[Greenbuilding] Glass ceiling

[John Salmen]

That is a tough one. When I started with green building is was primarily to
use 2nd growth wood as an alternative to using fungicide treated framing
lumber (which was the standard at the time). That worked best with large
dimensioned lumber for structure (timberframe). I liked it as it made both
the best cut use of a 2nd growth (smaller) tree and kept the wood in a large
dimension for potential re-use. Made sense. It also made sense to isolate
the different functions and materials so they could be kept isolated. I grew
to like plasteeech eps board insulation for that reason as it formed a
removable infill or skin. For a while all my foundations were block (bit
hard to do in earthquake design).

Basically I was designing residential structures the way I used to design
commercial ones. Buildings that need to maintain flexibility. I bet most of
your significant salvage is from commercial buildings. 

Hard to maintain in residential structures as they just don't have the
economy to support good material choices so the materials don't lend
themselves to efficient reuse (unless reuse consists of regrinding and
remaking - which is where the recycling industry has gone). We have
thousands of miles of thin cement board siding on homes that will be ground
up and probably reused as something in the near future. Everything now is
recyclable (if you build sufficient quantity of something - somebody will
buy it) but that is not the same as re-usable or even re-claimable and by
that I mean a ground up piece of wood has no claim to its origin. It no
longer shows us its grain or any history of its use.

Re-using and re-claiming is also not necessarily a good thing. Do I want a
floor from wood that came from an old factory floor with cells filled with
un-re-claimed heavy metals and toxins? For decades in my region cedar siding
was commonly finished with used hydraulic oil from the logging industry. We
had a client supply my shop with reclaimed beautiful old growth cedar siding
that he wanted to use for interior finishing - and as soon as we ran it
though the planer the wood reeked of petro chemicals and was unusable. Every
cell in the wood to the core was contaminated.

I had another client that had purchased lovely old fir flooring from a 100
year old department store. I asked him if he really wanted to live with a
centuries worth of commercial cleaning products not to mention
disinfestations products - that we would expose and then cover with a
'natural' breathable finish? His answer was he wished I hadn't made that
comment.

Then there is the story from the boston playgrounds (and Toronto) that were
built where centuries old housing existed. Children playing there were
subsequently documented with high lead levels. They found perfect
rectangular outlines of lead contaminated soil where the old houses existed
and had been scraped and painted every five years or so with lead based
paints. There are thousands of similar stories.


Like I said - recycling is a tough one - I just don't think we have the
knowledge to do it well 

Sorry for the rant.

John




-----Original Message-----
From: Greenbuilding [mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org]
On Behalf Of gennaro brooks-church
Sent: November-17-12 5:45 PM
To: Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Glass ceiling

Along the same lines of separating two panes of glass: i am learning that
one of the biggest talents of a green builder os their ability to unbuild
stuff then built it into something that is easily unbuilt later.

Gennaro Brooks-Church
EcoBrooklyn.com
347-244-3016
22 2nd St., Brooklyn.
This email was sent from my phone.

On Nov 17, 2012, at 8:03 PM, Clarke Olsen <colsen at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> Something I learned the hard way: if you lap glass panels, water will
capilery back into the joint.
> Stuff will grow in that thin space, and the best way to keep it clean is
not to let them touch.
> I think that the gap needs to be about 3mm (1/8"). If you want to make it
tight, maybe a bead of clear silicone..
> Another hard lesson, the amazing power of that caulk not to let go when
you need to take something apart.
> Maybe temporary window caulk would be easier to deal with.
> Clarke Olsen
> clarkeolsendesign.com
> 373 route 203
> Spencertown, NY 12165
> USA
> 518-392-4640
> colsen at taconic.net
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 17, 2012, at 3:50 PM, Chris Koehn wrote:
>
>> I am in the process us building a glass roof entry using glass similar to
yours, though 34" tall. Tempered deck railing panels that were mis-ordered.
Roof has a 3 in 12 pitch and 3 panes of glass are installed shingle-style
over steps in wood rafters.
>>
>> Chris
>> TimberGuides
>> Vancouver Island
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