it was a language issue. Native Japanese speakers usually send the appropriate parts to customers, and Mitsubishi is finding that there are a number of errors similar to ours because something was 'lost in translation.' Now the company is beginning to hire more Americans who speak Japanese to help, and they're finding that the situation is somewhat alleviating. In the meantime, we have another wait until we get the right board into our system.

So, folks, the lesson here is clear: Pay attention in language class! We need you in order to continue our sustainability work. And, who knows, you might get a job in an industry that you would never have expected.

Finally, an apology from me: Sumimasen. Watashi no nihongo ta totemo wauri desu. (My sincere apologies! My Japanese is very bad.)

 

A Sustainable Kitchen

Our kitchen is finished. It was designed by Kevin Gardner (who recently graduated from the College for Creative Studies in Design) and constructed by Jason Peet. Here's the finished product:

We wanted this kitchen to meet the same requirements as the rest of the building, with most of the components coming from the US waste stream. The dark cabinets we found on Craigslist. They were purchased from a home in Troy that was going through a remodel. They are 1956 steel cabinets that were originally yellow before we painted them. They fit our space beautifully.

The maple countertops came from Cooley High School. Their original use was countertops for the shop classes. Jason sanded them down to produce a beautiful finish.

The dishwasher is new. It's a high-efficiency 2-drawer model (so we can run small loads through separately).

The refrigerator is really a converted freezer. Refrigerators are the biggest energy suckers in a kitchen, especially the freezer, and so we decided to buy a chest freezer, along with a converter kit which allows the temps to remain at refrigeration levels, and use it as our source of cooling. Freezers are better insulated than refrigerators, and since cold air stays low, when it's opened only the top air (which is warmest) will escape. We estimated that it will cost $4 a year to run.

The shelving above the counters is made from reporposed wood in the building. The shelves are being supported by aircraft cable, which we harvested as extra from our hanging lights.

The lights below the shelves are LCD under cabinet lights. This is a beautiful working space -- thanks Jason!

 

 

 

Before and after - green alley

This is a good time for a before and after look at the alley next to the Green Garage. We bought the building on December 31 of 2007, and as winter made its way into spring, it became evident that something had to be done with the alley between us and the Blackstone. It looked pretty bad. 

John and Dan from Motor City Brewing Works approached us with the idea of working together to improve the alley, and we agreed, but only if we could turn it into a 'green' alley. They were fine with that, and so we spent about a year in design work. We designed a community space for walkers and bkiers, lined with native Michigan plants and permeable pavers to absorb the rain water, lit it with high induction lighting, and the resultant space well exceeds our initial dreams.

We were curious as to what effect this improved space would have on the neighborhood. Since the green alley just celebrated its first 'birthday,' I can report that it has produced tremendous change, far more than we anticipated. When we are out tending to the plants, we can't go more than a few minutes without people walking or biking through, often stopping to chat with us. Mothers bring their children through to see the plants, like Danielle and her son last week.

John and Dan of Motor City developed the alley entrance of their building to face the alley, making that the main entrance.

Last weekend, in celebration of the first year of our new community space, 2 events took place in the alley. On Saturday night about 50 people joined us for a showing of a Charlie Chaplin movie, complete with popcorn donated by Good People Popcorn. Sunday night we celebrated with a community pot-luck dinner. The evening was magical.

I think this alley is a testament to the power of conversations. This all started with a conversation between us and the people at Motor City Brewing Works. Soon after we discussed this project with other alley neighbors, and eventually included other community members in the planning process. This was not a single-vision project, but rather the culmination of varied ideas coming from a community of people that turned this into a beautiful walkway. It's amazing what can happen when people come together!

For more details on the alley, see the green alley pages on our site.

Status Update, and Why It's Taking So Long

We're still here! Construction continues, despite our best efforts to wrap this thing up. Some of the issues involve getting materials and people all together at the same time, some have to do with chains-of-events that we have no control over, and some things are simply taking longer than expected. Anyone who has done construction in their home can relate to this. I thought I'd give you just one example of a system that is held up by one small bug: water.

When we designed our heating and cooling system, many of you know that we first reduced the load needing heating and cooling by following passive design techniques: super-insulating the building, adding lots of natural light and allowing for as much natural ventilation as possible. The passive elements took care of 90% of our heating and cooling needs. At that point we could have put a furnace/AC unit in the building and called it a day. But we were striving for net-zero energy, and we want to be a demonstration center of what's possible, so our next step involved using solar-thermal panels connected to large water storage tanks, with water from the tanks flowing through pex tubing under our floors to provide radiant heating and cooling. Our glitch is the tanks.

We had a number of choices on the tanks: we could have gone with new, we could have had someone make them (someone offered), and we could find them from the U.S. waste stream. We chose the last option, found them on bidonequipment.com, and had them delivered. Here's what they look like:

The outsides look pretty iffy, but the insides are insulated and for the most part are in pretty good shape. We had Dormouse, a metal fabricating company from Detroit, come take a look at them and do initial repairs. We thought we were in pretty good shape, but as we filled the tanks with water, we came across leaks at various levels. Each time we found a leak, we had to empty the tanks (our gardens were the main beneficiary), which took about a day, have Dormouse come and locate the new leak, patch it, and fill them again. We've done a good number of fill/empty cycles, and we are almost there. So now you may have a better understanding of why all of this takes a while. It's a process, and we're practicing patience as we move through it.

As we move through this punch list, other work is getting done. Chad Dickinson has completed the reception area furniture and is moving on to constructiong the bookcases and desk that will be the library. Reception desk below.

Jason Peet is working on the kitchen.

Other finishing touches are being added, and of course the alley is a reminder that some day soon we'll reap the benefits of all this work.

 

Setting up the heating/cooling system

Last week and into this week we've been getting some things in place for our heating and cooling system. You might remember our somewhat complicated system: solar thermal panels on the roof of the annex heat up the water in tanks (also in the annex), and that water runs via pex tubing under our floors to provide radiant heat in the winter. In the summer, the panels are, for the most part, covered, and the water in the tanks is cooled during the night for daytime use. Our back-up system for a couple of months aof the year is an Altherma heat pump. Perhaps you're familiar with the diagram below:

The radiant tubing is under our floor, the panels are on the roof, and now we are getting ready to get some water into the tanks. We found our 2 insulated tanks on bid-on-equipment.com. They are pretty sound, but need a little patching, so this week Dormouse (the metal fabricating company that built our stairway from our old steam pipes) has been working on the patches. Here's some work they were doing on Wednesday.

In addition, we are beginning to frame out the insulated wall that will surround these tanks. We're calling this area 'tank town' because Woody Melcher came up with an ingenious way to hide the tanks by making the area look like a little town. The design hides our annex bathroom and provides lockers for the people working in the building.

Currently the frame looks like this:

As part of the design, we need things like lockers, so in keeping with our mission to buy used items, we've been looking around for some. This past week a group went over to the Detroit Public Schools warehouse and found a treasure trove of used items, including lockers, like the ones pictured below.

We've also been working on the bathrooms and shower room, putting in light fixtures and tile. Here is some of the tile work that was done in the shower earlier this week.

On a final note, our work in the alley is proving to be sound. Yesterday, you may remember that it rained all day. Detroit's alley's, especially, have problems with water puddling up and sitting. As I made my way from the car to the Green Garage, I dodged some pretty intense bodies of water, but when I got to the alley, this is how it looked:

All of that water ended up doing what we wanted it to do: it fed the growing plants that line the alley. I didn't hear the rush of water into the sewer; in fact, I saw no stream heading there. Success!

Back again

I'm back to writing this blog after a hiatus of about 8 months. Part of the reason for the break was the busy construction schedule, but the main reason was the fact that I felt that adding a blog to website reporting and facebook updates seemed....well, a little redundant. Recently, however, I've spoken with people who indicated that not only did they read the blog, but that it came right up near the top of Google results when typing in 'green garage detroit.' Interesting. In addition, they mentioned that for many people, when they want to know the latest that's happening somewhere, they look for the blog as the best information source. I was curious, so I opened my blog today, dusted aside the cobwebs, looked at the stats, and found that a surprising number of people are still reading it even though the last post is from July 11 of last year. I guess it's got staying power.

Since we're moving from construction mode to business mode, this is probably a good time to get this narrative resurrected. Let me update you on the most recent work. First, the floor is officially done! It took 6 months of work, most of which involved leveling the sleepers (the boards on which the final floor will rest).  Generally, in construction, floors will be leveled with a cement base. We bucked the trend and decided to skip the cement and hand level the sleepers, for a couple of reasons. First, cement has a high embodied energy component (it takes a lot of energy to make cement), and that's not efficient (although the guys that did the hand leveling could make a good argument as to which method involved more energy). Second, and to be completely honest, we didn't realize it would take so long to do hand leveling.

These are pretty complicated floors - our heating, cooling and electrical systems all reside under them. Here is a picture of the floor before the final wood planks were put down - the pex tubing will carry the water that will heat and cool the building.

On top of the tubing, we put down our wood floor, which is comprised of wood from fallen oak and ash trees from southeast Michigan and dried in a solar kiln in Troy. It was a happy day last week when the final planks were put in place. Eduardo had to lay down and celebrate!

We're also getting the showers tiled. The floor tiles have 60% recycled content. The wall tiles have only 40% recycled content, but we are going to add tiles we received as 'seconds' from the Michigan Design Center as accent pieces. Here's Juan doing tile work last Friday.

We are enjoying visitors from everywhere, many of whom have been following the progress of the Green Garage from a distance. I gave a tour to the Mowle family on Friday - they are in town from Ontario and added a tour of our building to their vacation schedule. I'm begining to find that Kevin's wall is our #1 photo op spot!

Next week we'll be continuing work on heating and cooling and bathrooms. We'll also be constructing the wall that will cover the tanks in the annex (reminder: the tanks store the water that will heat or cool the building). Also, happily, we have a meeting with the people that will be coming in to do the first clean of the building (the first clean has to happen before the painting can begin).

For you blog readers, I promise it won't take me 8 months to write the next post! I'll get something out at least once a week.