canvas Dropcloth

We have all heard of solar thermal water heaters by now, I hope. The system whereby liquid is heated inside black boxes on your roof and pumped into a heat exchanger and used to heat hot water in a tank. These solar thermal systems can also be used to heat radiant floors.

But how many people know that this kind of system can also power an HVAC system as well? Incredibly, they do, as evacuated tube solar thermal panels can be coupled with absorption chiller technology to heat and cool your house.

A company called SolarPanelsPlus has taken the two tried and tested technologies of solar thermal and absorption chiller and combined them to make an affordable, efficient, no-fossil-fuel burning HVAC.

One drawback is this type of solar thermal system will not work at night even with battery backup, so you will probably keep your other HVAC unit as a backup. But the energy savings are huge, and even on cloudy winter days this system can take enough sunlight and make heating and cooling power out of it.

This is definitely something to consider if you want to retrofit a new HVAC that will let you almost completely stop using your other fuel-burning system and begin using the free power from the sun.

Evacuated solar tube powered HVAC units by SolarPanelsPlus run on little electrical energy, and as with other appliances that run on electric, this can be offset by incorporating some solar PV.

This system does not use ozone-depleting refrigerants, and uses Lithium Bromide. This innovative HVAC option can also be set up to desalinate or distill drinking water.

—Paul McGinniss, canvas Healthy Home columnist

By Paul McGinniss

Lawn care company TruGreen started in 1973. You wonder why they left off the “e” in true. TruGreen later merged with ChemLawn to become TruGreen Chemlawn. ChemLawn speaks for itself. Chemical Lawn. (The Chemical Ali of Lawn care, perhaps?)

Miracle of miracles: TruGreen ChemLawn is now called TruGreen, and the company says the name change was “because one word is all you need for a great lawn. We have shortened our name to make it easier for you to remember that we are the experts of lawn care.” Somehow the corporate marketing department thought that by calling themselves TruGreen (emphasize green) that we would forget that they were putting chemicals on our lawns. Don’t think so.

The Toxics Action Center in Massachusetts asked residents to call TruGreen ChemLawn to inquire about their lawn care service. Through an informal survey anecdotal evidence shows that TruGreen ChemLawn’s customer service procedures make it difficult for potential customers to acquire factual information about the dangers of their pesticide products. When asked, TruGreen ChemLawn phone marketing representatives often did not readily release the names of the pesticides they would use on the customer’s lawn. In addition, the marketers generally did not even know about the public health threats of the products. Written information was often not offered or provided for customers. The TruGreen ChemLawn website has no mention of its roster of pesticide products and their health and environmental impacts. In addition, TruGreen ChemLawn representatives at times misrepresented their pesticide products as “safe”, a possible violation of federal law.

To learn more about all the wonderful green washing going on at Chemlawn—err, I mean TruGreen—a must stop is http://www.refusetousechemlawn.org/

Some of the eco friendly (NOT) things you will find out about TruGreen at the above web site are:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in a study of 9,282 people nationwide, found pesticides in 100% of the people who had both blood and urine tested. The average person carried 13 of 23 pesticides tested. The study found that children carried the highest body burden of pesticides. Fat soluble pesticides accumulate over time in our bodies. Pesticides that accumulate in women can be passed to children through breast milk.
• TruGreen ChemLawn is the largest lawn care provider in the United States serving more than 3.4 million households and annually generating more than $1.3 billion in income.
• TruGreen ChemLawn contributes to the yearly application of more than 70 million pounds of pesticides on some of America’s 30 million acres of lawns.
• A USEPA study found that residues from outdoor pesticides are tracked in by pets and people’s shoes, and can increase the pesticide loads in carpet dust as much as 400-fold. These pesticides, intended for outdoor use, will persist for years indoors because they are sheltered from sun, rain and other forces that can degrade them
• 17 of 32 (53%) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s pesticide products include ingredients that are possible carcinogens, as defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
• 13 of 32 (41%) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s pesticide products include ingredients that are banned or restricted in other countries.

By Paul McGinniss

So by now we’ve all heard about bamboo bowls and clothes and furniture and plants for landscaping. But have you ever thought about the possibility of building your entire house out of bamboo? I first discovered this concept on the great web site INHABITAT (http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/06/13/design-a-house-of-bamboo/), which co-organized the Greener Gadgets conference I wrote about for canvas in March 2008.

In 2004. Bamboo Technologies (http://www.bambootechnologies.com/bbhomes.htm) received confirmation from ICC Evaluation Service (http://www.icc-es.org/), a nonprofit, public-benefit corporation that does technical evaluations of building products, components, methods, and materials, that its structural bamboo poles used in it’s “Bamboo Living Homes” complies with the provisions of International Building Codes. This structural bamboo will be included in the International Building Code system for permitted buildings. This was the first time a species of bamboo has been approved as a structural building material in the International Building Code System.

The bamboo is harvested in Vietnam and the houses are manufactured there as well. The company states in a press release: “Prospective home buyers can choose from a range of prefabricated homes, studios, guest houses, vacation rentals, pavilions and gazebos. Bamboo home designs use many interchangeable parts and can readily be adapted, expanded, connected, disassembled or moved. Home buyers view online a gallery of home models and can select sizes, floor plans, options, costs, details and finishes, then preview steps and procedures to purchase a bamboo home at www.bambooliving.com.”

What’s more, Bamboo Technologies has an International Bamboo Building Design Competition (http://www.bamboocompetition.com/), which they bill as “An Architecture Design Competition of Structural Bamboo Buildings and Visionary Designs for Ecological Living.” In 2007, entrants from more than 64 countries entered the competition.