GBE > Encyclopaedia > Code > Issues > Proposal > G#13083

Bio-Based Building Specification Encyclopaedia Proposal

Bio-Based Building Specification Encyclopaedia Proposal
About:

Executive Summary:

prepared for Adapt Associates

LEP or ERDF potential funding:

There may be opportunities to develop the following proposal as a LEP or ERDF, supported ‘DIY’ project
A BioBased phase potentially fits with the current Priority: Low Carbon Economy
GBE would welcome the opportunity to work with Adapt (potentially as project managers) Adapt Associates (potentially as development partners, ***) and others with an interest in the Bio-based economy in the construction sector to represent much of its know-how in a more joined up way for a UK and wider audience.
Develop GBE Map, building on the INCrops and Architype’s Enterprise Centre competition entry EofE Biobased mapping exercises to promote initially EofE and later UK Biobased companies, their products and services.
Adapt Associate across the EofE region may allow access to Multi LEP funding
With Paul Bourgeois’ guidance interrogation of and compliance with their rules will be essential to build a good project.
If we declare this ambition in advance and Crowd funding is successful it could provide match funding of 50%
Paul Bourgeois suggested Contributions in Kind (staff time; data contribution?) are permitted in place of match funding.

Crowd Funding the future development:

GBE are considering Crowd Funding as a means to accelerate development, but crowd funders need confidence that the result is wanted by industry and to stimulate them our sector needs to support a campaign by making donations.
These donations can be against ‘perks’ which might include pre-set packages of GBE Collaborative Services that match the donators needs (becoming part of GBE’s pages, including company, service, product, specialist subject, etc.)
Donations would be subject to donators meeting some of GBE’s 400 criteria, and if not a refund would be in order.
GBE envisages these contributions being ring-fenced to ensure the money is spent on specific tasks, ***
These might include something they know needs to be published to help solve regularly occurring problems, that can inform designers to guide them in their proposals, in the form of CPD seminars or articles supported by evidence data.
Carrying out the work and being paid for doing it, enables their engagement with GBE, *** and GBE content continues to grow and to be enriched.
***
These sector contributions need to be in the order of 30% to stimulate the crowd funders to make substantial contributions of say 70%.

This trebling of funds can be put to good beneficial use, in a number of ways:

Enabling sector specialists to produce three times as much work as without it***
Match funding for LEP, ERDF Interreg, LIFE or H2020 grant applications
50% contribution to Graduate scheme to increase manpower on the GBE team to process more core pages sooner
Writing, linking up and updating more supporting encyclopaedic content

Funding Green Building Encyclopaedia (GBE) at present:

In order to be financially autonomous GBE need to charge a fee for data collection, correcting; creating, linking and maintaining pages and for numerous other GBE Collaborative Services.
Upkeep occurs yearly at each annual renewal, (substantially lower cost than set-up expenses) or more frequently if the company is forthcoming or GBE spot a change.
Thus GBE website content is predominantly free of charge to users, and some additional information will be available at a small cost e.g. CPD seminars at £0.88 or unlimited access with annual membership of say £50 per individual.
To reinforce a product’s inclusion and enable its appropriate, competent and effective application GBE creates Issue Paper pages, Defect pages, Problem pages, Solution pages, Q&A pages explaining good and bad applications.
All relevant and related encyclopaedia pages point at each other and also point to solution providers (manufacturer, supplier, installer, server pages) and solutions (product, accessory, system and material pages)

Brief Proposal: (subsequent 7 pages go into detail)

Green Building Encyclopaedia (GBE)

Having founded and spent 10 years on GreenSpec I have now embarked on Green Building Encyclopaedia (GBE) with a new and better linked up set of objectives, solving all the problems created and unresolved by GreenSpec.
GBE already exists as a live website with 1900 linked up pages created so far, but at its current rate of development it will take 40 years to complete whilst it needs to be done in 5 or it will have missed the boat.

There are 30,000 pages that GBE knows need to be created

(11,000 page of information already exist in various formats that need converting)
others need creating from scratch by myself, a large number of specialists that I know and others I have yet to meet.
100 pages of links to other organisation, website, databases, publications, articles, tools, software

GBE is not just about Green it is about Healthy, Environmental, Resourceful, Appropriate, Competent, Effective, Yardstick (HERACEY™) GBEs more readily adopted definition for sustainability.

GBE will also include: (it already has some examples of the following:

GBE Jargon busters (9000 so far with many published and GBE’s own definitions) and topical themes
GBE Environmental Checklist
- (300 trade based; 20 subtopics including: avoid these, consider those, reclaim or recycle them),
GBE Materials Guides (characteristics, appropriate and inappropriate applications)
GBE Issue papers (e.g. Overheating, thermal bridges, flood resilience, etc.),
GBE Defects analysis
- (e.g. mould on timber weatherboarding soffit caused by roof snow thaw-water overflow saturated stonework),
GBE Q&A pages (raining and answering many questions around the original question),
GBE CPD Seminars and Lectures, (1000 exist: Environmental, Design, Procurement and Professional practice)
GBE Robust Specification
- (110s Products, Methods of Construction, Preliminaries, Performance, Appendix, waste, etc.)
GBE Elemental Assemblies (892 so far including 130 Passivhaus, 130 Passiv+Eco, many Accredited or Compliance details including critiques good and bad of all),
GBE Datasets, equations and calculators (for widgets, plug-ins and Apps);
All of the above listed and linked up in both directions (to avoid searching menus)

Phases of development to focus efforts:

Retrofit:

Supporting AECB’s Carbon Lite Retrofit programme and STBA’s green knowledge wheel
Support any ambitions coming from Bonfield Report?

GBEs HERACEY™ offers 6 phases to consider:

Healthy (BBA are busy developing their Building Biology Association training programme, consider supporting WELL)
Environmental (BioBased focus prompted by Agrodome and UEA EC)
Resourceful (Circular economy prompted by BBM and Architype Architects Resource mapping and SALVO)
Appropriate (focusing on guiding users towards the best materials for the task and away from those not)
Competent (3^rd party accredited and equivalent products, systems and services)
Effective (focusing on bigger picture value engineering multi-functional good stuff into projects not out of them)
Yardstick (developing a system to encourage and reward designers for joined up thinking rather than ticking boxes)

Judging companies and products for inclusion:

GBE currently judge companies and products against 400 criteria and collect (if available) 1200 pieces of information to generate 33 schedule of information, e.g.

Robust Specifications: (Product, System, Elemental assemblies, workmanship, waste, maintenance),
- Resistant to substitution, cost cutting and value engineering
End of Life opportunities, Product Passports,
3rd party evaluations: (tests, certificates, technical, green, health and social labels)
Equivalency evaluations: (Against: Passivhaus, ETL, WTL, Ska, etc.)
Product and Application data sheets: (BIM, IFC and COBie, DOI, datasets for calculators, interrogation and Apps)
BRE Environmental: GGtS, Green Book Live, BREEAM, BRE EP, BES 6001
EU Green (PDR, LCA, EPD, PEF) etc.

GBE’s aim it to extract the essence out of manufacturers existing information and represent it in all formats to suit all users at all stages of the demand and supply chain.

In the process we filter out greenwash and with the owners rewrite it using more robust competent statements, often highlighting characteristics the company may have missed or do not understand or appreciate about their products.

GBE looks for positive responses to some of the 400 criteria, (some do not apply and no product will address all that do)

When we publish a company or product, we display all the data so the reasons for inclusion of the company and the product are there to be seen and judged by all, as can GBE be judged.

All this data and other encyclopaedic guidance should enable users to seek the right material characteristics or products with the right properties to match an application’s requirements and achieve a competent installation.

GBE’s Audience

GBE are trained Architects so our content at the moment is strong on information for Architects and all other design professionals but we have an ambition to develop more content to attract Developers, Clients, Self Build and DIY, Constructors, Facilities managers.
GBE has 7000 captured email addresses of contacts made in the past 17 years and uses Mailchimp with 1950 of them for Solution Provider and Members newsletters distribution
GBE has strong Social Media presence twitter: 2463+794 followers, facebook: 322 friends, Google+: 64+17 followers, LinkedIn: 3973 connections, Pinterest 153 followers driving traffic towards the GBE website

Follow-up after initial discussion with Agrodome after Bath University event September 2016.

Fred van der Burgh fred@agrodome.nl
Sissi Verspeek sissy@agrodome.nl
Brian Murphy brianspecman@icloud.com

Background:

Mainstream construction industry’s perception of ‘green’ and its consequent efforts seem to be predominantly focused on substitution by renewable energy and heat (incentivised by government refunds) or energy saving by insulation.

Whilst these are significant issues, they are by no means the only ones and renewables are not the most important.

Mainstream has begrudgingly and superficially engaged with environmental design, specification and construction; driven initially and predominantly by voluntary or development control enforced:

Environmental Assessment Methods (EAM) mainly created by Building Research Establishment (BRE)
- EcoHomes (now only Scotland)
- Code for Sustainable Homes (CfSH) (now abandoned)
- BRE’s EAM (BREEAM); for many different building types
- Defence Related EAM (DREAM),
- Civil Engineering EAM (CEEQUAL) (Now BREEAM Infrastructure)
- Health building EAM (NEET now BREAM Health)
- Other national and international schemes: GreenStar, LEED, etc.
Most reinforced by reference to BRE’s Green Guide to Specification (GGtS). (more about GGtS later).

Efforts to drive down building energy demands are focused on by:

England and Wales: Building Regulation Approved Document L (BRADL)
Scottish: Technical Standards
Voluntary/Enforced EAM (more about EAM later)
Voluntary energy standards (New-build and refurbishment)
- Passivhaus (Germany) for new-build
- Association of Environment Conscious Building (AECB)’s CarbonLite. (Passivhaus for UK new-build)
- EnerPHit (Germany) Passivhaus for retrofit
- AECB’s CarbonLite Retrofit for UK climate and energy mix
- Other national and international schemes: Minergie’s 4 schemes (CH) Canada’s ____

But improved U values combined with stagnant very poor airtightness targets, results in buildings that fail in the ‘performance gap’ between design and implementation; caused by lack of understanding, poor detailing, weak specification, lack of care and inevitable inadequate construction; leading to:

cold, drafts, thermal by-pass and uncomfortable buildings
- bio-based building materials are often dense and can achieve improved airtightness without membranes
thermal bridges, interstitial condensation, rot and structural failure

Bio-based materials with hygroscopicity offer moisture management that can enable recovery from poor conditions or poor construction.
Bio-based air-tightness membranes can let the building breath and lose any interstitial condensation

Some of mainstream are creating buildings with better U values and better airtightness but without providing adequate dedicated purposeful ventilation, resulting in two potential issues:

Condensation activating ever present spores into mould with potential for asthma, toxic mould, unusable buildings and risk of death

Bio-based materials with hygroscopicity offer moisture management that can enable recovery from poor conditions.

Unhealthy materials and finishes, off-gassing into the building, affecting occupant’s health with some serious consequences

Biobased materials can avoid many of these issues, whilst plant based solvents have similar issues, which other plant extracts can avoid.

BRADL is preoccupied with U values resisting winter heat loss and fails to engagement with decrement delay of summer solar radiation heat gains.

This missed opportunity results in 20% of UK housing and many other buildings suffering from overheating.
The industry’s preoccupation with thinness of construction and fiduciary rules (obligation to make a profit for shareholders) means it uses the thinner (petro-chemical) and/or cheapest (synthetic-bound mineral fibre) insulation materials in inappropriate locations where they fail to protect from and exacerbate overheating.
Both of there materials let solar heat in and reduce conduction heat flow getting out, leading to overheating, poor wellbeing in occupants and in extreme, but not unfamiliar conditions, to their death.
Bio-based materials benefit from decrement-delay characteristics that address summer overheating whilst their thermal resistivity addresses winter cooling.

UK’s GreenDeal (Energy Focused Domestic Refurbishment) and Energy Company Obligation (ECO) have been carrying out whole house external insulation to reduce heating demands, in tens of thousands of houses.

There are examples of blatantly ignoring thermal bridges created at services interfaces, perimeters and abutments.
These will inevitably lead to water penetration, surface or interstitial condensation and mould and subsequent ill-health of occupants.
Bio-based materials with hygroscopicity offer moisture management that can enable recovery from such poor conditions.
Historic fabric which is characterised by porous materials and moisture permeable construction including solid masonry walls need moisture transport, hygroscopicity and breathing insulation/cladding/lining systems to avoid the risk of rot, frost damage and mould.
Bio-based materials have these characteristics in abundance.

BRE also contributes to failures by ‘forcing’ designers to specify methods of construction using conventional materials from those listed in GGtS.

GGtS uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as its criteria for Greenness.
GGtS also openly ignores important alternatives including bio-based materials and methods of construction.
The consequence is high embodied energy and embodied carbon new additions to the housing and other building stock.
Bio-based materials sequester carbon dioxide during growth and after manufacturing processing these materials remain carbon negative and enable carbon negative building in construction.
Bio-based insulation materials offer low embodied energy and carbon in manufacturer as well as low energy and potentially low carbon buildings in use, most other materials cannot claim both.

Recent drives to reduce waste to landfill mean a lot of materials are recycled into new products, reclaimable and waste wood turned into wood panel products bound together with synthetic petro-chemical binders or adhesives.

Manufacturers are persistently required to respond to requests for cheaper goods.
They inevitably resort to strong chemicals to deliver cheap competent materials.
These new cheap goods often off-gas solvents or Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) into the surrounding air leading to indoor air quality (IAQ) issues.
Combine that with airtightness and poor ventilation this leads to very unhealthy conditions and ill-health.
Bio-based materials can avoid many of these issues.
Whilst plant based solvents do have similar issues, bio-based extracts can avoid more of these issues whilst bonding ingredients.

Current preoccupation with Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) are seen to solve one of the housing problems in the UK: ‘demand outstrips supply’ which results in prices of new homes being driven up

This issue will not be solved unless developers are willing to drop their insistence on high profit margins and their reluctance to build until the demand is high and profits maintained
Offsite prefabrication is seen as a means to:
- Build fast on site, (plus corresponding manufacturing time in the factory)
- Build more punctually on site, despite the weather
- Manufacture more reliably, competently and assemble more simply on site (but rarely cheaper)
- Build with less waste on site
  - Assuming it has been designed to minimise waste, acknowledging the size of stuff
  - Assuming the factory is also run on lean, waste-free principles
- Timber is an obvious choice for ‘cut-on-site’ but also for MMC in a variety of technologies:
  - Light timber frame (LTF) including: Insulated Structural Panel Systems (ISPS)
  - Structural Insulation Panel Systems (SIPS)
  - Solid Wood Systems (SWS) including: Cross laminated Timber Panel (CLTP)
- MMC is seen as a faster method of construction
  - CLTP is now often Value Engineered (VE) into projects replacing concrete high-rise structures
    - Site overheads can be significantly reduced with rapid construction systems
  - SIPS manufacturers often VE their panels into projects for rapid assembly on site

Innovative Methods of Construction (IMC) are a departure from MMC and can originate from any source

Straw and other thatch have historic origins but have recently been used in a panelised rainscreen application
Turf roofs reinvented as part of living roofs (green or brown, intensive or extensive)
Green walls are living planted walls often as a rainscreen cladding
Green walls as climbers growing up offset wire systems
Gabion walls filled with wooden logs, cut branches and twigs, creating spaces in the interstices and inside hollow cores creating habitat for numerous sized wild life species
Extensive research is on-going in the world of fungi as a potential source of a replacement for plastic insulation used for packaging, protection and thermal insulation as well as a replacement for timber based building boards
Algae have for some time been researched as an energy source and potential source for other outputs.

Framed Systems are increasingly being explored which can readily replace concrete, steel or hardwood

Glued laminated timber (GLT)
Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL)
Composite sections are used extensively:
- Offering lightweight, man-handle-ability, versatility, services accommodation,
- Using: Softwood, LVL, timber panel product webs, metal web components
- Composite sections cut from round wood

A criticism laid at lightweight timber framed construction is that they can readily overheat

Without masonry wall solar protection; additional heat can present itself
With the right thermal insulation materials and sometimes a combination of materials
- Summer Solar heat gains can be prevented from entering
- And then not have to worry about removing it
- Bio-based materials have the Decrement Delay & Resistivity characteristics needed to solve this
- MMC using plastic insulation for high performance and thinness do not solve this problem
- Plastic insulation some of which are not moisture permeable

Bio-based materials have numerous environmental benefits:

Renewable within our lifetimes (trees grow to maturity in 40-100 years)
Rapidly renewable (Plants and bamboo grow to maturity each growing season)
Unlike non-renewable fossil-oil-based-plastics (having been laid down in prehistoric times)
Bio-based materials sequester carbon from the atmosphere as they grow so are carbon negative
Unlike fossil-oil-based-plastics which release carbon to the atmosphere in manufacturing so are carbon positive
Bio-based materials are usually low embodied energy and low carbon in manufacture
Unlike fossil-oil-based-plastics which are usually high embodied energy and high embodied carbon

Bio-based materials are increasingly used as aggregates in various recipes

Wood chip in wood-crete in bat and bird boxes and blockwork
Wood chip in lime-crete
Cellulose fibre paper making waste in paper-crete blockwork
Cellulose fibre reinforcement in tarmacadam
Hemp chiv in Hemp-lime hempcrete in insulation and blockwork

We were recently enlightened by one UK company manufacturing hemp-lime and bio-based insulated buildings:

Significant improvement between designed/predicted/calculated and actual performance of hemp-lime
Extensive Research and Development (R&D) have got to the bottom of this
It is down to phase change properties of water in their material.
Such know-how enables them to mix and match materials and thicknesses to obtain the optimum performance with relatively thinner construction.
Such know-how if sharable is vital to the widespread understanding of bio-based materials and their properties to exploit in many more systems or to increase the availability of a well-researched and successful method of construction that meets Passivhaus Equivalency, very easily.
GBE aims to promote successful products as well as disseminate about the physics, science and numbers.

Bio-engineering is not a subject building designers are familiar with but it goes on quietly in landscape and civil engineering, a few examples follow:

Bioremediation of polluted sites cleans their sub-soils by growing selected plant species to absorb specific chemicals from the soil over a period of a few years, these can be harvested and chemicals reclaimed.
Bioremediation of polluted water bodies cleans sediment by releasing cultivated bacteria and growing selected edge planting species to eat or absorb chemicals over a period of a few months or years, plants can be harvested and chemicals reclaimed.
Hedge-bank walling use stones, turf, top soil and subsoil from the site to make freestanding or retaining walls in landscape
- Turf acts as mortar between stones to stabilise walls
Bio-based revetments stabilise land edges at water-side
Plant roots stabilise sloping soil
Tree roots absorb ground water and control ground water levels
Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) use a combination of permeable hard-landscape and
Permeable pavement absorbs surface rainwater during storms and release the water slowly
- Avoiding overwhelming urban storm water systems in extreme conditions
- Bacteria living in permeable pavement sub-bases clean up hydro-carbons dripping from vehicles
Rain gardens absorb rainwater during storms and release the water slowly
- Avoiding overwhelming urban storm water systems in extreme conditions
Top soil and intensive green roofs absorb rainwater during storms and release the water slowly
- Avoiding overwhelming urban storm water systems in extreme conditions

Inputs:

Scottish Environmental Design Association (SEDA) addressed two conflicting issues and produced two complimentary guides:

Designing for Airtightness
Building with low toxicity materials
GBE extracted this information into a Word file and reorganised into specification order
They contain Bio-based products (not exclusively)

IBO’s Passivhaus book of construction

Includes 130 elemental assemblies in conventional and greener material choices
Includes many bio-based materials
GBE has collected these methods of construction into spreadsheets for use in Design & Decision Tools (D&DT)
More versions with greater bio-based content could be developed

Sources of Bio-based Product information (few exclusively bio-based)

Healthy Flooring Network HFN (out of Women’s Environment Network (WEN) Specification (GBE has file)
- HFN c/o The Women’s Environmental Network, info@healthyflooring.org
- Predominantly bio-based carpets, matting and wood flooring

GreenPro (UK) (Ex AECB)
Natureplus (Germany)
The Blue Angel (Germany)
White Swan (Norway)
Ecolabel (Austria)
IBO BauBook (Austria)

Whilst there are a number of on-line databases containing bio-based products (few exclusively) they are not yet in the sights of the UK construction industry mainstream and they are often devoid of information on how to use the product to best effect.

Partner:

Agrodome have a long track record in understanding these issues,

EU funded research and dissemination websites
Lists of bio-based products
Built public and professional visitor’s building
Assembled public and professional visitor’s exhibitions
Using tried and tested bio-based building materials
Using bio-based methods of construction and numerous case studies,

Agrodome’s recent and potential involvement in Eco or Bio-based EU funded projects has reinforced this knowledge:

Agrodome

http://www.agrodome.nl (Catalogue of bio-based building materials and visitors/seminar building)

Biobased Bouwen (Netherlands by Agrodome)

http://www.biobasedbouwen.nl (Bio-based building including products by Agrodome)
http://www.greendealbouwen.nl (_____)
http://bouwboulevard.com Virtual Exhibition hall

CAPEM (Cycle Assessment Procedure for Eco-impacts of Materials)

http://www.capem.eu (Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method)
ICDuBo (Exhibit by Agrodome in Public and Professional visitors centre)
Mobile Display systems

CAPEM Compass (Construction Product Assessment Tool)

http://www.capemcompass.eu (product database with criteria for shortlisting and LCA analysis)

Envireo (Strategic alliance of numerous Interreg Projects)

http://www.envireo.eu (Strategic alliance of numerous Interreg Projects including CAPEM, Living Green)

Grow2Build (Agricultural bi-product in use in construction)

http://www.grow2Build.eu

INSURE INnovative SUstainable REfurbishment

Bio-based solutions have a strong role to play in historic fabric upgrades

The proposal:

Bio-based Specification and Bio-based Encyclopaedia

GBE would welcome the opportunity to work with Agrodome to reproduce and develop some or all of their outputs for UK and wider audience and for UK and other climates.
This may entail extracting the essence of what Agrodome knows, what it has already produced with Interreg funded projects, what it’s individual members do and know and make it readily available to all of GBE members and to its wider audience.
The process of assimilating this information would be a joint effort between Agrodome, its members and GBE in close liaison throughout.
GBE anticipates that some of its own know-how would be transferred towards Agrodome.

There may be an opportunity to develop this proposal as an Interreg Project:

Interreg Channel (just two countries?), Interreg North Sea or Interreg NW Europe?
In this case the initial proposal to start a crowd fund campaign could deliver the Match to the EU monies.
If there is a need to engage other partners we could consider CAPEM European Economic Interest Group (EEIG) and ex CAPEM team partners, individually or other organisations encountered in previous Interreg or Strategic Alliance projects.

Green Building Encyclopaedia (GBE)’s approach to delivering information is to:

identify issues,
investigate their problems,
analyse cause and effect,
determine basic principles,
set rules of thumb;
find solutions,
provide lists of solution providers and their solutions.

All delivered in a way that informs and educates the readers, if they have the time and if they care to learn.

Working with Agrodome may generate a whole new set of ways of working that GBE can adopt and develop.

GBE offers many types of information supporting the ambition for bio-based environmental buildings, these include:

Jargon Buster:

Addressing definitions of new and existing symbols, classifications, initials, abbreviations, acronyms, terms, phrases, used in environmental design in general and bio-based buildings in particular
A ‘Bio-Based Building’ Jargon Buster Theme can be created linking relevant Jargon Buster pages together

Environmental Checklist:

New Build, Refurbishment, Adaptation checklists
One for every trade, every checklist includes a subtopic on materials, properties, bio-based building in particular
“Avoid this, consider these and recycle or reclaim those”
A stand alone Bio-based Building checklist can be created as a daisy chain linking pages

Materials:

Characteristics and properties of environmental, bio-based and conventional materials
Appropriate applications to consider
Inappropriate applications to avoid
Data sets and equations for calculators or Apps.

Issue Papers:

Interrogating issues that are generating big or numerous problems that need to be understood
Enable correction and avoidance in future
E.g. High Carbon Building, Overheating, Urban Risks, Thermal Bridges, Flood Resilience, Healthy buildings, Indoor Air Quality, etc.

Defects Analysis:

When GBE users submit images of defects we analyse the images and promote reasons for the failure and offer solutions all posted on the website to share to a wider audience

Questions & Answers:

GBE users occasionally phone the helpdesk and ask questions,
GBE’s published response is always thorough
Addressing all the questions around the first question
Ensure all issues are understood and answers given
Enable informed decisions to be made.

Companies: Specialising in healthy buildings, surveys, analysis, eradication,

Manufacturer, suppliers, installers, servers (service providers) and specialist consultants.
Contact details
Linked to all their product or service pages

Products, accessories and systems:

Product pages with description, schedulers of information and product credentials analysis,
Appropriate and competent applications;
All supporting information attached and downloadable or listed and linked to.

Robust specifications

For each product, accessory, system, assembly and detail, workmanship, waste, maintenance, deconstruction and reuse.
Elemental specifications linked to component product specifications

Elemental Assemblies: (walls and floors, etc.)

Each element is shown in many different methods of construction
892 are documented already, ready to choose from, develop and post on line
These can be selected from or added to or modified.
They offer the opportunity to describe readymade combinations of components, materials and products that through Agrodome experience make competent bio-based buildings.

Each assembly described in detail
CAD files, 2D and/or 3D diagrams
Appropriate components and materials or products can be identified and linked

Data sets and equations:

Make calculators
Become core components of Apps in future
Expert systems to create Design & Decision Tools

CPD seminars

To read on-line
To download
To edit and present to audiences

All of the above:

All relevant and related pages listed and linked in both directions
No need to search menus and lists
Everything at your finger tips

Delivery of the results can be:

Primarily via GBE and secondarily Agrodome website
Both sites could be considered as satellites (or binary pulsars) of the other.
Avoiding duplication is important, the content can created and maintained on one, delivered to the other using RSS technology and signposted from the other
Reinforcing and connecting the content of each by sign-posting each other’s complimentary content should occur
- Improving search engine visibility
All contributors of know-how, time or funding would be acknowledged on each page footer.

Income from sale of data sets, tools, apps and files or membership can be apportioned as appropriate:

Overhead costs to hosting website
Income for time or know-how contributors
Repay Agrodome to cover development costs

© Green Building Encyclopaedia Brian Murphy BSc Dip Arch (Hons+Dist)
18^th – 24^thSeptember 2016
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