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Sustainable Living Audio Book – Learn From Looking – Chapter 3: Part 2
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The author of Learn from Looking, Charlie Szoradi, has given us authorization to share the written content and drawings from his book with our readers. This is one of many segments that focuses on the overall theme of sustainable design and overall sustainable living.
Book Topic: Sustainable Living
Learn from Looking is about critical thinking and reaching a sustainable future more cost-effectively than ever imagined. The book's subtitle "How Observation Inspires Innovation" speaks to the core aspect of the content, given that the author, Charlie Szoradi, is an architect and inventor who has traveled extensively around the world over multiple decades and built businesses that range from energy saving lighting to indoor agriculture systems. Mr. Szoradi shares insights on "green" clean-technology that are increasingly key for sustainability, profitable businesses, healthy living, and raising intellectually curious children in a pre and post Covid-19 world. We give Learn from Looking five out of five green stars! Note that the audio book comes with the E-book for only $15 together. Click here to Order the Audio Book on Sustainable Living
Sample content from Learn from Looking:
Examples of Critical Thinking for Sustainable Design
In my exploration of renewable energy, efficiency strategies, and technology related to my “green” architecture practice, I found hundreds of examples of critical thinking. Here are just a few examples of critical thinking relative to how we interact with energy and sustainable design in the built world. The following pages highlight the critical thinking for each.
- window shutters
- shoji screens
- showerheads
- light-emitting diodes (LEDs)
- pens and pencils
- moving mountains
Window Shutters: In a village outside of Budapest, Hungary, I saw a set of shutters that had a set of double hinges. The primary hinges were on the sides so that the shutters could open out similar to what you would expect to see with operational American shutters on homes from the last two centuries. However, these village shutters included an insert panel on each side with the hinge at the top. The idea was pretty simple. If it was raining and the resident wanted to have the shutters open for natural ventilation in their homes (most of which did not have air-conditioning), they could lift up and out the insert panel and use the surface to protect the opening from the rain. The same move worked well for shading the opening of the window on bright sunny days. This low-tech solution piqued my interest into how cultures without an abundance of electricity were able to improve their interior climate control.
Shoji Screens: The sliding translucent rice paper and wooden panels that are so prevalent in Japanese culture intrigued me. When I worked in Japan for one of my graduate school architecture professors from the University of Pennsylvania, I saw how they were able to divide and transform spaces as well as share light between the spaces. The shoji screens were walls and doors as well as windows. Some critical thinker ages ago challenged the very preconception that a wall needed to be static and opaque versus active and translucent. Professor Koyama, who teaches at Tokyo University, said, “Why does the window open and not the wall?” The shoji panels piqued my interest in mobility and illumination. Our home back in Philadelphia now includes interior doors with translucent glass that share light between spaces, sun tunnels, skylights, and transoms. As I looked into even more ways to use natural light, I started to explore the implications on commercial architecture. The challenges were steep. Since the deployment of fluorescent lighting in the 1950s and air-conditioning systems, commercial buildings no longer needed to use as much natural light or natural ventilation. I could not help but look up at the ceiling to the sea of tubes.
Showerheads: I saw in my travels that water was a much more precious commodity than here in the United States. We sometimes forget that millions of people around the world have to carry water to their homes each day. We take for granted running water, and some research shows that we may run out of fresh drinking water on the planet before we run out of fossil fuels. I looked into low-flow showerheads that reduce the typical 2.5 gallons per minute down to 1.5 gallons. The problem was twofold. First, the name low-flow is terrible for marketing. I started referring to the ones I tested as “high-performance” showerheads, because “high” is better than “low,” especially when it comes to water pressure. The second problem was that many of the low-flow showerheads did not create a shower experience that was as pleasant as the high-flow heads. After testing showerheads on site in hotels and homes in different countries where I have stayed around the world, I continued the testing with showerheads back at our home from different manufacturers.
Finally, I found one that used less water but felt like the same pressure via an aeration technology. When I ran the calculations on the savings, the return on investment (ROI) was solid. A gallon of domestic water costs about a penny out of the sink or shower (far less than bottled water), and by saving a gallon a minute on a ten-minute shower, the ten cents saved each day adds up to about $36.50 per year. With a forty-dollar showerhead, the ROI was over 90 percent, and the payback was just over a single year. The surprise came when our monthly gas and electricity bill was lower over the first month, which I discounted for seasonality. After several months of savings, I put on my detective hat. Our bill was very low to start with, given that I designed our home outside of Philadelphia with both solar photovoltaic panels for electricity production and solar water panels for hot water heating. Plus, I installed one of the first on-demand water heating systems as well to back up the solar system. With dual net metering, I monitored the daily utility cost of operations.
The learning was profound. By reducing the ten gallons a day, for both me and my wife, Cynthia, we were not using as much natural gas to heat the water. The savings on the natural gas was higher than the savings on the water. The takeaway is counterintuitive: a $40 high-performance showerhead saves over $80 each year, which is more energy than the energy produced by a $400 solar panel. We have tens of thousands of dollars of solar panels on our roof, and this discovery aligns with the 1970s mantra of the green movement, “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” The first word is “reduce,” and by reducing the water, the savings is dramatic on both water and energy consumption.
