While sourcing to build your own home, you can find out all sorts of interesting things about the industry.  Of course, a lot of money goes into the housing industry, and along with that money comes incentives for various groups and corporations to game the system…  Here are two short examples.  For a third one, consider the Low-E, High SHGC controversy on the Windows Page.

Flush-less urinals

A typical toilet uses a lot of water to flush away a liquid.  Euro toilets have a second “number 1” button that uses much less water.  A urinal uses even less water, but still a lot.  A “flushless” urinal uses no additional water and with two boys, could save me thousands of gallons a year.  I asked a plumber about it and he said “no, those are very dangerous, you shouldn’t install one, they aren’t even legal in most states”.  Well, I have seen them in many airports and public buildings, and I know that the US Core of Army Engineers has switched to flushless urinals exclusively, so that didn’t sound right.

TO THE INTERNET! for research.  I found a lot, here is one with some good numbers and details, and here is one source that had a nice video, but here is the jist of the story in my own words.

These flushless urinals are more common in Europe.   An american business man (James Krug, ex-exec of Disney corp and big donor to Al Gore) thought it would be a good green business opportunity here in the USA and started a business, Falcon Waterfree Technologies.  Not being totally altruistic, his design is based on a cartridge fluid trap that need to be replaced periodically at $40 a pop, but it would still be much cheaper than all the water that a regular urinal requires. I personally prefer the H2Zero model by Caroma because of its longer lasting trap design.  Click Here for a demo video.

James and others in the industry were “blindsided” by the plumbers union.  Of course, the union claimed it was a public safety issue and had some unqualified hack write a ridiculous report (based on no research, she had never even seen a urinal before being hired) to support their position that the urinals were actually “deadly”.   You don’t need to stretch your imagination to suspect that the union was actually more concerned about the fact that people who install flush-less urinals wouldn’t be paying plumbers to install water lines or do as many repairs.  Whatever story you believe, the building code was actually adjusted to ban the flush-less urinals.  But James Krug couldn’t let that happen to his fledgling business, so he used his connections to push the green angle.  So now the Democrats (yes it gets political) were on both sides of this one. They had union lobbyists trying to keep the plumbers paid and they had environmental groups lobbying for the water savings…  They had to come to a solution that made everyone happy, and they did, sort of.  The residential building code was adjusted so you can now install one of these flush-less wonders, and save all the water you want, but only if you also have water lines run to it (preferably by a union plumber ;^).    That is what political compromise looks like.

Steel stud framing

The front wall of the main portion of my home will not be earth sheltered or significantly load bearing… As a result, I am planning to use 6 inch steel stud framing.  This was definitely my architects preference (over wood studs).

We could not use ICFs for that south wall because there are too many windows (and not enough structure) to support the weight of the concrete above.  I guess we could have used ICFs below the windows, but the startup costs would be too great.  Also, ICF can be made to handle curved walls, QuadLock does it better than others, but it is still relatively expensive.

There are many advantages to steel studs, including reduced cost, longer life, increased precision, no chemical treatment, etc.  From an environmental perspective, wood is renewable but the steel is much lighter, longer lasting and very recyclable…   The only clear downside is excessive thermal bridging with the steel studs. Even though these steel studs are thin, they still act like a heat conduction highway.  In addition to allowing the heat out via high speed conduction around the insulation, they also produce cold spots on the interior walls that can result in condensation and visible ghost lines as dust and soot in the air get stuck in the condensation.

As usual, when looking for a solution…  TO THE INTERNET!!!

I found lots of very interesting papers such as this one or this one. They all seemed to be about 10 or 12 years old and they included lots of interesting ways to reduce the heat conduction…  The three main categories were;

1. cut slits or holes into the stud to increase the distance the heat must travel thru the stud (like a maze).
2. Stamp the faces of the stud to reduce the contact (conduction) with the wall coverings
3. wrap the stud or the whole wall with insulation

 

The first two options are just a stamping process and could actually reduce the weight and cost of the studs while improving the thermal performance.   However, they did require an investment in research to figure out how best to stamp the steel for minimal conduction with maximum stiffness.  The third option is the simplest in terms of technology, but increases the cost of building considerably.  The third option could be done by wrapping each stud individually or by sheathing the wall its self, which is the most expensive because it uses the most foam and then also requires special attachment of an exterior covering to protect the rigid foam sheathing.   So, clearly improving the efficiency of steel stud construction would be in the best interests of the home owner, the steel companies and the planet.  Clearly, there would be a lot of money available for research and the winning design should easily take over the market…  But the steel companies didn’t count on the power of the petrochemical lobby.   While the steel researchers were busy figuring out a better steel stud, Dow Chemical and others were lobbying and adjusting the building code so it now requires all exterior steel stud construction to include insulation sheathing.  This undercut the innovative efforts of the steel industry and I couldn’t find any companies that sell the more advanced steel studs.  (Update, actually, now MarinoWare does sell studs like this, but you will need to special order to get them).

Here is a gallery of pics to illustrate…