Recycled Glass Trails

Photo by C. Tonsor Three years ago, while working on the AMD Lonestar project here in Austin  http://www.sustainablefacility.com/CDA/Articles/Industry_Watch/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000625547, the design team decided to try an alternate for the typical decomposed granite trail.  The City of Austin offers recycled glass that you could get pretty much at cost, but would have to pay for delivery.  It was proposed that we [...]

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PVC: Is it poison?

Did you know that pvc products (polyvinyl chloride) are very dangerous to our health and environment? And that this danger starts in the production of this product throughout its life? What the heck is it, you may ask….do you know that new car smell or that shower curtain smell? That’s it. The chemicals that off-gas [...]

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Texas Water Codes & Our Stream

Here’s where everything gets interesting.  So, there have been developments since my last post on the babbling brook.  UT came back and their EHS (Environmental Health and Safety) department stated that this feature falls under a “Special Aquatic Activity Device” which would mean that it still has to meet the water quality standards of a swimming [...]

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Babbling Brook

One of the coolest features in the garden is our Earth as a Sieve water feature.  It’s about 85 feet long and begins with a hand pump.  Children pump the handle and fill their vessels with water.  They then dump the water over the cave stone (whole-y) boulders and the water trickles down a small [...]

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Sustainable Cistern Materials

  We need to collect rainwater, store it and make it available for re-use.   We also need to comply with Materials Selection Credits 5.3 “Support sustainable practices in materials manufacturing”, 5.5 “Use salvaged and recycled content materials, 5.7 “Use products designed for reuse and recycling”, and 5.8 “Use adhesives, sealants, paints and coating with reduced VOC [...]

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Buffalo Grass

Here’s a quick and interesting tidbit.  The Wildflower Center is doing a research study to investigate the performance of a native turfgrass playlawn mix.  They are using multiple different species of native grasses that work together to form a shortgrass lawn that can stand up to traffic.  Cool, huh!  This could potentially replace the stand [...]

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