The Green Garage

Friday lunch recap 10/4/12: Solar thermal panel seasonal prep

The subject of Friday, 10/4's lunchtime presentation was solar panels. More specifically, the Green Garage's solar thermal panels, which we've recently turned on in preparation for the coming cool weather.

Joe Gallagher, who did construction design and management for the Green Garage (and is currently doing the same work for our residential project, the El Moore),  is responsible for keeping an eye on the GG's panels. He gave us a quick introduction to the GG's solar thermal heating system, which includes an array of ten panels on the roof that heat 5,000 gallons' worth of water. When the temperature drops and the building starts requiring heat, the water is pumped through tubes in our floor, providing radiant heating.

Joe walked us through the process by which the tanks start heating the water, which started on September 2nd. By September 3rd, we saw an increase in the water temperature in the tanks of 20.8 degrees.

Joe's goal around this time of year for the past couple years has been to get the water in the tanks to a temperature of 160 degrees. Are we there yet this year? Joe thinks so (an external sensor suggests the temperature recently hit 155, and since it's just outside the tank, he thinks the water is in fact hotter), but our sustainability labs are going to get a firmer answer today, actually, with the use of a very long thermometer.

Whether we get to 160 or not, though, we're optimistic that we'll be able to comfortably heat our historic, 12,500 square foot building all winter with free energy we're harnessing from the sun. (But we'll get to 160.)

 

Friday lunch: the life in the soil

Last Friday, our resident rooftop farmer Kirsten Lyons spent a few minutes disussing the microbial life in the soil around us.

Kirsten, who manages the Green Garage's urban rooftop farm, has been playing in and learning about Michigan soil for decades as a gardener, farmer, and landscape designer. Some years ago, her passion for soil brought her into contact with the work of Elaine Ingham, a soil biologist who advocates for an ecological approach to soil management. 

Rather than relying on chemicals and tilling to nourish healthy soils, Ingham's approach consists in learning about the astonishing abundance and diversity of microbial life that calls the soil its home, then naturally creating the conditions in which that life can thrive. A thoughtfully balanced microbial ecosystem should yield an abundance of productive, healthy crops, a hypothesis that Ingham's practice confirms repeatedly.

Kirsten discussed her own love of the soil and explained the basics of Ingham's work while showing a serires of microsope videos taken by her, Helen Bradley, and Caroline Peterson, two other Green Garagers who've been heavily involved in the rooftop farm. The short videos offer a remarkable glimpse of our microscopic relatives that thrive in the vast, teeming world beneath our feet. Here are two of them:

 

 

 

Friday lunch: the buzz about bees

Well, hello there! After more than a year away, we've decided that it's time to dust off the old blog, in part to extend the reach of our Friday lunch conversations.

If you've never attended a Friday lunch, we hold them every single Friday (except major holidays) at noon. Everyone brings a lunch and introduces themselves, then we introduce the work that goes on at the Green Garage and host a brief presentation, either about our work in sustainability or the work of one of our businesses-in-residence. (After lunch, starting a few minutes past 1:00, we give a tour of our building.) 

From here on out, we're going to do our best to recap all the presentations here on the Green Garage blog so that folks who can't make it to lunch can still connect with the material & the people presenting it.

Last week, we invited Rich Wieskie, an avid local beekeeper, to talk a bit about beekeeping in Detroit. We met Rich in June when we interviewed him for a beekeeping-themed entry in Green City Diaries, our monthly sustainability series.

We changed our presentation format this time, hosting a Q & A between Matt Piper, the author of Green City Diaries, and Rich. Joan Mandell, Rich's partner in life and bees, was also in attendance and chimed in to help answer a few of the questions.

Rich & Joan in the Green Alley

We touched on a lot in a brief conversation: the history of beekeeping in Detroit, its current state, the ecological significance of the honeybee, the meditative personal dimension of beekeeping, as well as the life cycle of these fascinating creatures. A great insight from Rich was how relatively healthy urban bees have remained during the recent decades' honeybee crises, compared to bees that live near large agricultural sites. The diversity of urban flora (a diversity that is, in fact, promoted by bees) and smaller-scale use of pesticides in cities has helped urban honeybees stay safe. Fascinating.