WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2011
BUILDING A BETTER WORLD
CHINADAILY.COM.CN/LIFE
A growing number of environmentally conscientious homeowners are renovating their houses to save energy and cash. Cheng Anqi reports.
While Jack Frost has been knocking at Beijingers’ doors for weeks, Du Xiangsi sends him packing. Th is has been made possible by the aluminum corridor Du has constructed in front of his house’s main entrance. “It protects my family from cold in winter and heat in summer,” he says. “It works better than an air conditioner.” He can even turn off his storage heater on
sunny days. Du is among the growing ranks of “green builders”, who believe the value of apartments should be judged less by size and interior design than by energy effi ciency. Th e 60-year-old lives in an old dazayuan, or tenement courtyard, in Xicheng district. His neighborhood comprises a dozen ramshackle homes with poor heating and insulation.
“Even
the heater offers little protection
from
cold in winter,” Du says. “It’s a waste
of
energy.”
He
explains he used to dread receiving
his
heating bill until the NGO Friends of
Nature
included his among the 21 homes
that
underwent energy-saving renovations
though
the organization’s Good Houses
Save
Energy project.
Du’s
corridor acts as an “insulator”, Tsinghua
University’s
professor of energy saving
technology
and project consultant Qiu
Jizhe
says.
The
house’s south-facing windows can
warm
it until sundown.
“So
the house’s interior heat is retained
in
winter while the summer’s heat moves
around
the corridor to flow out the open
windows
and keep the inner rooms cool,”
Qiu
says.
Weatherizing
makes the house comfier.
It
blocks draft s and creates a more uniform
temperature
inside, Qiu says.
Friends
of Nature assistant director
Zhang
Hehe adds, “We want our trial
households
to have diverse income levels
and
situations.”
There
are incentives to using less electricity,
other
than protecting Mother Earth,
Qiu
explains.
“Saving
energy directly translates into
saving
money,” he says.
Buildings
consume up to 30 percent of
the
country’s energy supply, Ministry of
Construction
figures show. Most of that
goes
to heating and cooling.
“Most
people want energy-efficient
homes
but don’t know where to start,” Qiu
says.
Energy
efficient lighting is a bright start,
he
explains. Customers should start by
thinking
about brightness and colour, and
then
decide between compact florescent
light
bulbs (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes
(LEDs),
Qiu explains.
LED
bulbs cost from 50 Yuan to 300
Yuan
but last up to 30 years, Qiu says.
Wang
Yuan recently replaced five traditional
incandescent
bulbs with LEDs.
The
29-year-old had paid about 15 Yuan
($2.3)
a month for 200-watt bulbs. But the
60-watt
LEDs enabled her to reduce her
electricity
bill to 5.4 Yuan a month.
“LEDs
are expensive,” Wang says. “I hope
prices
will drop as more products enter the
market.”
Other
items that are helping homeowners
like
Kong Qingling save money and
energy
include “green switches”. These are
power
strips that operate on a timer that
shuts
off power to appliances — especially
“energy
vampires”, which are items like
water
heaters that suck power even when
turned
off.
“The
energy a TV uses when it’s on
standby
is simply wasted,” Kong says. “A
green
switch allows you to save a lot of
energy
without unplugging anything.”
Kong
filters bursts of dirty air shot into
her
apartment by the trains that traverse
Haidian
district’s Sidaokou stop across
from
her apartment with 30 potted plants.
She
has considered buying an air purifier
“But
if nature can help freshen air, why
not
use it?” she says.
“Gardenia
can contribute visual appeal
to
a room, and its fragrance can bring clarity
of
mind.”
Magazine
editor Luo Huixin finds joy in
tending
the vegetable garden she cultivates
on
her balcony.
The
hydroponic setup has produced its
third
batch of green beans. A timer-operated
system
drips a nutrient solution through
tubes
to each plant. Excess is collected in a
reservoir for reuse.
Buying
goods certified as produced in
an
ecologically friendly way plays a vital
role,
Beijing Biechu Space Design Studio
engineer
Guan Huilong says.
“People
like internationally certified furniture
but
don’t realize it creates vast amounts
of carbon dioxide as
it’s transported by air
and
train,” Guan says.
“Buying
products made with local
materials
and labour reduces pollution and
prices.”
This
is advice Li Xiaolin took to heart
when
redecorating her home according to
a low-carbon plan.
She
had her old traditional Chinese cabinet
polished
and repaired rather than buy a
new
one, she says.
“It
has become the living room’s centrepiece,”
she
says.
“All
of our guests praise it and ask where
we bought it.”
Planting green concepts
By CHENG ANQI, CHINA DAILY
Qiu
Jizhe sniff s every place he visits.
The
environmentalist, who was born
to
a family of poor Taiwan province
farmers,
says the habit comes from his
understanding
of how important animals’
dwellings
are to their breeding.
“I
have a sensitive nose and am very
careful
about improving a place’s environment,”
the
42-year-old says.
“Most
animals — such as cows, ducks
and
pigs — are warm-blooded and produce
heat.
The more there are, the hotter
they
feel. If the temperature is too high,
they
get sick, lose their appetites and stop
growing,
which cuts into the profitability
of
their slaughter.”
His
innovative solution is a water wall
that
reduces temperatures while filtering
the
air, he explains.
“When
people feel hot, we tend to turn
on
an air conditioner, which expels carbon
dioxide
emissions that cause global
warming,
which is the crisis of human
existence.
We can use the same eco-friendly
methods
that help animals to
make
our lives more comfortable.”
Qiu
has assisted environmental protection
organizations
in Taiwan’s Taichung
since
graduating with a master’s degree
from
Taipei University of Technology’s
architecture
department.
He
mostly deals in the construction of
“ideal
green houses”.
“An
ideal green house is a home that is
constructed
and operates with the least
disruption
to land, water and energy
resources.
The optimum design solution
effectively
emulates the site’s natural
systems.”
He
started innovating in Taichung,
in
2007.
“I
saw many disadvantages in our community,”
he
says. “We had water leakage
problems.
People would fall on the slippery
courtyard
tiles, and the air in every
room
stank and was dirty. It was a low
quality
of life.”
The
couple purposefully sought a
cheap
apartment with many problems
to
test their energy-efficient renovations.
It
faced westward, and its summer
temperature
peaked at about 38 degrees
when
it was 32 degrees outside.
So
he successfully experimented with
a
temperature regulation method of
installing
another window 10 cm outside
of
the original.
During
hot weather, he can open the
inside
windows and roll down the blinds.
This
causes hot air to rise and cool air
to
fall.
“It
allows you to take advantage of passive
solar
heat,” Qiu says.
When
installing pine flooring, Qiu
found
a space in the back of the western
wall
he filled with fibreglass.
The
couple also installed 2-meter-high
outdoor
air conditioning units on the
kitchen
balcony, living room, study and
downstairs
room to draw bad smells out
and
fresh air in.
When
the roof started leaking, Qiu
lined
it with insulating polystyrene bricks.
“It’s
like the thermal insulation of
refrigerators,”
he explains.
“Their
temperatures are cool inside
and
aren’t outside. It’s the thermal insulation
that
maintains the cold that’s inside
the
fridge that you can’t feel if you touch
its
exterior.”
The
green building concept changed
the
couple’s quality of life, Qiu says.
“We
reinvented our house with good
ideas
and cheap materials,” he says.
“It
doesn’t look like a luxury home. But
it’s
a coziness that’s very comfortable and
doesn't use much energy or cost much
to
live in.”
He
says it took some convincing for his
neighbours
to agree that many sustainable
building
practices aren’t more expensive
than
conventional methods.
The
community went on to found the
Green
Comfort Health Association, Taichung’s
first
studio dedicated to sustainable
housing
renovations.
Qiu’s
2009 book Hao Fangzi (Good
House) shows how to get started in the
green
building business.
The
book and his work earned him
the
2010 Taiwan Environmental Heroes
Award
from Global Views Monthly.
“I
hope to create a green concept in
everybody’s
mind,” Qiu says.
“It
can be glorified in every workplace,
home and occasion.”
