A Visit to Greensburg, Kansas, Part 1

My wife and I recently passed through Greensburg, a town in southwestern Kansas. We were there for less than 24 hours, but had a rewarding visit. 

Ninety-five percent of Greensburg's structures were destroyed by a very large tornado in 2007. Faced with a clean slate, the town of 1,500 decided to rebuild “green.” A non-profit, Greensburg GreenTown, was formed to aid in this effort. The wind having been the agent of destruction, the wind has been harnessed as source of power – there are several wind turbines in town, and a wind farm south of it. As a T-shirt we saw described it: “It's a wind-wind situation.”

Greensburg GreenTown is housed in the “Silo Eco-Home”, an odd-shaped structure, built since the tornado on a residential street containing an eery number of empty lots. (About 600 left town after the storm.) The Silo serves not just as Greensburg Greentown's administrative offices and visitors' center, but as a B&B. The tallest structure to survive the tornado was the town's grain elevator. It was made of concrete, and so the Silo Eco-Home, being a demonstration home, was as well. To test its strength, an old car was dropped onto its roof, twice. The Eco Home was undamaged; the car did not survive.

We had a reservation for the night at the Eco-Home and arrived about dinner time. We found that the building earns the “Eco Home” designation because of its many green features, each of which is described on a card taped to it. I'll comment on some of my favorites below. The rest are listed at the bottom. Most of these items were donated.

Driveway: Impermeable paving creates water runoff that can overwhelm the sewer system. Permeable paving allows water to seep into the ground, as happens naturally. This reduces the burden on the sewer infrastructure and promotes groundwater recharge. The Eco Home's driveway is constructed of permeable pavers by Permapave, an Australian company. The pavers look great, but weeds may be a problem, and unfortunately Permapave has no US distributor. Filterpave is a similar product that is available here.

Flooring: Bamboo is durable, good looking and fast growing. What better material to make a floor out of? The floor of the office is stranded bamboo from Warner Bamboo.

Lawnmower: I didn't see it, but wish I had! In the garage is a Hustler Zeon, an all-electric zero-turning-radius riding mower from Excel Industries.

Showerhead: Not only does Evolve's showerheads use fewer gallons per minute than a standard showerhead, but it gives your water heater a break: As the water is warming up, the water flow is normal, but when the water reaches 95 degrees, the flow slows to a trickle until you step into the shower and pull a cord, causing the flow to return to normal. This way, you can multi-task while waiting for the shower to warm up.

Toilet: Dual-flush toilets are an idea whose time has come. They should be much more common than they are, especially in arid parts of the country. The toilet has two buttons, one for each type of flush. One uses less water and is intended for liquids, and the other, for solids, uses more. Makes perfect sense! Why use more water than is needed? Caroma, an Australian company that has expanded into the US, made the toilets in the Eco Home. There's even a model with a small faucet and basin above the toilet tank, for hand-washing. When the toilet is flushed, water flows through the faucet, into the basin and then into the tank. This “grey” water is used to flush the toilet the next time. Why use potable water to flush the toilet? Caroma says that its toilets have saved 4,883,734,221 gallons of water in the US.

Roof: It's counterintuitive to grow things on your roof, but a green roof makes sense. It reduces heating and cooling needs and the heat island effect, makes garden space available to city dwellers, and creates habitat for wildlife. Chicago's City Hall has a green roof, which saves them $5,000 a year in utility costs! The Silo Eco-Home's green roof was manufactured by LiveRoof.

Ceiling fans: These cool in summer by creating air movement, and warm in winter by bringing warm air down from the ceiling. Why they don't warm in summer and cool in winter? Good question! Because the fans can spin either direction, and the direction determines the result. Watch this video for more information. These fans were provided by Accent Lighting, a Kansas company.

Cupola: As this article describes, cupolas take advantage of the stack effect to provide natural, or passive, ventilation, which helps cool without air conditioning. Natural ventilation and cooling is a fascinating topic (the stack effect, stepwells, windcatchers, exterior screens/shading, window placement and the Venturi effect – there's a lot of cool stuff!) which deserves its own blog entry, so watch this space for more on that topic.

In the morning we were given a two-hour tour of the town by Ruth Ann Wedel of the GreenTown staff. I'll describe the tour in another blog entry.

For more on Greensburg GreenTown watch a presentation by its Executive Director here, or go to its website. GreenTown Joplin has been formed to help that city recover from the tornado that hit it in 2011.

Here's a Silo Eco-Home product list:

• The home: Armour Homes

• Appliances: Sears