Volare...Merano, Bolzano, Italiano...ciao bella

Greetings from the heart of the Dolomites - Merano.  This is where Queen Elisabeth of the Prussian empire used to take vacations.  With its picturesque Alpine setting, peaceful river promenades, blooming cherry trees, incredible gelatto, the wonderful thermal baths, and all the wonders of italiano culture = this was by far the scenic highlight of my 5 week european trip.

Pictures do not do this town justice.  I was constantly in awe of the suddenly rising snow-covered peaks with temperatures in the mid 60's.  Only the Grand Teton gets close this - and they are 'far-away' from the city.

On things green + groovy:  Italy doesn't seem to be quite as enamored as Austrians are with Passiv houses although their solar installations are plenty.  Headlines in the papers fret about the coming radiation emissions from the Japan nuclear crisis and people are shunning all sushi and Asian things.  

There are important regional German elections this weekend. With the recent announcement of 10,000x radiation releases from Japan, the 48 year reign of the CDU party will probably end - something nobody foresaw 3 weeks ago!  Amazing howthings can change in such a short time due to one unpredictable event.

Back to teaching:   Austrian students seem impervious to the whole nuclear debate since Austria doesn't have any nuclear power plants.  But 6% of all their electricity comes from nuclear (through the Euro common grid), and in NE Austria: 90% of their power comes from an old Soviet era Czech nuclear power plant.  I continue to be amazed at their knowledge and ease of handling LCA, embodied energy, biomass + geothermal systems.

Innsbruck Home + Garden show

Last weekend I went to the  'Wohnen u. Garten Messe' in Innsbruck - kinda similar to our Home+Garden spring shows - except a lot smaller.  The gardening was pretty much what you could imagine from the 'sound of music' land - gorgeous alpine flower arrangements with ponds, waterfalls and intricate woodworking.  But the 'home' part of the show was anything but.

Out of ~ 50 home booths: ~ 5 were devoted to Passiv Haus construction+consulting, ~ 5 were devoted to windows, ~ 15 'biomass generators' , 1 oil-fuel furnace, ~ 3 awning booths, and ~ 6 geothermal/heatpump booths.  Ok so that doesn't add up to 50... hey who said I was counting?  :-)

The 'biomass generator' booths were interesting to me.  They were all wood pellets furnace vendors.  They had large crowds around them - especially the one that took a tree direct from the forest cranked it through chipper and through a cork screw arrangement into the fire box.  The 'secret' for all these units were in the tightly designed and computer controlled fire box.  I again saw the no-exhaust stack complete combustion units that just emit CO2!  Where can I buy one in the USA??  I asked (in german) one of the sales people there that if he is successful at putting one of his unit inside every Austrian house, how long will the forests last?  He looked at me stupified and said 'that's a dumb question - what does that have to do with anything?'.

Later, while I was talking with a fellow semi-retired engineer at a Passiv Haus consulting booth, one of the curious people browsing around was asked if they knew about 'passiv homes'  and they kinda shrugged off the question and said 'well, of course!' .   In asking the engineer about all the wood pellet and 'biomass generators' around, he said that they also have a lot to learn in Austria that envelope design comes first, and that the salesperson's comment represents how much further they have yet to go.

The window vendors' framing details are much more 'embedded' than we have thereby providing less leakage and more insulation value.  There were several triple glazing configurations with varying separation depths - curious.  One of my students showed me the link that verified my suspicions that the embodied energy in these triple glazing isn't worth the added performance value of around 20% in the overall LCA of  these things.

Overall, I enjoyed the show, picked up several building catalogs, made several cool contacts ... and in the 'small world department'  discovered one of the professors at the university where I teach was doing local energy assessments for communities - as in simulation modeling.  I met with him 2 days later and we will be doing some work together... hopefully I can get him to come to the US and help assess and pilot some communities' energy commons project.... stay tuned.

Oh yeah... did i mention the ~3 insulation specialists booths?  That's probably the big difference between comparative home shows.  These booths had a whole array of fascinating materials of various thicknesses and purposes.  When I asked if they had any 'sustainable, non-oil based, eco-friendly, low-embodied energy' insulation, they didn't hesitate and pointed to the various lines of expanded cellulose (wood chips) insulation.

here's a listing of what the Austrian's use for insulation:

Baumwolle Blähton Calcium-Silikat-Platte Flachs Glasschaumschotter Glaswolle Hanf Holzfaserplatten Holzwolleleichtbauplatten Kapillar-Dämmplatten Kokosfasern Kork Mineralschaum Mineralwolle Perlite Polystyrol expandiert (EPS) Polystyrol extrudiert (XPS) Polyurethan Porenbeton Schafwolle Schaumglas Steinwolle Transparente Wärmedämmung (TWD) Vakuumdämmung Zellulose

Here's the best practice for a residential house, that I have found so far:

A plus-energy-passive-prefabricated-house  from the C2C network run by one of my friends here:  Dr. Michael Braungart. 

Austria Learnings 301

I have done this trip many times: presented, keynoted, attended various conference and exhibits and now I'm enjoying just teaching, learning and observing. 

As I walked along Maurach by the Achensee (Tirol, Austria) on a break from teaching classes (did I already say, 'somebody pinch me?') … I notice all the massive wooden beams on the large volume houses here. There are no small <3,000 sf buildings here. There are opulent vacation homes for the rich and famous (Porsche CEO has second home here), but most homes are for multi-family dwellings, hotels, stores and working farm homes. All of them are built with heavy timbers and masonry walls. Most of them have multiple solar hot water collectors at all kinds of angles. There have to be thousand’s of these solar collectors in this area alone – it’s a commodity. Makes my 4x6, 20’ long beams at WinSol3 look downright puny along with my ‘small’ 12' roof overhangs.

I find it curious that most large buildings have solar hot water arrays and yet all lighting is incadescent - including night quartz spotlights.  After asking the owner of the hotel where I was staying, his answer was too obvious:  Biogas or propane is way more expensive than local generated hydro electric power.  Ahh.... yes, the dominance of local energy supply.  But what happens with global weirding, melting glaciers, and future droughts?

All those SHW collectors are inspiring me to get even more free hot water when I return to WinSol3.  I am thinking about some custom stand-alone? copper pipe draindown arrays with thermosiphon storage tanks above the collectors.  Freeze protection would still be attained through a draindown scheme.

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Blog on the Japan disaster aftermath:
It's amazing how quickly global energy supplies have been pushed into the mainstream.  I think we will be studying this worse case scenario for some time to come.  Even in Germany, 9000km to the west of Japan, people here have cleaned out local stores’ radiation counters and iodine tablets.  There are 1,800 radiation measuring stations in Germany alone – a normal precautionary system - since Chernobyl. They haven’t measured any additional radiation - yet - from Japan, although there is still some cesium hangin' around in it's last 30 year half-life. There are huge crowds of demonstrators railing against keeping Germany’s 30 nuclear power plants open – if I am close to one, I will join in. Just the idea of having 1,800 radiation monitoring stations continuously monitoring the air that the citizens breathe tells me that people here are both protective and a bit necessarily paranoid. I guess that comes from too many wars and interesting neighbors.Or as Andy Grove said 'only the paranoid survive'. 

The students here were born before Chernobyl and most of their parents have totally different views of the Japan nuclear crisis.  So I wonder why everyone is so freaked out about nuclear radiation and meltdown. The worse case scenario is that a huge dose of radiation gets in the atmosphere and that people develop some form of cancer over the next 20-30 years. Chernobyl accounted for around 30,000 deaths - totally. There are more than 35,000 deaths a year from coal.  Our foods, our air, our flame retardant doused furniture, our toiletries also can cause cancer.  We are afflicted with lung cancer from cigarettes, diabetes from corn syrup, etc..  Yet we don’t see people protesting around the factories at Kraft, Procter Gamble, Monsanto or Dow Chemical that make these things.  I think the relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear bombs,  the memories of WWII, and the general hideousness of radiation poisoning, not to mention Hollywood are part to blame.

Euro Blog 2

My transition to Euroland - Austria to be specific - has been made. After a bout with jet lag fatigue on Sunday, I am fully adjusted and having fun. The 3 groups of students here have been a real joy to teach with and I am not over indulging in the delicious food + pastries - yet!
I am still adjusting to the internet though - everytime I log onto this blog and most other web sites it's always in german, and i have to think about what it means.  It's pretty cool that all my web searches are europe based - so I am learning a lot of new green+groovy things.

Here's a picture of the town I am staying and teaching in:

 and here's a picture of the FHS building (University of Applied Science) where I am teaching... it's double walled glass with HVAC mainly in between the glass envelopes... very cool design... similar to the Uni at Innsbruck.

I have a few blog drafts that I am working on, but right now I have to head out for my first ICE train (hi-speed) experience.  I am so damn excited... feel like a little kid about to go on his first Amtrak ride (NOT!  :-)  I'll be looking at the front of the train car where the train speed is posted and see if they exceed the 230 that I saw last time...  all from my comfortable seat that has a plug for my laptop and wifi on board.  And ya'll wonder why i continue to do this every year?  Well, it won't be long before I miss the California coast and the beloved Sierra Mountains and WinSol3 and will be looking forward to coming home.  But that's a ways off....

Euro Blog 2011 Part 1a

I arrived yesterday in good ole Deutschland (germany) and after forcing myself to stay awake by walking around for too long, I am overcoming the inevitable jet lag and getting ready to teach here in Austria later today.

The first few days here are always (I've been doing this since 1992) filled with unique transitions and observations.  After a few days, I am so immersed in the culture, I actually start thinking in german!  As I am typing this I have the Austrian ORF2 TV channel on in the background which has continuous webcam loops of the hundreds of ski areas and some major cities around here with Tyrolean music.  I love that station and its Alpian meditative qualities.  I could easily jump on a local ski bus and within 40 minutes be on the slopes outside of Kitzbuelh.

On this trip I have sworn to not partake in my usual morning breakfast routine - it is the glutenous start to unhealthy eating (by California standards) and will be focusing more on locally bio-dynamic dark breads, jams+jellies, and non-red meat items.  We'll see how that goes.  For the first time in two decades, I am obsessed with losing rather than gaining weight on this trip... good luck with that!

They have a 'Fasching' Fest(ival) this week - I guess it is Lent or something, but more like a toned-down Mardi Gas.  Thankfully I  am not in a northern german city where it's non-stop partying - or maybe I wish I was?  Last year, I remember drunken youngies getting on the trains and just havin' a good ole time with open containers and raucious singing.

Since this is supposed to be sort of an eco-blog, I need to focus on all things eco + green.   My personal transition from american culture to what was my childhood germanic culture, sometimes appears backwards and regressive when in reality it is more forward thinking and appropriate for lo-carbon living.  My first few days are always filled with new observations that quickly fade as my brain + heart transcend and absorb.  Yesterday's arrival was greeted by many car advertisments touting a car's low grams of CO2 per kilometer.  Yeah baby... it's all about emissions, all the time - without the guilt factor.

This morning's local Tyrolean paper was filled with biomass, PassivHaus, solar hot water and eco-electricity advertising, like we would see clothing and supermarket ads.  I have already spotted at least 3 exhibits, open houses, and conventions that I may check out for all things green and groovy here.

Something noteworthy that struck my interest was an academy sponsored by a local (3 countries) Bank and Industrial park investment group called IG Passivhaus network  (  www.igpassivhaus-tirol.at  ) whose motto literally says 'We build and sanitize homes of the future' !  How's that for transitioning to the language over here... sanitizing homes really means renovating - as they focus on retrofiting existing homes to healthier + cleaner homes with higher quality IAQ and way lower energy use.   This network was also advertising their PassivHaus exhibition in May.  Their link is to a german site for Passiv Haus.   (www.passivhaustagung.de )  This was a FULL-PAGE advertising in the local paper.  It's intent appeared to be about educating potential home owners and renters about the best building technology.  The mascot they used was an 'active owl' - too cool.

Another event I picked up on was by the local bank for a 'Build + Live Forum' next week.  Free admission, focus on PassivHaus financing, in Innsbruck - somebody twist my arm :-)  .  The event that I will most definitely attend is the 'Building and Garden' show at the big Innsbruck convention center next weekend.

On this trip, I am will be more focused on energy commons part 2, permaculture and learning about raising my own food in a biodynamic way - and this area has been the epicenter of that for over a hundred years.  To me, PassivHaus, Biomass, solar, wind, etc are so yesterday here.  I am always looking for the next new thing out of here.

This part of the world combines the world's best lo-carbon, hi-tech, modern lifestyle with ancient culture and really fires more on the Triple Bottom Line - especially the social aspects.  Over the past twenty years I have witnessed leading edge concepts from the German-speaking countries and Scandanavia spreading globally 5-10 years later.  So this is one of the ways that I stay ahead of the curve and add value to USA students and professionals... sshhhhh... don't tell anyone :-)

Ok - so now to walk along the river and enjoy saying high to all passers by and immersing myself in cultural transitions.  I gotta get ready for the students this afternoon and there's no better way to get started than to walk a few kilometers where their shoes walk and observe. Maybe there'll be beer and pizza later tonite after class - sound familiar SFM CSUS students?  fun...