Exploring Green Building and the Future of Construction 

What do you think about Net Zero? If you liked this, be sure to check out Exploring if Tesla Solar Roof is About to Go Mainstream - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Xi_5PqHcKNc.html

Thanks, Matt for publishing the video! As an architect and multi-discipline engineer, I have been for decades trying to educate clients to incorporate these technologies. Sadly building owners are short term thinkers who only think about the initial building costs and don't consider the long term saving potential in operating costs utilizing these technologies.

You should do an interview with a Net Zero or Passive House architect and home owner. It would be interesting to hear about how they went thru the process of building green.

Pretty good over view Matt. When I saw the title I was thinking "here we go again, Green Washing", but you steered clear of many of the things you get LEED points for. I prefer the Net Zero concept since it's a bit more straight forward as far as lowering energy use or offsetting it with on site generation.

My mom's old office was LEED certified. Had a garage with EV charging and solar panels on the roof

Excellent summary. I suggest following with an episode on the Passive House movement.

So much useful information Matt. Thank you for producing all your content. It's informing my new build project!

So interesting Matt! I loved this!

Great vid man! Helped me a ton with my dissertation.

i just enjoy these videos, they stay on topic and they are always so informative and even chatting about eco friendly concepts definitely helps a lot with pushing politicians on driving green projects

Great summary. Thanks and greetings from Turkey !

This video is packed with so much valuable information, every time I watch I learn something new 😊 Thanks a lot for all your hard work.

Very interesting video. I've been seeing some on hempcrete. Also on bamboo. Just watched your video on algae for making plastics. A lot of new technologies coming out. Thanks for bringing them to us.

Great video. Love seeing these innovative concepts.

Loved it, Matt! We'd LOVE to watch you create your own Net Zero/Passive home. This is something we are now considering because of this video.

We have a "low flow" crapper. Usually we have to flush it _AT LEAST_ 3 times to get solids to go down the drain. And yes, I've had the rest of the plumbing checked, no blockages in the drain lines at all. If I was going to replace it with another low flow I'd look into a system designed for marine or RV use since for those you REALLY don't want any extra liquid than is absolutely necessary going into your holding tank (or sewer system).

Very good summary. Thank you very much

this channel deserve more subscribers . i love it .

This is so resourceful and informative… thank you

So glad I found this channel. Thanks for all the great info, and please keep at it!!

I like this topic and really enjoyed this video. Also worth looking into is the Passive House (Passivhaus) building standard. It focuses on insulation and temperature control to drastically reduce building operation energy costs.

🙋‍♂ Matt, tks for sharing the roof of The Music City Center here in Nashville. 👍 Excellent video Matt.

thank´s for collecting all those very Important Projects !!! This is important for a sustainable Future

I really enjoyed this video! It was very interesting. I'm currently writing a thesis about the impact of sustainability on the performance of REITs. I would say that green building is a major challenge that we are currently facing and finding solutions is of utmost importance. I'm glad you brought up the subject in this video!

Good video - would be neat to see a city level conceptualization of green building - roads, bridges, open spaces, etc.

The benefit that you neglected to mention from the mycelial bricks is that concrete production produces a huge amount of carbon dioxide which would be reduced. By using the corn stalks in the building you mentioned, that building essentially also sequestered all the carbon from those plants instead of putting it back into the carbon cycle (until they broke it down for the biodegradability demo). This could provide the opportunity to build buildings with a SIGNIFICANTLY reduced carbon footprint or even a net negative one all the way back to the base resources.

Great video as always!!!

that intro music always gets me so hyped for ur video! Usually I don't like intros, but yours is an exception for sure

Here's a concept I think would make an interesting video topic, how feasible is converting the updrafts from a skyscraper into wind generated power?

Know of any companies working towards these same goals in the residential area? Thank you for the great and exciting content

Nice video. Some stuff I didn't know about in there (like the bricks and the Bullit building). This is a huge subject. take a look at domestic next. Especially retrofit as there are an awful lot more buildings to fix than new ones that will be built. (I've EnerPHited my house - passivehouse retrofit standard)

Very informative and useful. Thanks for sharing.

Just watched your Passive House Design & Green Building videos. Great content as always! Have you heard of Masdar City? Was initially meant to be the world's first zero-carbon city. Possible video idea?

Great info Matt. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the interesting and fruitful video. I liked, subscribed and will follow your chanel. Please provide more videos like this, Matt.

Have you done a similar video on net-zero single-family houses?

Great video Matt, thanks for sharing insight into this important component of more sustainable living. The upfront construction cost doesn't seem much higher than conventional building, did you hear much about the timeline for payback, as the energy savings were substantial?

Thanks for the iformation. I also ph.D student on green building concept in Rainwater Harvesting in the buildings.

Tks for showing the Green roof of the Music City Centre here in Nashville. The roof is the outline of a guitar, the one parts are the frets. Its a pretty cool building.

Thanks Matt...I still have a lot of concerns about the mercury that is leeched into the soil and ultimately water tables from solar panels.....Clean drinking water is one of our most precious resources and I hope we haven’t pushed forward for progress sake without proper safety precautions.

THIS VIDEO SO HELPFUL THANK YOUUUUUU

Thanks for this one Matt

Am a little late coming to this video, I've been going through your back catalogue since discovering your channel. My dad has built a few green buildings, using hay bales. The walls may be thick but does it ever make for good insulation, it is so easy to heat and cool.

I'm a B.Tech Civil grad. Felt the need to lean into my creative nature and incorporate it into my workflow.. going for M.Des Sustainable Design now. Wish me luck fellow humans🖐😎

Fungus is amazing! Read, "Teaming with Microbes." Living soil is what I dream nanotech will be like one day.

I think there are some good ideas, mixed in with lots of pretty poorly thought out ones. My home was built using a new shingle made to decompose faster in the landfill. Turns out it decomposed on my roof causing water leakage and damage after 10 short years. And the builder installed these exterior lights designed to ONLY allow CFL to be used by using a non-standard base for the bulb - that were no longer made when I went to replace the bulbs. So the landfill now also has 4 light fixtures in it that were obsolete. Make a note to do another show in 5 years about what worked and what didn’t.

I would love to see a deep dive into some of your videos. Take two of the most interesting technologies in this one and deep dive link in the video to find out the economic, building skill level, durability, etc of the technology show cased.

Thanks for sharing!

thanks for the knowledge🙏

This is all so awesome, thanks for sharing, Matt!

Well done Matt, this is an excellent & informative video.

Hi Matt, love the format of these videos, do you have a reference list for the stats you've mentioned? Thanks

LEED is a good start; Don't forget the even more rigorous building certifications through the Living Building Challenge, or Passive House certification.

Thanks for this video!

just saw the intro. Im in. I finished watching the video BTW. Congrats. :)

you should have also discussed transparent wood. It has some really incredible properties for construction.

Would love more talk on timber buildings. Their feasibility, how they've been doing until now, and their cost

Love this topic!

this is awesome!

Thanks and greetings from Turkey !

Matt you mention glass curtain walls but I have discussed this with several builders and manufacturers and they estimate most of these systems will last less than 25 year. The total cost of refitting new curtain walls (moving tenants out, scaffolding, etc) is going to be possibly be so high that for many of this type of building it may be quicker and the same cost or lower, to do a tear down and rebuild.

At the end turn the volume up and show some footage!

Love the video man! It might be worth to also consider low tech options for reducing carbon and energy use! Most videos about improvements to our built environment often lean on new(or coming tech). Eventhough the problems are created by how and what we build. We create problems for ourselves to then fix with new tech. Everyone wants the new full glass apartments, but you are only creating more cooling demand. But if we take a step back to what we really need/adds value then we could reduce electricity bills and still get amazing buildings. For those who are interested in simpeler(often already proven techniques) can lookup the term vernacular architecture. Vernacular architecture: the architectural style that has been developed by the original inhabitants (of a place or habitat, extreme example:igloo) over honderds of years is often removed to make place for large high-rise which is adapted to the place that’s its being built( a full glass skyscraper I’m Dubai for example). A great book for this is: the barefoot architect. Great examples that very easily improve our houses are orientation, shading and material use. P.s. you might be able to find the book I mentioned online for free;)

Another great video Matt. Thanks so much for educating everybody to Green Building. We have been building green for decades and people like you are helping us make these more common and more accepted by people who are not educated in this rapidly evolving field.

I am designing a zero carbon solution for an existing high rise for my 3rd year project so this video is super helpful, thanks!

Hello Matt great video!! I am engineer and passive house consultant. Maybe you should do a video about passive house institute efforts that are targeting the household mainly and greater scale buildings. Keep up the good work!

Nice show, Matt.

Check out the city “Masdar” over in the UAE. They are moving in the correct direction, mainly because they know their source of income, OIL, will be scaling down in the future. It’s really interesting, however, having been there, I personally can’t stand the crazy heat and sand storms. Never understood Dubai as a vacation destination.

Thanks Matt for information,I am an architecture student

Congrats, Matt!

It would be nice to get transparent Photo Voltaic windows to stop the UV heating in summer and take advantage of passive solar heating in the winter. Both would make a drastic difference in energy consumption. Also rooftop solar preheated then point of use water heaters. The solar heat storage potential of water has a lot to offer that we tend to overlook. The mycelium would work well for bag dome structures like they do with concrete, just inflate the double walled dome and let it grow to fill in between. ...Any way, it's Just a thought

Another great video!

Has Deltec Homes come across your net zero residential search yet Matt? Besides their 360˚ homes, they have green net zero homes. An old friend from high school runs it, neat stuff!

Hey Matt, great video! New to the channel and definitely a subscriber. But please tell me the name of the building on your cover photo? :)

Good video for architecture students

I am so on board for a lot of the ideas presented. We may have to rethink how we make cities. In a place the the US where we have ample land, but dense concentrations of people in cities (like New York, Chicago etc), perhaps we need to stop building close and up, and more spread out an wide, allowing more green areas (to beautify as well as for CO's reduction), as well as lowering what buildings need in the first place. If we made most of the power we need per structure, it becomes less needed to have more and more power plants.

Love this video very interesting information. Question what’s the name of the building on the cover of the video ??

Great content 👍

Question, Matt. You didn't mention anything about air conditioning with the modular/Passive homes. Is that somehow built-in, or would it have to be added? What about Thomas Jefferson's passive air tunnel air conditioning idea?

We've got plenty of net-zero construction going on here in Richmond, Virginia, USA and I'm all for it except for the privacy intrusion systems which seem to be bundled together with such projects. I mean, the cameras and other surveillance equipment is freakishly proposterous.

Glad that you covered this topic Matt! Look forward to a part 2 of this topic in future :) For your information, I work in one of the Country Green Building Council.

A good example of a Green Building is "Project Jewel" in Singapore. Located in an airport.

thanks for the share

I want those techniques applied for social housing, which looks to me to be a far more important use of buildings, given most office workplaces are online, and the housing affordability crysis is wrecking the market.

my friend used to live in the older building pictured at 7:25 something to consider is the gentrafication of these building projects. since 2014 her rent has increased for a 1 bd rm apt from 1400/mo to 2800/mo yippie

Really informative video

I belong to several building bodies in Australia one being Green Building Council. Several local Entrepreneurs and I are organising a four-day EV & Renewable Energy Conference/Field day will be in Sept 23 to 26 Sept in Lismore NSW Australia

Since many of these concepts are cost efficient, it seems like inertia and lack of awareness are what is holding it back, along with businesses' tendency to ignore future costs and savings, which most maintenance and IT guys could probably tell you about.

Back in high school, circa 1980, we had a geography teacher that was interested in energy efficient housing. Some of the criteria was related to windows, roofing, wall design and eaves, as this was single and two level dwellings. The house that scored highest was a corrugated iron exterior wall house, tin roof, wide eaves, and very small east facing windows, and only two windows we could see on the north side of the house. Today, I am looking to build with Compressed Stabilised Earth Bricks (CSEB) done as a solid brick house, use geothermal heating and cooling from about 3.5 metres below ground level, eaves to allow winter sun, but block the summer sun. Earth brick roofing tiles, and attempt to use battery storage from solar and vertical axis wind turbines, so the house can go off grid. With the wastewater, that should be able to be reused for toilet, and treated through an on site septic system. It will take a few years for me to get to completion, but, I will look to posting videos of the process, so viewers can have a good laugh at my expense!

Great topic!

building with fungus? ....me: Morrowind music starts playing

Glasses with Electrically controlled Transparency is used in my country India in a few coaches of Indian Railway,also known as Vistadom Coaches,they recently completed 180 km/h trial, and is ready to launch 🥳

Very cool, thanks

What a cool video! +1 subcriber.

Working from home saves more than 100% of lifetime building energy costs: You don't have to build an office building, you don't have to power it, and you don't have to drive to it. This is the way of the future.

Dude, you should have billions of subscribers!

5:20 we knew all this 25y ago when I studied architecture. Why isn't this standard by now?

Interesting video. In the UK Breeam is said both ways but mainly Bree Am. The point you didn’t raise is that most large office or other commercial buildings are constructed by a developer / pension fund and then rented to a tenant. So the extra capital cost of construction is paid by the developer / fund but the running cost saving is taken by the tenant. So far in the UK at least there has been no real rent adjustment for this as rents are normally pegged to existing buildings. Developers / pension funds that I work with do want to build “green” but the cost appraisal / income calculation falls over. The UK Government via local planning rules has introduced high Breeam standards but these are not always being achieved as they are being successfully challenged on being uneconomic in areas of lower or even median rents. This needs to be urgently addressed, probably by tax breaks, so all new buildings and refurbishments are to a high standard.

I own 2 Victorian properties that I rent out in the UK. The flat had mould problems on the walls that I could not get rid of. I double glazed the windows. It didn't fix the problem. I insulatated a solid brick wall that didn't have windows on it. I insulated it from the inside. The mould stopped happening on that wall only. I could not insulate the two bay windows because I had already doubleglazed them. The insulation would protrude beyond the double glazing sills and framing so it would look a total mess. The rooms were also very small. I then found that there was plasterboard in Wickes Builders Merchants (in the UK) that had 9mm of plasterboard stuck to 17mm of insulation. I had old plaster that was 32mm thick. I removed the old plaster and had this plasterboard put onto the wall. It ended up exactly the same thickness as the old plaster. It fitted perfectly with the double glazed sills and frames so I didn't need to mess with the double glazing. This fixed the mould problem completely. It also reduced the amount of heat going through the walls by 50%. I haven't had a problem since I did it about five years ago. Under the floor is so cold now that it is hostile to mice so it discouraged mice from living under the floor. They lived near the hot pipes of the central heating near the boiler judging by the droppings. I guess that he mould might have been on the walls because the property needed pointing. If the pointing is bad then the rain soaks into the walls. When the wall dries out after the rain it acts like a fridge and the wall gets cold. You then get condensation on the wall because it is colder than normal. I pointed the walls. However, It takes about 1 year for every inch thickness of the wall to completely dry out. So it would take about 9 years to dry out fully. So the mould problem continued. I also insulated under the floorboards with solid insulation between joists. The solid insulation was held up with thick chicken wire nailed under the joists. The solid insulation meant that if water was spilt on the floorboards then the joists will get not get permanently soaked. If fibreglass was used then the joists would become permantly wet and rotif the fibreglass became wet. While I insulated under the floor I insulated the central heating pipework with Bylaw 30 insulation which is twice as thick as the normal pipe insulation. This saves about 1KW of heat when the central heating is working. Insulating the pipes is more important than insulatiing the floor. 1KW is about 20% of the heat of the whole flat. I insulated the cold water pipe as well so that it would not freeze and break. I then changed the draughty front and back doors and installed double glazed doors. They obviously stopped the draughts. They also were air tight so they didn't let mice in. I don't have mice in the flat anymore. It was a permanent problem before. I changed the boiler to a condensing boiler that is over 90% efficient when my old boiler became uneconomic to fix. That saved about 12% of the heating bill. My boiler is getting used less often so it is going to last longer and need less maintenace. I did similar things to my other property. I got the double glazing done by a cheaper company and the quality of the work was about the same as the expensive company. In some ways it was better and in some ways worse. I didn't have a mould problem on this property. That property is a house so I had a roof on it. I put solar panels on the roof. I did this while the government was paying me for the electricity that it produces for the next 20 years. It will take me 20 years to get my money back for the solar panels. But my tenants also get half price electricity as well. If you add the two together (the tenants and me) then it takes about 10 years to get our money back. I put 4KW peak of solar panels on the roof. That is enough to cover all the electricity needs of the house over the year. 50% of the electricity from the panels is used by the tenants. The other 50% is sent back into the grid because it is producing too much for the needs of the tenants at the time. The value of the property will go up in value as well. My tenants don't want to leave now because the properties are so comfortable and cheap to live in. At the beginning of this my tenants in the flat were always complaining and getting me into trouble with the the local Council to fix the mould etc. I tried to do this. I didn't know how to fix these problems at the beginning. As time went on I found more solutions until I completely fixed all the problems. I did these jobs in small projects over 15 years. It was financially hard for those years as I spent the money on these solutions. I write all this because it might inspire you to do something similar. Even if you are a renter it is good for you to know how mould can be fixed so you might want to talk about solutions with your landlord or estate agent. He might want to fix the problems and have an easy life. My estate agent charges me less because he knows he is getting less hassle looking after the properties. It is not always about making the most money from the tenants. I accept that for many landlords it is all about making the most money possible so they won't want to spend the money. I am enthusiastic about reducing energy in buildings. I would like to see a greener world. I have studied about this subject. Other people are not interested. Also, for some people it is too daunting a task to take on. If you as a renter gently pass this information on to your landlord who is ameanable to all this it might be less daunting for him or her. Best wishes.

How about doing a show covering existing homes with moving towards Net Zero and/or LEED?