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About Us |
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Designing for the 21st Century
The 20th century provided a tremendous learning experience to professionals in the built environment. Incorporation of emergent technologies is a continual challenge but the last century also thrust to the fore the challenges of energy efficiency, healthy buildings and natural resource availability and cost. Building codes changed dramatically.
In the 21st century, the challenge is to create resource-efficient environments that are more comfortable, healthy and safe than before. We accomplish this by combining the latest technologies with the lessons of the past 100 years. One thing is clear: maintaining our high standard of living requires our building design and practices to be more comprehensive than ever before.
Conservation of any resource is almost always tightly linked to conservation of energy. Ways of accomplishing it include:
Direct operational energy savings, especially heating and cooling costs, such as active and passive solar systems.
Used and recycled building materials. New building materials made from by-products of other agricultural or industrial processes, using minimum-energy manufacturing methods, such as straw bales.
Innovative methods of meeting building code without sacrificing energy savings.
Technologies that maximize resource utilization and minimize harmful side effects. Often this means revival of an old technology such as strawbale construction.
Designs and construction that ensures a long life for the structure, avoiding repairs and rebuilding.
Use of energy-conserving appliances such as electric vehicles and solar ovens and stills.
The best of these methods also reduce other environmental problems such as greenhouse gas emissions and toxic indoor environments.
2lDesign Meets the Challenge
Standard Mechanical and Plumbing Details Building code provisions were developed for protection of public health and safety, but without consideration for environmental design. Engineers and designers often spend so much time on code compliance that none is available for innovative energy design. 21 Design’s engineers have spent careers developing excellent code-compliant, energy-efficient mechanical and plumbing details for their own projects. Now you can use those details to produce superior results with minimum work and free yourself for more interesting, productive design efforts.
Alternate Material Details (Coming Soon)
Designers and building owners alike are discovering that a return to old technologies such as strawbale construction can result in a structure that not only is resource-efficient but also provides very pleasant surroundings. New alternative materials such as Rastra can provide a cost-effective energy solution.
Different building materials require different techniques and details. 21 Design’s engineers are highly experienced in alternate material construction, especially strawbale. We will provide an expanding library of details so that someone new to the technology can concentrate on design, space utilization, and other energy efficiency features.
Building Plans
For some projects, you may be able to base your design on one of our complete building plans. We start our building plans library with a simple strawbale home.
Solar Designs
Passive and active solar design has long been recognized as an effective means of reducing a building’s requirement for energy generated by burning fossil fuels. But for the 21St century, as energy conservation gains market value for mainstream builders and buyers, more solar is incorporated into new buildings and retrofitted for older ones.
The first entry in our library of solar designs is a domestic hot and cold water system.
Energy-Conserving Devices
From solar stills to electric vehicles, effective, clean, energy-efficient devices far better suited to the 21 st century can replace traditional power-hungry and polluting equipment.
The solar cooker that starts our library of energy-conserving devices has cooked meals for its owners almost every day for years and has won awards for innovative design. |
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21 Design is a Sub Chapter of our normal Professional Engineering Business at Al Nichols Engineering, Inc. At 21 Design we provide information thru Workshops, Seminars and WEB tools for the 21st Century. |
