A green tour of WNY
By Jana Eisenberg; photos by kc kratt
Last October, the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (www.nesea.org) set up a 2007 Green Buildings Open House, which was part of the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour. The tour demonstrated that here in Western New York, people with residential, commercial, and institutional buildings are taking advantage of clean renewable energy and other environmentally sound technologies. During the eye-opening day, participating homeowners and building managers were on site to describe unique features and answer questions. LEED certification is a quality that many of the designers of these buildings strive for—LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and it was developed and is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council.
The tour was also meant to convince the public how comfortable, affordable, and attractive such buildings can be. It’s going to take more than a tour to prove this, but it was amazing to see the efforts being made. The day kicked off with a press conference at the Darwin D. Martin House. Joan Bozer, a director of the Western New Sustainable Energy Association, emceed, acknowledging Martin House chief operating officer Mary Roberts, architect Jamie Robideau of Hamilton Houston Lownie, and Walter Simpson, a Martin House trustee, among others. Senator Antoine Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the Environmental Conservation Committee, also said a few words; then it was on to the tour.
Darwin D. Martin House
While the Martin House renovation is not complete, the installation of wells to power a geothermal heat pump is. This efficient, environmentally friendly geothermal exchange HVAC system will be utilized throughout the campus. The system is fueled by the capture and conversion of earth core temperatures through wells dug to approximately 350 feet below the surface. It works for both heating and cooling, and is absolutely fascinating.
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The offices of Ecology and Environment, Inc.
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E&E is a business whose livelihood is to “promote global sustainable economic and human development with minimum negative environmental impact” (www.ene.com). So their headquarters, in Lancaster, had better be “green.” And indeed they are. Paul Fuhrmann, resource manager, was our guide through this 1990 two-story brick building. The lobby has one of the longest open central atriums in Western New York, with over 1,000 plants aiding the indoor air quality. No pesticides are used—beetles control disease instead. The roof opens to create air exchanges, and the building plan, with its southwest orientation, is based on wind and sun declination (that’s “angle” to you and me).
E&E has also created a grasslands habitat on the surrounding 125-acre plot to help preserve native plants and animals (166 different bird species, for instance). Aside from minimal cutting to comply with the fire code, there is no formal landscaping. Fuhrmann did point out a few stands of nonnative conifers, used to provide wind breakage and also for aesthetic reasons; some hard-core environmentalists, he said, object to this usage. The rest of the building, and indeed the company, is a shining example for energy-conscious businesses: paperless communication when possible, recyclable paper goods in the lunchroom, ride-sharing programs for commuters, and so much more.
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The home of Walter Simpson.
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Walter Simpson is committed to achieving a “climate-neutral lifestyle.” His family is vegetarian and counts that as part of their contribution; meat production is fossil-fuel intensive. They super-insulated their house with retrofit construction, tripling to quadrupling the insulation in the walls, ceiling, and attic from its original levels. The next step was installation of a ninety-five-percent efficient furnace. Then, triple-glazed windows, which are three times as insulating as conventional pane windows. Finally, they installed the photo-voltaic solar electric system on the roof and in the basement, that heats all of their water. Due to the combination of the super-insulation and the (coincidental) multitude of south-facing windows, the house functions as a passive solar home. The sun provides a total of forty percent of the heat for the house year round. The family uses a clothesline for drying, and there’s an “Energy Detective” mounted on the wall that provides real-time feedback on the kilowatt hours being used by the house at any given moment.
Creekside Village Apartments
The University at Buffalo owns Creekside Village Apartments, a graduate student housing complex. The project was done by the Amherst-based architectural firm of Lauer Manguso and Associates. The LEED-certified community building, situated near the entrance to the thirteen-building complex, features passive solar heating and a small indoor pond. It is not only lovely and soothing, but humidifying and heat-saving as well. Sensors monitor natural light and adjust interior lighting automatically to maintain predetermined, appropriate levels. Twenty percent of construction materials were manufactured within 500 miles of the site.
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Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve.
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This is a newly constructed building by Beardsley Design Associates for the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Nature Preserve in Depew. Standout features include Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood, classrooms with hydronic radiant floor heating (did you know that this type of system dates back to the Romans?), and a vermiculite (worm-composting) bin in the kitchen.
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The Elmwood area home of Joan Bozer
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On a quiet side street in the Elmwood area, Joan Bozer has demonstrated her own commitment to the energy-saving cause by installing a photovoltaic array on her roof. She points out that there are credits available to homeowners who take similar steps. (A few resources to check out for yourself include www.powernaturally.org, www.nyserda.org, and www.energy.gov.) Bozer adds that we really don’t need fossil or nuclear fuel, and that drastic measures like chopping the tops off Appalachian mountains to get at coal seem pointless.
The tour also included UB’s Norton Hall, the Buffalo Museum of Science, the Audubon Machinery Corporation in Tonawanda, and Grand Island’s Riverside-Salem Environmental Chapel, which is built of straw bale. And, of course, the wind-machine towers on Buffalo’s waterfront. I didn’t make it to all of those, but it’s great to know that they are all here, doing their part to conserve existing energy, and working to create their own in ways that do less harm to the planet and our environment—for themselves and for the future.
Jana Eisenberg is a freelance writer living in Buffalo.
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