[Greenbuilding] living wall

[RT]

On Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:52:41 -0500, Gennaro Brooks-Church
<info at ecobrooklyn.com> wrote:

> I'm building a 35*20 foot exterior living wall that needs to hold most of
> its weight and is attached to a brick brownstone facade. I am looking for
> long lasting (50 plus?) materials to form the structure.

You'll have to excuse some of us old geezers for being confoozed by the  
above query.

"Living Wall" has, for the longest time meant a wall like the one  
installed in the Canada Life Assurance building in Toronto back in the  
mid-to-late 1990's

http://www.ibiblio.org/london/renewable-energy/mailarchives/greenbuilding2/msg00997.html

and more recently, marketed by

http://www.naturaire.com/natural_air_cleaning.php


It appears that Gennaro is simply wanting to hang a trellis for some
greenery to climb on ?

If one chooses the right vegetation, no "structure" should be necessary.

The stalks can be trained to take on almost any configuration desired and  
with each passing year those woody stalks become "structure" that is  
capable of supporting vegetation other than itself.

It would simply be a matter of either driving something like Tapcon screws  
into the mortar joints to have something to lash the stalks to while  
training them. Or a simpler, less intrusive wall attachment would be the  
spring clips that grab onto the edges of a brick

http://www.leevalley.com/en/gifts/page.aspx?p=10437&cat=4,104,53209&ap=5

But if a construction of some sort is absolutely necessary, it seems  
bizarre that an aspiring "Green" builder would opt for high  
embodied-energy aluminum or stainless steel framing components or cable.  
It seems akin to trying to shave with a tub grinder.

ie I have a masonry garden wall that was erected specifically to provide  
an amenable microclimate for growing Chinese melons. Since the melon  
plants only last one growing season (ie no woody stalks remain over till  
the next) they required a trellis. Since it was "only" a vegetable garden  
wall, I used 2x2's ripped from softwood 2x4's as uprights and 1x2's ripped  
 from 1x4 S-P-F strapping -- the uprights attached to the masonry with  
Tapcon screws and the 1x2's attached to the 2x2's with non-descript screws  
(probably 2" drywall screws).  That thoughtlessly-built trellis affair (ie  
no thought given to longevity) has provided more that 25 years of service  
and last time I checked, shows no sign of needing replacement. For those  
who are familiar with Chinese Winter melons (which can get bigger than big  
watermelons) the support capacity provided is not trivial (as for say,  
snow peas or tomatoes)

For a "serious" trellis, White oak lumber (which I know is so plentiful in  
the NE states that people hack up good sized trees and burn it for  
firewood ) would be a good choice I would think. I have no doubt that it  
would easily last for the 50 year time frame Gennaro specifies.

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a >
manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply"
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