News

08 Jan 2010

Outright ownership of a second home on a golf course or in some other luxury destination has moved beyond the vast majority. This has brought about the upswing in fractional ownership through which individuals can own a fraction or part of that dream.

2009/09/08

A house or a building can be thought of as being an envelope, which shelters an indoor space from the weather outside. The objective of the envelope is to maintain a comfortable inside environment. One approach is to build the building and then force the inside temperature to be comfortable by using fans, heaters, air conditioners, window louvers or computerised control schemes. A better way is to design the building with more consideration for its environment so that the need for active space heating or cooling by mechanical or electrical means is substantially reduced, if not totally eliminated.

There is a school of thought that argues that the creation of the built environment is, in itself, an unsustainable act as it collects materials from one place and assembles them in another in a manner that does not easily or readily allow them to be so collected again. Purporting to design for sustainability therefore would appear to be a direct contradiction, if not a blatant deception.

The concept of green plumbing is still relatively unknown in South Africa. This is changing however as South African plumbers and water related stakeholders are fast realising the importance of conserving water. But what does green plumbing mean?