Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Forget Green Buildings, check out this Livable Building

On Monday, in Seattle, there was a groundbreaking for the first of 12 livable buildings to be completed here. This six-story building is being billed as the greenest commercial building on earth. It will be the largest net-zero energy and net-zero water building ever built.

The Bullitt Center will be sporting some of the following features:
  • All energy will be produced by solar power
  • Most lighting will be from natural daylight
  • All water will be captured from rainwater and stored in a cistern to be used in toilets and/or sterilized to be used for drinking water and other potable water
  • All wastewater and sewage will be collected. The water will be sterilized and the sewage will be collected for composting (the building will not be hooked up to the sewer)
  • There will be no parking in the building, only bike racks
  • Common building materials that contain PVC plastics, mercury, cadmium and about 360 other substances considered hazardous won’t be used
  • Has "irresistible" stairs to reduce elevator usage (see image) 
  • Uses geothermal heating and cooling
I currently work in a super green building but I'm exceedingly jealous of some of the things being done here. 

Image courtesy of The Seattle Times (click to see more features of the building).

4 comments:

El Gaucho said...

Very cool indeed. I wonder how the initial building costs and annual costs to run/maintain/repair/etc are compared to a "normal" building of similar size. It would be fantastic if the yearly expenses were low enough to entice others from a pure cost savings standpoint to build similar buildings.

Robj98168 said...

Don't know about the cost, but there won't be a water, power or sewage bill since the building provides it's own on all three. Very neat.

Panamamama said...

The Heifer project building here in Little Rock is very similar. I don't think they have zero sewage, but know the grey water and rain water is all recycled into a really cool system that is beautiful to look at too.

MamaLovey said...

I love the "irresistible stairs". When I was in South America we stayed with a friend in the city. He lived on the 5th floor of an apartment. There were no elevators. None. It was unheard of and when I (the American) asked why I was told it would be wasteful and unnessary! The staircase was concrete and outside. If it was raining, you got wet. Amazing. They also don't use dryers--too wasteful! Love it!