Wednesday, May 18, 2011

A site visit with plumbers


Last week our green plumber, Ross Terrano attended an international meeting of Green Plumbers in Palm Beach. On Saturday, he brought Ronald Lunt of Green Plumbers Australia and Jon Cruz from Green Plumbers USA, Sacramento California, two of the attendees down to our site so they could see his work and the other technologies and strategies we are using here. We had a very interesting meeting, sharing our perspectives, sources and experience. Australia's history with drought, including the last one beginning in 2003, the worst on record has greatly influenced the mindset on water usage there. People have become very thrifty. The design of our Caroma toilets responded to the resulting water restrictions. But Australians go beyond that, Ronald told us that often people will take the wash water directly out of the washer to water trees on their property. Even with the recent flooding and easing of the drought conditions, citizens want to keep the water restrictions in place and continue their thrifty habits since drought is part of the environmental cycle there. This led us to a more general discussion on drought, floods and other natural disasters and the need to produce a large quantity of housing quickly, efficiently and economically. Certainly, we added to that the opportunity and responsibility to also make them sustainable and environmentally friendly. Ecosteel would be an appropriate building system since it can be quickly designed and delivered prefabricated to the site. Jon and Ronald suggested an insulation product from Hemp Technologies that would also be of great use. Its a carbon dioxide collector, a natural desiccant as it expands and contracts according to the humidity, mold resistant and is an ultra efficient and economical material to grow and process.

No comments:

Post a Comment