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Posted on Aug 22, 2013 in GreenBy3 Blog, GreenBy3 Stuff

Following the Ride the Future Tour

Electric Vehicle enthusiasts such as GreenBy3’s Jorge Riano have had a great time this summer following Ride the Future Tour — a cross-country caravan of all kinds of EVs — cars, motorcycles, scooters, and bikes — traveling to promote EV propulsion and to set four Guinness Book World Records! The tour started at Brittlebank Park right here in Charleston on July 4 (celebrating Independence, get it?) and made their goal of 44 cities in 44 days to finish at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California on Aug. 16. 3,000 miles – Zero Gas. The idea started with one woman who wanted to do it — and it grew. The purpose was to demonstrate –  to the whole country –  just how amazing electric vehicles really are. If you’re tired of dependence on gasoline – there IS another option – even if you want to take a cross country road trip. So, what if you had an electric vehicle and wanted to go across country — or to Columbia for...

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Posted on Jun 26, 2013 in GreenBy3 Blog, GreenBy3 Stuff

Earthquake Drains Installed at Crisis Ministries’ Job Site

1,400 earthquake drains are being installed into the ground where Crisis Ministries’ new 30,000-square-foot men’s shelter and soup kitchen will be built.   Earthquake drains are used to mitigate the hazards associated with liquefaction – a process that occurs during seismic activity where water fills in the spaces between individual soil particles and causes the ground to become extremely loose and unstable. The drains are inserted into the ground using a heavy-gauge steel insertion mandrel which vibrates during ground penetration. As the mandrel forces the drainage tubes into the ground the granular soils surrounding the tubes are compacted. Furthermore, these drains open up drainage paths within soil layers and strengthen potentially weak or unstable areas within the soil. The earthquake drains will ultimately reduce the risk of structural damage caused by an...

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Posted on May 24, 2013 in GreenBy3 Blog, GreenBy3 Stuff

Water Conservation by Design

The  GreenBy3 team went to Hendersonville this week to work on some of the finishing touches being made to Biz611. The interior is really taking shape and looking good and there is lots of activity outside the building. We were glad to see a paved parking lot, despite frequent rain in the last few weeks. Solar panels are in place. A grid is being installed on the east wall facing Church Street that will be the trellis for the “green wall”. Landscaping crews were installing plants including relocating trees and plantings that had outgrown their placement at the Landmark Apartments . We want to give you a closer look at a cleverly designed water conservation feature — the inverted roof. In this picture you see the east wall of the building (with the trellis for the living wall). You can also see how the roof angels down toward the middle on each side. This design captures rainwater in a trough. Half of the captured rain water runs to the east...

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Posted on May 16, 2013 in GreenBy3 Blog, GreenBy3 Stuff

Did You Say “Dirt”??

A couple of years ago, GreenBy3 was able to reclaim 12,000 sq. ft of a modular office wall and raised flooring system  by the trade name of DIRTT, from an entire floor of a North Charleston office building. Not only did we prevent this high quality modular system from hitting the landfill, we’ve been able to use it effectively on several of our recent projects, including Biz611. DIRTT stands for “Doing It Right This Time” and is made by a Canadian company that takes care to produce their products in the greenest ways possible. Their manufacturing methods, their marketing tools and their people take great strides to reduce waste, reduce their carbon footprint and reduce their energy use. The DIRTT product is a a system of walls and doors that is easy to customize and reconfigure to meet the client’s needs and space. A raised floor conceals data and communication cable but makes them accessible for troubleshooting, repair, and rearranging. One of the reasons we felt the DIRTT office...

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Posted on May 13, 2013 in GreenBy3 Blog, GreenBy3 Stuff

GreenBy3’s Latest Project a “first of its kind” Sustainable Building

The finishing touches are being put on Biz611, a business incubator in Hendersonville, N.C., that will help cultivate young startups focused on helping the environment and developing software. The incubator is GreenBy3’s latest project and it’s scheduled to be completed by the end of this month. Located at 611 N. Church St. in downtown Hendersonville, Biz611 (pronounced Biz Six Eleven) is the first building of its kind in the area. A long list of sustainable practices was incorporated in the construction of the 9,500-square-foot building, as well as in the way it’s designed to run. The building maximizes natural light, generates solar energy and captures water for use by way of an inverted roof and cistern. It also features a “living wall,” or a vertical green wall. The building’s real-time energy efficiency performance will be continually reported on monitors throughout the building, allowing tenants to see their impact on the building’s energy consumption. The building also is designed with a lot of glass, open space and common areas to encourage collaboration, creativity and interaction among the businesses. GreenBy3’s involvement...

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Posted on May 2, 2013 in GreenBy3 Blog, GreenBy3 Stuff

Collaboration Coordination and Sustainability in Action

Those of you who have been following GreenBy3 in the last year are aware of a project we’ve been working on in  Hendersonville, North Carolina — it’s Biz 611, a new, contemporary-style incubator space for small, start-up software development businesses in Western North Carolina. The construction phase of that project is almost complete and this month we’ll be sharing lots of details on this exciting project with you. But first, we want to back up almost two years. Before there was a new building, there were two existing buildings on the site that needed to be cleared from the lot. The work GreenBy3 did to identify useful materials in those two buildings and working with the new building’s architect and general contractor to reclaim and reuse those materials is a great example of what we mean when we talk about the importance of collaboration, coordination and sustainability. We knew it would reduce the new building’s environmental footprint and save money for our client if we could reclaim and reuse brick,...

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