 We're back. We're live. This is Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. We're talking about Code Green, which is Howard Wiggs' show at 3 p.m., 3 o'clock, rock every Monday. Howard is going to be here shortly, so we're going to do a tag team here. Okay? And our special guest is Matt Goike. He's the principal of Green Sand Architecture and Sustainability. That's a plus sign. Correct. So hi. Welcome to the show, Matt. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here. So Kiska, say, Green Sand Architecture. What is that? Yeah, Green Sand? Green Sand, yeah. I never saw Green Sand. What is that? Well, it was named after the Green Sand Beach on the big island of Hawaii. That particular beach is made out of mineral olivine that is brought up from the lava flows in certain parts of the island, and over time the waves have worked it and worked it, and so we have that beautiful Green Sand Beach. That's one of the first places that Rhonda and I, when we came to the islands, 20... She's your wife and co-architect? Rhonda is a partner, yes. She is not an architect. She is an environmental consultant. Perfect. So the two of us together form Green Sand. Why? Yeah. Well, we thought that when there was a need, there was a passion on our side for doing Green Architecture, doing sustainable architecture, impacting the environment in whatever ways that we can, one project at a time, one home at a time. And so that's, you know, we kind of... When we formed the firm, we put our two interests together and specialties, and it has worked out pretty well so far. Are you buzzing with business? We are doing well, yeah. Yes, we are. We're very busy, and happily so, and always looking for more work, though. Where's your office? Actually, we are working out of Kailua now. I used to have an office right in this building here for a while, but we downsized a little bit so that I can do more design. So I am now more hands-on meeting with the clients directly and designing and then handing it off to folks, whereas before I was overseeing and designing part-time, and so I wanted to get kind of back to the things that I love, really love to do, meeting with clients, talking with people about architecture. Shaping plans together. Yes, very much so, very much so. So we're calling this show Shades of Green, Shades of Green Architecture. Correct. I guess you could say Shades of Green Architecture. That's not Halloween anymore. That's something else. Yeah, so we run into a lot of people and clients and projects out there, and not everyone can be super deep green, but every little bit helps. So that's what we talk about, Shades of Green. There's a wide variety of projects and types of things that people are interested in, how they implement them, and all of them can have some form of green on them. I bet there are three distinct Shades of Green. Why do I feel that way? Well, today we're talking about, there's many more Shades of Green, but today we're going to talk about three projects and how those different projects are green in different ways. So historic renovation, luxury off the grid, and functional renovation. Let's start at the top of the list. Historical renovation. So historical renovation, this is a project in Manoa, and the decision to renovate a house in itself is a very green decision because you're diverting things away from the landfill, you're not expending a lot of energy for shipping more materials over here, and so there's a lot of nice qualities about that. In this particular instant where we're not only preserving some materials, it happens to be an historic home that we're preserving. Is this the very home? Yeah, this is the home. This is the completed home. Well, that's really nice. So you can see it. Obviously, this is a circa 1920 home built in Manoa. Looks like a gingerbread cottage. Looks like a gingerbread cottage, exactly. And it was subject to a lot of ill-conceived renovations over the years, as many homes are, and so we wanted to bring it back to its former glory, and also modernize it to meet the new lifestyle of the current owners. So before we get into the energy and sustainability aspects, did you have to do a lot of work to remove the changes that had been made, ill-advised changes that had been made over the years? We did. We did. We basically demoed all of that out, and again, in talking about sustainability, those materials that were demoed, we tried to recycle them as much as we could. The second, we tried to reuse them and repurpose them, not on this particular project, but we worked with Reuse Hawaii. Oh, sure. We know Reuse Hawaii. Yeah, good friends with Quinn and known him for a long time. But we try to get every project, every client we have, commercial or otherwise, try to send it through Reuse Hawaii. And that's the right way. Yes. To be doing it with Reuse materials is the right way, philosophically and in a larger picture for the environment. Right. So, okay, now let's get to the energy part. What did you do in this house to make it more energy efficient and independent? Yeah, so this house really came up in two ways. It was the insulation and then the PVs that they are just now going to put onto the house. I don't see any PVs. No, they're not on the house right now. This is one of the things that there's always been, there continues to be increases in the technology. And when we first did this project, the most available, most efficient panel was like 230 watts per panel. But now they're up over 300. And so that made this, putting panels on this particular house because of its orientation and its availability of sunlight and things of that nature. Is this in the neighborhood where it rains? Yes, this is in Minoa. So it now becomes more economically feasible, so they are going to put that on there. And the entire house... It's a substantial increase in efficiency. It is. Between 230 and 350. Up to above 300 now. 20% increase. Yeah, so those are important. You know, that moves your, if you had 100 panels on your house, all of a sudden you only had to buy 80. And you don't want to spend the whole roof on panels. You want to retain the architectural aesthetic. Right. We're just going to put it on that kind of dormered flat roof portion. And because the other side is facing the wrong way, and it's very steep. So you can't get away with... So you lose efficiency when you lose efficiency on that too. Okay, so panels, new panels. New panels. 300 panels. Some of the energy efficiencies that we're doing. It's all LED lighting. We chose to use the tankless water heaters, the gas, because they have gas in that neighborhood. Gas oven and stove. Gas barbecue in the back. Why do you like gas? It's not necessarily that I like gas, but it reduces the electrical energy load. More so than whether I like a certain energy source over another energy source. And then insulation... It's easier to cook with gas, too. Apparently. I'm not... That type of... It's lost on my palate, let's say. Whether it's electric or induction or gas. Okay. So insulation was the next big thing, and the entire house was foam insulated. So we had to take this down... I'll take it down to its very structure. And we insulated the floor, the walls, and then the roof. Makes a big difference, doesn't it? It makes a big difference. What's the high-tech insulation you use now? It's the... We're using... Well, just the foam insulation. It's your basic closed-cell foam that is sprayed on. And it comes in... It's all about the same. It depends on the installer on how well it's done and how well it covers. And that's really worth mentioning. It's not only that you want to design it so that theoretically you'll be more efficient. You want to get a contractor who is skilled to put it in the right way. That's right. Otherwise you're losing some of that theoretical advantage. That's right. Actually, if you don't use foam, if you're using regular bat insulation, there are different levels, grade levels of installation. And we always specify a grade one, which takes a little more skill. You have to be out there watching it. You have to put insulation around and behind pipes. You just can't put it on the sides. There's no gaps. It has to touch all six sides of the cavity. I mean, there's a lot of things that go into installing insulation properly. We're going to have time, I think, before we take our break to talk about getting off grid. And we have a picture that also looks like a gingerbread cottage. Another kind of gingerbread cottage. This is kind of, which kind of leads into, well, all of our projects, that being green and being completely off the grid, you don't have to live in a yurt or a cottage like this. It's just a before picture of the after picture. You can shower daily. It doesn't have to be. Good. It's just a before picture or the after picture that we just saw. That's just a picture that we found for illustrative purposes. So what did you do for that? To get it off grid, to allow regular living there and so forth? I guess if we can move into the next project, which is Paka Makani Farm. This is an image of the historical renovation. Yeah, beautiful. From a design point of view, this doesn't have to really do with energy so much, but the homes of that era were very compartmentalized. You had a living room, you had a front room, a power, dining room, kitchen. So one of the things was to make it more open but still retain that quality of having these separate rooms. It looks like you did that. And that's what we did through a series of archways that are still of the period. So it turned out very nice. They were very happy. Matching the material on the exterior was difficult. Finding that combed siding was pretty bit of a challenge. You said it was a historic house. Does that mean it was designated as a historic house? It isn't designated yet. It's the process of getting it designated now. So they should find out actually the end of November. If they want to be faithful and rather get the designation, they may have to do more work on it, no? No, actually, they've gone through all the reviews. It's just a matter of getting it officially approved. That's really a feather in the owner's cap. He not only renovated it for efficiency but to retain it. Yeah, they saw the beauty in it. They saw the value in it. Especially being in Manoa. Saving these really iconic structures from that time period. That's important. Not everything should be saved, but in this instance, it made sense. And the structure was still solid. It wasn't termite-ridden. Did you have to do anything with electronics to control the use of power in the house as renovated? No, that's not something that we really got into on this house, no. This was really just the PV, the insulation, the choice of water heaters. So this is a project and material-wise, since we wanted to be true to that time period, we wanted to recycle materials or recyclable materials and things like that. So this is one of those shades of green where it's a greenhouse because we restored it and diverted things from the landfill. But it's not deep, deep, deep green. We're going to take a short break. I see Howard in our gallery. Hi, Howard. I'm going to take a short break. This is Matt Goike. He's an architect with architecture plus sustainability talking about three different kinds of projects. We covered one, and we're moving into this. Howard can move into the second one. We'll take a short break here on Code Green. Aloha, everyone. I hope you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii, but I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. I'm here to talk about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. We livestream every Tuesday from noon to 12.30. We're here to share what people are doing about sustainability in Hawaii and what the issues are impacting all of us in all the islands. Join us, please. Hi, I'm Chris Lethem here with Think Tech Hawaii, and I invite you to watch my show The Economy and You each Wednesday at three o'clock here in Hawaii on OC-16. We look forward to seeing you. Aloha. Greetings, this is no longer Jay Fidel. My spirit did something to my memory and I had the dash over here and Uncle Jay filled in for me. Thank you very much, Jay. And so, Matt, before we got so rudely interrupted, we want to talk now about the PK... PKM Farm. Paka Makani. It means Touched by the Wind. And this is following along with the idea of the shades of green. It would be considered a dark green project. It's completely off the grid, located in the North Kohala area near Hawaii. It's on a 20-acre site. It has a barn, a farm dwelling, and they catch their own water, they treat their own water, and they collect all their energy. In addition to that, they also were definitely interested in as many green materials and also they're very interested in materials that were of low toxicity. The Living Building Challenge is an organization out of Portland and the Pacific Northwest area. It's known as being tremendously difficult, as I understand. It is, it is, and this project is off that, and we got through the design development phase, but during bidding, we dropped that and not only, we only got lead platinum for the house, which is also difficult, but... There's not a whole lot of lead platinum buildings in the interior United States of America. That's correct. Yeah, that's correct. We got it for this particular project, and it was more difficult for this project for a couple of reasons. One, the lead program, this isn't really a discussion for this particular, but the lead program likes to promote inner-city, urban, infill projects, and this is off on the Big Island in Farmerland, right? So we didn't get a lot of points for that, or we weren't able to capture a lot of points. It's not on a bus route. It's not within two, one mile of a shopping center. Yeah, none of those things were there. And then in addition to that, there's such a thing as a scale for the size of your dwelling. The lead, again, likes to promote smaller, more compact homes. This is a luxury home, a two-bedroom, 3,600-square-foot two-bedroom, and so that raises our scale higher. So with that being said, some of the, this project was off the grid. We looked at many different options, let's say, and the two prominent ones were wind turbines. This particular, the region why it's called Paka Makani, touched by the wind, is that this is in a certain area of the island of Hawaii that gets constant wind. And it's actually when you're out there, it's tiring. It's oppressive. When you're out there working in it. And so we looked at that as a viable option. However, the wind power does take a little more maintenance. It's a little noisier. It does have some sound associated with it. And that was something that they were particularly concerned about. One, the maintenance, and two, they didn't want a lot of noise or sound coming from their things. Even so much as that, we have the energy room and the photovoltaics and the water collection system is on the barn, which is 400 feet, 500 feet away from the dwelling. So there's a little bit of hum from the electronics and the inverters, but still, we wanted them distant. This project has 99, 230 watt panels on it. We have 6, 8,000 kilovolt inverters. Two charge controllers. 48 deep cycle batteries. How big are each one of the batteries like a filing cabinet? No, they're not that big. They are about 2.5 feet tall, about 12 inches. I mean about 2 feet deep. And we have them outside of the barn in a cabinet. We have them self-filling for water purposes. And we have a hydrogen sensor inside to help just in case things build up in there, we know that we'd open things up a little bit more. If there's a build-up of hydrogen, we're looking at explosive or... Potentially. Yeah, there's a spark of some sort. There's a potential for it. This particular enclosure is vented, but if we have never gotten an indication for it, but if we did, we would just open up the tops of it and just let it air out real quick. Good to have that monitor there. Yes, it is very good. And that's something, you know, for homes, you know, when we're designing, we think about where we're putting these, how close, where the wind is blowing. We don't want that gas to accumulate anywhere, and especially to get into the home in any way. Absolutely. So we think about those things and how it's cited and where it is. And in terms of energy efficiency, we have... only one air conditioner. It's a split system. They have it for the master bedroom. And the only room, and that is used occasionally, they really don't use it too often, just because there's enough insulation and ventilation to keep the place cool. But the one room that gets a lot of air conditioning is the computer room. It's a small three-by-six room where everything home runs to, and that gets air conditioning. Now, just regarding the computer room, on a scale about 10,000 times larger than that, you have the Silicon Valley data centers, Google, Microsoft, and so forth. And they have huge warehouses full of servers, and they used to air condition them, and then they figured out that you really don't need to keep them that cool, just at a moderate temperature, and you have to figure out where the hot spots are and invent the hot spots. Yeah, and, you know, spot cooling. Yeah. Right. We don't have that problem, but one of the issues there that we want to keep it in an enclosed room is because of the salt spray and the deterioration to the electronics goes very quickly. Yeah. So all the lights are LED, lots of insulation, lots of natural ventilation. Absolutely. In this particular project, we had a bigger problem controlling the winds versus trying to enhance wind movement. Where in most of our projects we are always trying to enhance wind movement, natural ventilation. But in this project, it was controlling it. In the great room, I don't think we have a photo of it here, but we have a 10-foot diameter glass fan that just slowly moves air. When you put that thing on high, you have to hold on. Yeah. The blades of those fans are incredibly well tuned. And very quiet. Very quiet for the size of that fan and the amount of air that it moves. One of the other deep green things that this project had on it was the water. This is a wet area. Well, it's certain times a year it is wet. It gets about 35 inches a year, which is not that much, but enough. But there are firefighting demands. There's domestic water demands for potable water for drinking and then there's irrigation demands for the farm. So, water was a big, big discussion on how to handle it, how to catch it. The fire department is rather particular about this. You're keeping a certain reserve of water? Yeah. Since we had two buildings, we have about 15,000 gallons for 7,500 for each, 15,000 total. And then we have domestic and irrigation supply. Irrigation, too. We're talking about a lot of water here. Well, irrigation in terms of when the farm needs it. And so we used a number of soft technologies to help drive water that's sheep flowing across the land into the ground and plant bigger things along these shelter belts, so to speak. But that works very well. And then all of the wastewater from the home goes into the garden around the house. I'm sorry, the gray water, not the wastewater. The wastewater goes into a infiltration field. And above that, they plant what they call fodder plants, fast-growing plants that they cut and they put around other plants to keep the weeds and the moisture in and things of that nature. So it's really an integrated system. The water that falls on the land is collected and then we drink it and use it and it goes back into the land. It's really quite interesting. Quite nice. Yeah, we're about to wrap up. So what's the real big take? Oh, the energy use and that energy use of this home? Well, it's well below zero. In the hers rating, we actually got a negative number. Part of that I have to be clear is that we built the PV system is oversized for the home right now because they have plans to build other structures within the farm for the farm, like a farm manager's worker's homes and things like that. Currently, they're charging two electric vehicles. One to drive on the road and one like an electric utility vehicle for in and around electric appliances, electric blowers and electric everything. So they're an efficient home but because it's a working farm they have a lot of demands for the electric field. That is really a remarkable story and on that cherry note we're going to have to wrap up. Thank you so much, Matt. You are leading the way. You're a pioneer in this field. We're leading.