GREEN ROOF TILES by Toyota Roof Garden | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World

GREEN ROOF TILES by Toyota Roof Garden | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.

Installing a green roof on top of your home can be a real minefield – expensive, weight and drainage issues, difficult to maintain etc etc.

Toyota Roof Gardens (a subsidiary of the Prius-creating car company) have created a tile-based system that’s as easy as laying down carpet. The TM9 self-watering turf tiles connect directly to an irrigation system, so they self-water. At only 2 inches thick they are lightweight and don’t require any additional structural upgrading to your existing roof and rumored to cost $43 per tile. It is a modular, apparently  easy-to-install system that only needs to be cut once a year.

So how can we get hold of these in the UK?

Google House!

“Google house and Magnus”

I hadn´t seen my good old friend Magnus for about 5 years and when I last year produced a “geek” event Crossover Nordic on the island of Orust in Sweden, I realised that our venue Slussens Pensionat was only 10 minutes from his house and the Eco village that he has been part of creating. I have heard about the plans and the process for many years over many coffees but to actually visit it and see it in real life was fantastic.

He told me that he built the whole house by himself with no help and by using Google to find material and to learn different skills such as plumbing, carpentry, electricity etc. The house is taking its fresh water from a lake and clean it and pump it back again.

“Massey”

To prepare the ground and to move material he had to get a tractor…a classy Massey Fergusson and since he is a fixer he had to mend it first because it didnt work.

“Prototype”

To test if he actually could build a whole house by himself, he started with a prototype. When that worked well, he went on to build the main building. It took him about a year.

So there I am… on Orust working with Nordic content producers to create new ideas from the web and mobile and Magnus has managed to mock up a house using Google, rapid development including a prototype. Sustainable as well…!

In the dark about fluorescents?

We’ve been sitting in the dark this week at work. Literally!

At our work retreat this week-end we were joined by faculty members from around the world and our Canadian comrades seem more aware than we are in the UK about the impact of office environments and our health. Apparently we need an ionizer because we have dead air and also need to switch off our fluorescent lights!

So we’ve been sitting in the dark ever since.

So what is so unhealthy about office environments and what can we do to improve them? After all, we do spend half our waking hours of the working week there.

Early in 2008, in response to renewed public concern arising from use of type II luminaires, NRPB carried out a study on Ultraviolet Radiation (UVR) from Fluorescent Lamps based on a sample of readily available lamps. Assessments were made of the possible potential risk for the induction of acute effects by reference to the suggested UVR exposure limits then in use and the results indicate that fluorescent lamps still do not present an acute hazard.

For this risk assessment, it was assumed that “a person is subject to 157 MED y ^-1 of solar UVR up to age 18, and then (as an indoor worker) is subject to 93 MED y ^-1 of solar radiation. These values have been used in a study of the impact of ozone depletion ⁶ using an MED of 200 J m ^-2. The exposure model assumes a two-week holiday in August in the UK ⁸. The indoor worker is also exposed to UVR from workplace lighting. The increased risk of contracting NMSC from an occupational exposure of 6.0 MED y ^-1 as opposed to 4.6 MED y ^-1 (at 300 J m ^-2 per MED) can be calculated.

In summary, under the conditions of this analysis they conclude that at commonly used illumination levels the UVR emissions presented neither an acute nor a significant chronic hazard ¹.”

According to new research by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) however, “some energy saving compact fluorescent lights can emit ultraviolet radiation at levels that, under certain conditions of use, can result in exposures higher than guideline levels.” see their piece on Precautionary advice: Energy saving compact fluorescent lights about the use of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) in the home.

I think we need a bit more information on the risks of fluorescent lighting and any well founded comments would be greatly appreciated, as well as advice on how we can light up our working and home envoironments in a healhy way.

As for us at our office I can’t see us leaving the fluorescents off for long. It’s a dark office and it’s pretty miserable working is such a dull environment…I don’t know which is worse!