Seattle Green buildings frought with failures

Seattle's very expensive environmentally friendly City Hall and Justice Center are recognized and have received awards for their design.

Each building are plagued with quite a number of problems — and fixing them is going to cost taxpayers millions of dollars. This, only two years later.

-Light reflecting shelves don't work and create glare
-The Green Roof, a oxygen-producing, rainwater-preserving is dead and had to be re-planted.
-Boilers are exploding.
-Cops have trouble getting hot water to their locker rooms. -Offices are too hot or too cold.

"Tenants are uncomfortable and we are wasting money heating and cooling air that is not reaching them," according to one city report.

"This is the same sort of problem they're having everywhere, and the more that you mandate this system and the more, in some cases, that you try to fit a square peg in a round hole, you're going to see these costs go up," said Todd Myers, director of the center for environmental policy (search) at the Washington Policy Center.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,155782,00.html

You posted this without commentary, so I'm not sure what you really think, but going your past writings are sharply critical of most environmetalists and environmental reforms.

So... would you end all attempts at reducing the environmental impact of buildings because the first experiments aren't entirely successful? Or are you critical of the two projects mentioned, or...?

This is an example of the jackbooted morons in the government doing damage to themselves. Unfortunately it's a drop in the bucket to the damage they inflict on the rest of us.

This is an example of government trying to put on a new face without actually changing any of their ideas behind the pretty facade /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif spend money on wonderful designs that I'm sure would have worked, and then hire the same lowest bidder contractor to screw it up that they hire to not fill potholes.

It's not the effort of building a green building that I'm critical of, it's their utter failure to manage the project. which is typical of large projects the world over.

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idleprocess said:
You posted this without commentary, so I'm not sure what you really think, but going your past writings are sharply critical of most environmetalists and environmental reforms.

So... would you end all attempts at reducing the environmental impact of buildings because the first experiments aren't entirely successful? Or are you critical of the two projects mentioned, or...?

[/ QUOTE ]


I am critical of the feel good stuff that is not firmly based on sound logic/science, the emotional feel good type stuff that folks leap and latch on to.

I'm for stuff that actually makes a difference and helps. Here in Oregon, I've seen way too many examples of feel-good environmental policies/actions that have made things worse for the creature/environment. Often they are things that make one feel good, emotionally charged, and sound great on the surface.

The atypical tack of all or nothing is another battle cry which often accompanies emotionally based environmental causes. Often I feel a more sound plan of action that is implemented in phases, working towards a goal, measuring and monitoring the results as you go, adjusting the plan as needed to bring about the desired result is a more sane method. It also results in less folks being offended/misplaced, and allows people from both sides of the track to work towards a common goal.

The non-Native(depending on whom you listen to) Suckerfish fiasco is a great example. They darn near killed off the whole population of them, meanwhile destroying the livelyhood of many farmers in the Kalmath basin. The suckerfish thrives in shallow oxygen rich warm water. They cut off the farmer's deeded water rights, and kept the streams high and deep. This cold, deep, and oxygen deficient water actually harmed the suckerfish population. With a little more science involved, they could have just maintained the stream levels and given part of the water to the farmers. Instead, both the fish and the farmers suffered.

All the irrigation water was cut off to 90% of the farmers, comprising 1400 farming families. Kalmath Lake was built in the early 1900's to bring life to a desert area. The farmers had deeded rights to the irrigation water. Over decades the farmers through hard work changed the land, turning it into an abundant farmland. Veterans returning from past wars were offered the opportunity to create new lives here, and in fact, many of their deeds are signed by various Presidents.

"Water was guaranteed to the residents of the Klamath Basin forever; by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. "

On top of that, the government built the lake smack dab in the middle of a small wetlands:
"There is evidence to suggest that suckerfish came to the region when the Bureau of Reclamation destroyed 75 percent of the Basin's 350,000 acres of naturally-occurring wetlands to create the irrigation district in 1906. "

Oregon Senator Gordon Smith (R) estimates that no irrigation water will mean a loss of $200 million to the local economy. In this area, farming (and activities supporting farming) are pretty much the only source of income.

As an example of something is more prudent, imho. The Federal Government should buy the deeded water rights from the farmers on dry years, if they are going to take the deeded water away from the farmers.


Finally, sane things are happening.
Appeals court rules plaintiffs must prove
harm to invoke Endangered Species Act
""For too long, environmentalists have been able to easily obtain injunctions against property owners on the basis that courts should give the benefit of the doubt to the species. The Ninth Circuit has just put environmentalists on notice that now they are going to have to give courts legitimate evidence of a likelihood of harm" they can't get away with destroying people's lives on baseless allegations anymore, Brooks said. "
http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/esa/esa%20lawsuits/esaprovharm050105.htm

The diversion of water for the suckerfish has basically destroyed the populations of two lakes, you can see pictures of Tule Lake and Tingley Lake at the top of the web page here, check out the 2001 photos... At least the snowgeese had water in 2004.
http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/

In fact, there is a petition you can sign if you disagree with the government actions:
http://www.petitiononline.com/klamath/

heaven forbid they find some rare species of tadpole growing in a puddle that formed in the back of my truck. They would force me to park it and water it and care for it and I would have to walk everywhere, have to buy lillipads and rocks and make my truckbed into a pond at my expense even while paying off lawyer bills adding up in the thousands.

This is probably a non existant idea of how far the extremism could go one day....

Oh, I'm aware of how inefficiently government spends money. I used to work for a community college, and I quickly found out just how badly they shafted the taxpayers with their purchases from government suppliers and their BS "competitive bidding" (they would have been better off paying retail without shopping around). Paying $3000 for computers work $1000-$1400 was common. Floppy disks were sold at the bookstore for $2.50 each when $1/ea for name brands was average price.

What was really bad was that they forced all departments to buy supplies from the bookstore - whose prices were double retail at the least.

That college would have been nearly twice as (financially) effective if they had just done away with their intensely stupid purchasing policies. Makes me wonder what kind of kickbacks the fine folks in the purchasing department were receiving...

What kind of idiot designs a roof that requires replanting?I'm all for conservation but someone out there needs to get a grip.

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MrTwoTone said:
What kind of idiot designs a roof that requires replanting?I'm all for conservation but someone out there needs to get a grip.

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I take it that you don't spend much time on the west coast...

Actually there is a good article in this past months "This Old House" magazine about green roofs. I think they are a great idea! If done properly of course. Significantly improve your insulation, significantly reduce the heat gain that you'd get from sunlight. I have a flat black roof (which got a leak last week by the way) over a room that costs a fortune to cool in the summer due to that heat gain. I'm going to give it a light white wash soon to try to reduce that, but ultimately planting a garden up there would be an excellent solution.

However, you have to plant drought tolerant plants /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Or, setup to water your roof when it doesn't rain /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif If you use the wrong plants, and the wrong setup underneath them, then they are going to die and you just have a muddy roof /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

So I think it's a very cool idea! But you just can't take lowest bidder on projects that involve new technology and new techniques.

Green roofs are a 'sound-good' idea that take a lot of behind the scenes engineering and technical experts to make work right.

Sure you can get some better insulation effect by having a 'green roof'. You just put a foot or so of wet dirt on your roof! And you have plants growing up there. And the roof is now longer plain black and absorbing all that solar heat load.

But you now have to make the entire structure able to support the dirt and water and plants growing on the roof. You have to care for and maintain the green plants, or like James said you just have a bunch of mud and dead plants on your roof.

You have to design and build the roof to handle constant moisture on top of it now.

The idea is simple, the execution and the details are not all that simple.

Oh, and Lynx-Arc, don't discount your "tadpole in the truck bed" scenario as that outrageous. The Environmental folks have recently declared that a depression in the ground that might get a puddle in it in the spring from heavy rains is a protected "Vernal wetland" and must be protected. Protected meaning that you have to keep the puddle and the muck around it.

Sound ideas based on fact and logic that help are great, sound-good/feel-good policies are not good.

Arrgh!!!!

I worked at a place where they planted a rose garden on the second floor as an artistic endeavour. Some small trees were planted as a counterpoint to the rose bushes. The plants looked beautiful, until the roots started to find the joints in the sealed concrete.

The weight of wet dirt needs to be taken into account, as does the heat buildup in the soil. I recall reading that dark green is actually the bast for absorbing heat from sunlight. A thick roof (but not too thick) that acts as a thermal store may not be helpful in some climates. I'm thinking of Phoenix, for instance, where nighttime cooling is desired.

Daniel

A roof that can change from light to dark might actually be the best idea here. In the winter you want a dark roof to take advantage of passive solar heating. In the summer quite the opposite. A interesting Idea I have is to put solar panels on the roof with cooling tubes under them. In the summer, you circulate cold water through the tubes. This warms the water slightly, cools the solar panels (a good idea actually since it makes them a little more efficient), and keeps the roof temperature cooler to lighten the AC load. After that the water, already preheated a bit, goes to the water heater, thus saving a little energy. In the winter you don't cool the panels. Whatever heat the panels absorb (since they are dark) helps to heat the house. In all cases you get "free" electricity as a bonus.

NO! I dont want to mow the lawn dad... last time I fell off the roof and broke my leg and also the birds keep trying to bomb me becaue I keep pulling up the small trees their nests are in.

Just imagine people practicing putting on their roof because the greens up there are smoother than the back yard and have no dog stuff to step in.

Where I work at, we have a partially green parking garage.
Part of it has the building overtop of it.
The south end of it and just the east and west edges have dirt, landscape, trees and especially the south end a big flowerbed over it.
Hardly any leaks at all anywhere down there.