[Greenbuilding] living wall

Tim Vireo Keating t.keating at rainforestrelief.org
Mon Feb 7 10:56:32 CST 2011


In terms of wood, if one is looking for even greater durability, for 
just a bit higher cost in material, black locust could be used 
instead of white oak. White oak is considered 'very durable' in terms 
of rot and insect attack in the outdoors, but black locust is 
considered 'extremely durable'. Gennaro, I could certainly find you 
some. Indeed, in those sizes, it'd be easy.

But, for 100-year longevity, I my understanding is that HDPE is more 
durable than steel. Perhaps HDPE tubing? It'd be nice to find it made 
from recycled material, but I don't know if that exists. What one 
could also do is to rip a thin 4x8 sheet of recycled HDPE plastic (I 
know at least two sources) into thin strips and fasten them with 
epoxy and small stainless steel screws. Sizes would, of course, 
depend on the load.

And there's definitely some 1x1 RPL already out there (I know of at 
least one source), if you wanted to go with that dimension.

tim keating

At 6:58 PM -0500 2/5/11, RT wrote:
>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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