New products say it loud: They're green and they're proud

The "most exciting" green products of 2006 aren't terribly rousing. They include recycled concrete flooring, for example, and a water-efficient showerhead. Ho-hum.
By: Lew Sichelman: latimes.com
But they are innovative, and at a time when energy costs are going through the roof, being inventive seems far more important than being thrilling.

Take the polished-concrete system from Advanced Floor Products of Provo, Utah. Called RetroPlate, the process involves grinding, polishing and chemically hardening concrete slabs so they can serve as the finished floor surface.

The process mixes old-world know-how and a little American ingenuity — European stone-grinding and polishing technology is combined with hardening agents used in this country — to create a durable, easy-to-maintain surface that cuts heating and cooling loads.

But most important, no other materials are needed to go over it.

Such "multiple environmental attributes" are among the key things about the Top 10 Green Building Products named late last year by Environmental Building News and GreenSpec Directory, co-editor Alex Wilson said.

As in previous years, the best and the brightest innovations in green products are drawn primarily from the directory. Though more than 250 listings were added to the book's database last year, not all of the winners are new. Indeed, some have been around for a while.

"We like to see evidence of success in the real world," Wilson said.

Still, the pace at which green products are coming to market — GreenSpec now includes more than 2,100 listings — shows just how far the environmental movement has come. Designers "are looking for green products," Wilson said, "and manufacturers are responding."

It's a good thing too because during the next 25 years, about 40 million houses and 20 million square feet of commercial space will be built to accommodate America's swelling population. Not only will these structures require energy to heat and cool, they'll also require a significant amount of energy to build.

According to a recent report by Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm, these new homes, office buildings and shopping centers will use an additional 4 quadrillion BTUs of energy. That's in addition to the nation's current energy consumption.

With that in mind, here's a look at the fifth-annual list of green products that appear to have the clearest residential applications:

• Triton Logging manufactures a number of lumber products made from trees in underwater forests. The trees were submerged decades ago when hydroelectric dams created man-made reservoirs and lakes, and there are a lot of them. Worldwide, the company believes, there might be more than 100 billion board feet standing below the surface.

Triton uses remote-controlled logging submarines to clamp onto a standing tree and attach inflatable floats. Then, with an electric chain saw, it cuts the tree, which floats to the surface and is loaded onto a barge. Because the trees are cut, the lake floor is not disturbed and no sediment is created.

The Canadian company recovers Douglas fir, western white pine, lodgepole pine, hemlock and other species year-round. All of the milled wood is certified as "SmartWood Rediscovered" by the Rainforest Alliance.

• Delta Faucet has a new showerhead that uses only 1.6 gallons of water per minute yet still delivers "superb performance," according to the directory. Most low-flow showerheads create very small water droplets or aerate the water. Either way, the water cools quickly, making for a less-than-satisfying experience. But Delta's new fixture uses "H2Okinetic Technology" to produce "fairly large" droplets that have better heat retention.

• Environmentally, the best option for landscaping is usually native plants appropriate to the climate that do not require much water. But when irrigation is necessary, efficiency is essential. Yet more than half of the water used for outdoor irrigation is wasted, according to HydroPoint Data Systems in Petaluma, Calif.

To prevent waste, HydroPoint's WeatherTRAK control system creates watering schedules based on such physical landscape features as soil type, slope and plantings, as well as weather data beamed wirelessly to the controllers every day.

Although most irrigation controllers base water delivery on time-of-day metering, sometimes with override controls for soil moisture, HydroPoint's system uses actual local weather conditions to examine "evapotranspiration" rates and regulate water delivery so that irrigation will occur in the correct amounts — but not if rain is predicted or falling. The controllers are fully compatible with most irrigation systems.

• SageGlass has developed an electronically tintable exterior glazing that provides glare control on demand while still preserving views.

SageGlass is a multilayer, thin-film coating that is as durable as low-emissivity coatings. The glazing switches from a clear to a tinted state and back again.

The Faribault, Minn., company is partnering with numerous window, skylight and curtain-wall manufacturers to produce both residential and commercial applications.

• You've heard of concrete countertops, granite countertops, marble, engineered stone and laminate countertops. Now, there's PaperStone, a dense, hard, water-resistant, solid-surface composite made from cellulose fiber and a nonpetroleum phenolic resin derived, in part, from a natural oil in cashew shells. Made by KlipTech Composites in Hoquiam, Wash., the latest PaperStone is 100% post-consumer recycled paper.