Green Initiatives

Green Wall
Green walls are vertical structures containing a specific compilation of plant life that clean the air of VOC's. They are composed of pre-vegetated panels or integrated fabric systems that are affixed to structural wall or frame. Active green walls behave as an indoor bio-filter. The HVAC draws the VOC contaminated air to the plants and through the growing medium where it comes in contact with the water in the green walls irrigation system. The VOCs are transferred to the water and the purified air is recycled back into the building. The micro-organisms that exist in the plant culture break down VOCs and use it as a source of energy, eliminating the pollutants from the air. A single pass of air through the green wall removes up to 80 percent formaldehyde, 50 percent toluene and 10 percent of trichloroethylene.

Solar Photovoltaic Roof Plan

Geothermal

Geothermal energy is energy derived from the natural heat of the earth. At a depth of five to six feet below grade, the temperature of the ground remains steady. With the use of a heat pump in this system, in the colder months of the year, heat is extracted from the ground and moved into the building to help with heating the building. During the warmer months of the year the cooler temperature of the earth is extracted, and moved into the building to help with cooling. The function the heat pump serves is to transfer heat from one space to another by installing loops vertically at a depth where the temperature remains constant or by drilling vertical boreholes at a greater depth. The heat pump pumps fluid through the loops which is warmed or cooded by conduction as fluid pases trhrough. The most efficient gas furnaces today deliver 98% of the energy that they are supplied with, geothermal systems deliver an efficiency that translates to 500% because additional "free" energy is extracted from the ground. The payback for the geothermal system is 5 to 8 years.

Photovoltaic Energy (PVCs)

Photovoltaic energy is produced when sunlight is converted into energy with the use of solar cells or semiconductors. These semiconducting cells are usually made of silicon and do not contain any corrosive material or moving parts. When solar cells are exposed to light, they will produce photovoltaic energy. This energy is environmentally clean, quiet and safe. For Kitchener Wilmot Hydro the current electricity cost is $0.20 per kWh. In the Ontario there is a program called FIT which stands for Ontario Power Authority Feed-in Tariff program. It specifies when using a roof-mounted system generating between 10 kWh and 250 kWh it will pay $ 0.71 per kWh with that price guaranteed under a 20 year contract. The savings would be $0.51 per kWh. It is more cost effective to sell the power generated from the photovoltaic panels than to use it on our site.