Green Living - Retail store

Green Living

1130 Dragon St # 140

Dallas, TX 75207

http://www.green-living.com/

Our final stop for the day was Green Living retail store located  at 1130 Dragon St., Suite 140, Dallas TX.  

 This store was a welcome stop after being out in the heat at our residential build site.

a great selection of Green home products

 It had an interesting collection of Green home products.    The had recycled glass dishes,   foam mattresses made from recycled materials and other interesting product like natural based paint for your walls and hypoallergenic pillow.  


 They even had garden products such as natural fertilizers and compost bins.

Compost bin

Green Garden chemicals

Everything in this store was either green , re-used, recycled... or re-purposed.

This is definitely a place i plan on shopping at in the future... and even best of all ... they had great prices... not something you normally see when you get in to the Green market.

Ferrior Homes - Residential build

FERRIOR CUSTOM HOMES
Residential build Site- 2807 Hedgerow, Dallas TX
http://www.ferriercustomhomes.com/services/custom_homes/projects



One of our most interesting site visits on Saturday was the residential build site of  Ferrior  Custom Homes.  We met up with Don Ferrier, president of Ferrier Custom Homes.  





He is the third generation of the Ferrier family in the quality construction business.    He has taken his family business a step above by specializing in Green custom homes.    The awards won by his company are too many to list. 






This custom home in a simple neighbor hood in Dallas is going to be a site to see once completed and i would like to check on it later to see its progress.   We got to check out the beginning stages with the foundation and the basement floor just put in.


He went over the many features this home is going to have from energy efficient white roof, special windows, 18 seer HVAC unit, tankless water heater, upgraded insulation and drought-resistant landscaping.  

Rocks from construction debris....

All the construction debris at this site was neatly sorted and ready to be disposed of properly... there were piled of wood, stackes of rock etc... this is another little thing builders can do to stay green... and be on their way to meet LEED  standards






It was very interesting to hear the details of how much energy this new custom home was going to save in the long run and although an estimated price for this house is at around $1.35 per square, I am sure it will pay for it self very soon. 




Although costly upfront, these great energy saving homes are something i can see popping up everywhere in the future.... check out all the different models on the Ferrior website.
http://www.ferriercustomhomes.com/home/

Fairmont Hotel - Dallas

Fairmount Hotel – Dallas

http://www.fairmont.com/dallas     

1717 North Akard St. 

Dallas, TX 75201 

We toured the Fairmount Hotel  this weekend as one of our site visits for our Project studio class in Sustainability.

The tour was guided by the Hotel's Chief Engineer, Jason James.

The Fairmont Hotel  is a surprisingly green building located in the heart of downtown Dallas.

It has won numerous awards for its green initiatives:

2009 and 2010 Hotel Association of North Texas Green Hotel of the Year Green Key Rated Four Keys (First hotel in Texas to receive Green Key Rating)

The Fairmont has a beautiful and productive rooftop garden that is actually used by hotel chefs to suppliment  their  menu.

Fig trees and pepper plants were among the great selection in this garden.   

Local bees are managed by the Honey Bee Guild.... the bee's activity can even be followed on Twitter. 

The Hotel has done many other things to promote conservation within the Hotel.  

From replacing lighting with compact fluorescent light bulbs and recycling old telephones. 

  

Water efficient shower heads are being used to conserve water and also being recycled to take care the herb garden watering needs.

They even offer guests the option to participate in the towel and sheet exchange program. 

It was nice to know that a Hotel like this is doing so much to be a  leader when it comes to Sustainability and hopefully many other business will follow in their footstep. 

Trinity Audubon Center

Trinity Audubon Center

6500 South Loop 12

Dallas, TX 75217

Phone: 214-398-TRAC

 http://trinityriver.audubon.org/

The Trinity River Audubon Center was the city of Dallas’ first LEED certified building.  

The site where it is built was previously used as a landfill so the City of Dallas commissioned architect, Antoine Predock to design a building that would utilize this abused space and get maximum use of the land without further damage to the surrounding environment.   

The final result was the Trinity Audubon Center , a modern, green building built to LEED Gold Standards in 2008, costing approximately $14.7 million. 

 

Highlight features that brought this building to LEED Gold status include drought resistant landscape and natural plants that compliment the Trinity.     

Rainwater harvesting, solar panels and slanted windows maximize natural lighting and energy efficiency.

 

Since it is build along the Trinity wetlands, the building was designed with slanted glass to protect against glare and bird strikes.

Natural materials like bamboo and concrete used for flooring were brought in from within a 200 mile radius to cut back on fuel use during transportation and construction debris was recycled according to LEED standards.

The Trinity River Audubon Center is going to be one of the main connectors in the Dallas Trails Master Plan connecting the Audubon center to other trails along the Trinity.

 

This center will be used for education and conservation initiatives in Texas. 




 The Trinity Audobon has many educational programs and also provides citizens with access to a lot of different nature friendly activities such as bird watching, hiking and picnicking.   

In the Dallas Trails Master Plan, the numerous citywide trail systems are designed to connect to the Trinity River Audubon Center, providing a premier trail destination location as the Trinity project continues to develop.

   

Overall.... The Trinity Audubon Center is a great place to see Sustainability put to use  and a great educational center that could really be key to getting Dallas to reconnect with nature. 

RECYCLE REVOLUTION

Recycle Revolution

1703 Chestnut St. Dallas TX 75226

 Second stop on our site visit was Recycle Revolution. 

This down to earth recycle plant was started by founder, Mr. Eddie Lott.  Recycle Revolution (RR) is located near downtown Dallas Texas and provides recycling of items most recyclers will not even touch. 

Items such as bukly electronics, Styrofoam and glass are some of the items that this company is determined to get people to start recycling.  They recycles items sometimes even at a cost to them, not for the profits obviously, but because they actually care about how these items are disposed of.

Recycle Revolution accepts paper, plastic, aluminum, cardboard, glass, electronics and small appliances.  Recycle Revolution tries to match up recycled items with people or manufactures that can use them locally to cut  on transportation cost of shipping them out to china like most other recycle plants would.   By keeping and reusing locally, they are reducing harmfull effects even more.

RR has matched up with a client who will use the melted down Styrofoam mixed with other components to create a light-weight bricks which can be used to make Dome shaped homes and keep the Styrofoam out of the landfills.

Serviced offered include:

• Recycling Collection
• Compost Collection
• Electronics, Lamps & Batteries
• LEED + C&D Recycling
• Shredding

Eddie also told us about their other program:

 Dallas Eco-Op , 10137 A Shoreview, Dallas, Tx 75238.    This great co-op is a number of different vendors who get together to share cost by setting up in one location to showcase their innovation green products and eco-friendly services to the neighborhood.  It offers local jobs and promotes a greener style of living by reminding people that a simple thing like recycling your trash can really make a difference.

It’s ideas like this that make Recycle revolution a true revolutionary in the recycle business.

TARRANT REGIONAL WATER DISTRICT

The Tarrant Regional Water District

600 East Northside Dr., Fort Worth Tx
http://www.trwd.com/home.aspx

Host: Laura Blalock

Our last tour was of the Tarrant Regional Water District.  We got to see their LEED Gold status building and examine the many great featured that were incorporated into their design.  

,This building had an impressive solar panel system on their roof.   Their solar arrays installation was the top feature that brought this build in to Gold LEED status.  Although  the Dallas Veteran’s Adminitration building has topped it now… at its completion  the Tarrant Regional Water District had the largest solar array system in the state of Texas.

 Other elements behind their impressive Gold LEED statuts are the  concrete flooring and counter tops, natural cleaning products used in maintenance, grid-tied Hydro-Electric Turbines, double pane Low-E Glass Fluorescent Lighting, natural cork flooring, insulated walls, native Austin Limestone, recycle based Furniture, High energy lighting features,  native plants, grass that never gets watered and a drip irrigation system that collects rain water for the shrubs.

All these details that and even the painstaking recycle of construction debris they maintained during the construction process gave this building a much deserved gold LEED Rating.

OMNI HOTEL- FT. WORTH

The Omni Hotel Fort Worth

1300 Houston St., Fort Worth TX

Our third stop was the Omni Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas.   Mike Davis, Assistant Director of Engineering led us on our tour.  He showed us the engineering section, where Mike showed us a control program that is used to monitor activity in the hotel.    It send alerts to notify engineering if there are any issues with the controls on the heating and cooling throughout the hotel.  They try to stay within a 10 degree temperature range to keep energy cost under control.  By getting alerted immediately to any faults in the system, they are able to control energy loss and maintain a confortable atmosphere for their many guest.

We also visited their Chiller Room.  The chiller room piping system catches all the water flow throughout the hotel.  They are 3 chillers and cooler towers which utilize hydro-electric controls that are on timers. 

The Omni also had a wonderful roof top garden.   The entire roof area was covered by rows of a variety of plants.  Also hidden to one side was a private vegetable  garden that was started by the Hotel Chefs. 

The chefs enjoy being able to grow their own fresh herbs and vegetables and the hotel gets the benefit of having a  green use for what would be normally a empty concrete roof.   The possibility that this roof top garden may also be cutting energy cost by keeping the roof cooler has not even been truelly examined

BEDFORD PUBLIC LIBRARY

Bedford Public Library
2424 Forest Ridge Dr., Bedford, TX 76021
Host: Maria Redburn
http://www.bedfordlibrary.org/

Our first site visit of the Bedford Public Library was a great example of the use of Sustainability in the design of a building.  Our tour was under the expert guidance of Library Manager, Maria Redburn.   She was very knowledable about all the impressive features that had been incorporated into the design of the new Library.   

 

This very modern and efficient building is actually an adaptive reuse of an old Food Lion Store.   It was amazing how they were able to build a library almost twice the size of the older one and yet keep electrical cost almost the same…..with all the new energy efficient features added  they  have lowered their energy costs by 50 percent.

The City of Bedford was able to use grants received to increase services without the increase in costs a building of this size would have normally had.  The Library received over $2.1 Million in grants, one from the State Energy and Conservation Office (SECO) for $1.9 million and the other from Oncor in the amount of $175,000.

With these grants...the Library was able to get maximum efficiency out of their new building  ...they even have a great solar kiosk in the main lobby to monitor their energy consumption in real-time.

Geothermal heat pump system with 150 wells buried underground is used to cool and heat the Library using the earth’s core temperature.  Hot and cold air is cycled in the wells to bring them to earth’s core temperature to decrease the high temperature gaps that usually make heating and cooling so costly.

Reflective white roof and solar panels on roof are used to increase efficiency of buildings HVAC system.   These panels help generate enough energy to provide for the majority of the Library’s daily energy consumption.

T-8 Lighting, strategically placed Low-E windows to capture natural lighting and motion sensors in every room save on lighting cost.  These were simple features added with great cost cutting benefits

Native Texas plants and drought-resistant landscaping is cutting costs on landscaping maintenance. Automated Material Handling- the Library was able to save on Manpower costs by freeing up library workers with this automated book sprter.  Books are placed in drop box and are automatically directed to the sorter which scans then bar codes and checks books back in and sorts them for faster re-shelving.  Although upfront cost was about half a million dollars, this sorter will pay for itself after 7 years

Overall...this was a great Library and its an example other City's need fo follow to meet citizen's needs for services without comprimising services due to budget constraints.

Sat. May 12, 2012

First day in class for my MSRE degree.....

I am excited about starting on this degree... from this first class I can tell that I am going to be learning a lot more about Sustainability than I knew was out there.  There are so many aspects to Sustainability... it is more than green/energy efficient buildings.  Each  of my cohorts brought a different aspect of sustainability to the table.   Aspects like renewable energy, sustainable horticulture and sustainable transportation.  You will see more details on these topics in my blogs later.

Our instructor is Michael Wollman … he brought us a great a speaker today… Leonard Bade, MSOD,SPHR … an expert in executive Development and a great team builder.  

Together they were a great team and really opened everyone up in our class discussion.

We discussed the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility.  We looked at the step ladder theory of group dynamics and how it was leading us from where we are now to our future goals.   This discussion was parallel to the words found in the definition of Sustainability….  “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

     This really made me reflect on myself and my future goals as I move forward to complete my degree.  We discussed issues that would make you lose your step on this latter toward your goals and is was really a great discussion because it made me really reflect on a lot of issues and road blocks that could make me stumble…like simple insecurities that I never considered.   

Sustainability is really important because if forces you to take ownership of your actions and look at the future results your actions may bring.   Sometimes its easy to agree that reusing and recycling are great ideas, but the sacrifice to actually do it is a whole different story and really takes commitment.  Sustainability seems all about finding the best ways to bring  back the responsibility to society so we can all have the capacity to endure past our expiration date…because the earth will still be here long after we are gone.   I invite you all to look up Sustainability just to see what  it means to you….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

Master' of Science in Real Estate - Sustainability

2012-2013 Dallas Cohort

SUST 5304 - SUSTAINABILITY PROJECT

 My name is Beatrice Carrizales, I am starting this blog as a project for my class SUST 5304 -Sustainability Project Studio A.   I have just started on my Master's Degree in Real Estate -Sustainability through UTA.   

I work for the City of Dallas  in the Sustainable Development & Construction - Real Estate Division and hopefully the knowledge I gain  through this program with be something I can bring to work with me.