GREEN WALLS KEEP PROPERTIES COOLER

December 2, 2009 on 12:02 am | In Green Building, Green Cities, Green Houses, Green Workplace, REASONS TO LOVE L.A., Solutions, Trends, Uncategorized, all |

GREEN WALLS KEEP PROPERTIES COOLER

By Jodi Summers

We discussed green roofs, now let’s cover green walls. Covered in vegetation, green walls can be 25% cooler than regular building walls in summer, remove air pollutants, and they look great.

Historically speaking, green walls aren’t exactly a new idea: The Romans planted grape vines along building walls, resulting in faster growing and sweeter grapes for wine. The structures are also prevalent in Europe, where modern-day green roofs first took off.

What the ancient Romans devised is now be adapted for 21st century applications. Steven Peck, president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, a Toronto industry association, observes that interest in green walls is growing, estimating that green roof installations have increased at about 30 percent a year over five years.

Locally, the Rainbow Apartments off San Julian Street in the heart of skid row has a 34-foot-long vegetable wall filled with strawberries, tomatoes, basil and other herbs and vegetables. Residents of this step up housing facility are surprised at how the garden has united them.

“It brings us together as a group, kind of like therapy, to see something growing and flourishing,” Jannie Burrows said.

The wall was installed with the assistance Urban Farming, as part of the nonprofit’s Food Chain project. Urban Farming also erected “edible” walls at the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, the Miguel Contreras Learning Center and the Weingart Centidenter.

The Food Chain project, said Urban Farming founder Taja Sevelle, enables residents in some of the city’s poorest areas to grow food in underused spaces at a time when food prices are soaring. The walls, she said, “get people to think outside the box. You can plant food in so many different places.”

In the corporate world, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. recently installed a 2,400 square feet green wall on one side of its headquarters in Pittsburgh. It’s the size of two tennis courts and features more than 15,000 ferns, sedums, brass buttons and other plants that create a swirling pattern of varying hues of green above the company’s logo. They are divided among hundreds of 2-by-2-foot aluminum panels that were anchored onto the building’s frame after part of the granite facade was removed.

“We think it’s the right thing to do for our community, for our customers and our shareholders,” said Gary Saulson, head of corporate real estate for PNC. “We wanted to add greenery to an area that didn’t have any. … We really view the green wall as public art.”

Green Living Technologies LLC, of Rochester, N.Y., designed the wall at PNC. The company has also installed walls in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle.

PNC bills its green wall as the largest in North America. On average green walls cost about $100 to $125 a square foot.

The Pittsburgh wall requires only 15 minutes a week of watering during peak growing season — less in winter — provided through the building’s plumbing system.

For non-edible green walls, according to Joanne Westphal, a landscape architecture professor at Michigan State University and part of the school’s Green Roof Research Program, the biggest benefit to green walls is their ability to help cool buildings through shading. They also help capture rainwater and release it more slowly into the atmosphere and stormwater systems. Additionally, green walls can offset the carbon output of one person a day.

http://www.agreenroof.com

http://www.greenroofs.org

http://www.socalgreenrealestateblog.com/?p=514

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5hKS7UwnC8nR6j4kYQLu6m1X7nBbQD9B9DRK00?index=0

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hKS7UwnC8nR6j4kYQLu6m1X7nBbQD9B9DRK00

http://www.insideurbangreen.org/green-wall/

http://www.edgelosangeles.com/index.php?ch=style&sc=home&sc2=&sc3=&id=97540

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/14/local/me-garden14

http://arkitipintel.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/amelia_b_lima-green_wall.jpg

8 Comments »

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  1. Unlike green roofs — and their vertical cousins, green walls — edible walls also produce fruit, vegetables and herbs in far less space than typical gardens. That’s why advocates of urban farming have embraced them as a way to lower food costs, increase nutritional quality and cut fuel consumption and carbon emissions by using fewer delivery trucks.

    Comment by New York Times — December 3, 2009 #

  2. Green walls are easy to maintain, and can be watered with a simple drip / drop system.

    Comment by Enviro Plumber — December 5, 2009 #

  3. Society’s earliest mud huts had the first “green roofs,” but it takes advancements such as the roof-top meadow on the California Academy of Sciences building to clearly demonstrate their utility and inspire broader adoption. Among the earliest and best-known commercial-scale green roofs in the United States is the Gap’s headquarters in San Bruno, whose 62,000-square-foot expanse was planted in 1997 and is still reducing the structure’s carbon footprint today.

    For homeowners turfing their rooftops, advantages include keeping the interior of the building cooler through natural insulation, and absorption and cleaning of rainwater, which reduces urban runoff-water pollution.

    Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/RERS1AHKVJ.DTL#ixzz0ZCrizuQf

    Comment by SF Chronicle — December 9, 2009 #

  4. Green walls, and other innovative energy-reducing architectural efforts are wonderful developments. Prices are at a premium, but in many cases are worthwhile for some parties. Continued adoption should drive prices down with economies of scale.

    Comment by Rob Viglione — December 28, 2009 #

  5. I usually don’t financial article in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful …

    Comment by Bridge financing — January 3, 2010 #

  6. The Earth Advantage Institute reported that design professionals should watch for the following green trends in 2010: (1) homes connected to the smart grid, (2) energy labeling for homes and buildings; (3) BIM software advances, (4) financial community buy-in to green building; (5) “rightsizing” of homes; (6) eco-districts; (7) water conservation; (8) carbon calculations; (9) net zero buildings; and (10) sustainable building education.

    Comment by Earth Advantage Institute — February 5, 2010 #

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    Comment by Jennifer DeWitt — March 18, 2010 #

  8. http://Green-Home-Businesses.info

    Comment by Izyc — July 31, 2010 #

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