Mike Ingles

does anyone know how rain gardens thrive in the Bay Area? I am wondering because right now, its the rainy season, so everything is getting a lot of water – but when it is summer and dry, how do the plants in the rain garden get their water? What plants do you suggest putting in the rain garden?

Hello all
For those of you in the San Fran Bay Area registration for the tour of East Bay native plant gardens just opened. Went last year, will go again this year. http://www.BringingBacktheNatives.net

Thanks much to Chad and Charles. Are there specific details that you used, or did you just design your own details for each specific site? I’m going to look at SSI and see if there are any parking lots in their case studies; looking for pictures of good examples to show client that it can look good as well as earn them LEED credits!

Naomi-
If 6″ curbs are a must, explore the possibility of using curb cuts at regular intervals or where it makes sense….the cuts will still allow runoff to enter the depression. Clay soils? Maybe grade soil towards a central trench/basin filled with gravel. Put an underdrain at the bottom of the gravel and follow Charles’ suggestion of piping…[Read more]

Naomi
We have done quite a few parking lots with the planting islands as depressed catchment areas. Most of the time we have to plumb them together to get rid of the water as infiltration is not good. One problem I have seen is that these areas tend collect litter and looks bad unless cleaned oftern.

I just took a little Green Associate Review the week before last as part of training for BPI (Building Performance Institute) certification. I plan to take the GA test within the next few weeks, so I’ll post how it goes.

Anyone have a good detail/case study for using planting islands as small stormwater catchment areas? This is for the northeast, and the parking lot will most likely have standard curbs, but if there’s another idea… Just getting started on the project, but excited about the possibilities. Thanks!

Has anyone taken the LEED Green Associate exam? Please share your exam experience.

Semiarundaria fastuosum is a good screen variety. Dense and upright.

Baskar – Could you go into more detail with your comments…

natural topography( wild grasses area or growing naturally ) can take as landscaped area? or it should be neatly landscaped ( dry or xeroxscping_) area? for site selection ?.

Hands-on all-day workshop on Modeling Residential Sites with Slope in Google SketchUp (for intermediate/advanced users) in San Francisco Feb. 20th, 2010

tal_sketchup.pdf

Hi James,
Actually, my professor introduced me to your work this past summer, my first semester in LA, and it was he who let me know about your rendering techniques and color usage. In fact, our first shot at perspectives involved 20 minute perspective-making sessions that aimed to emulate your graphics.
I could only hope that if he hadn’t told…[Read more]

Hi Vanessa; glad you’re having success with the colored pencil techniques. You have a good eye! I do use a cream pencil combined with peach on almost all buildings and hardscape at the very beginning of coloring a drawing, then wash over them with whatever color will best depict the material I’m envisioning…terra cotta, slate blue. etc. The…[Read more]

Nick,
Thanks! I’ll probably be doing more of these in the future and I would like to seed them be as representative of the true design as possible.

Thanks!

Eric-

I got your message. I need to make some evergreens for a plan tomorrow as fate would have it. I’ll post my steps here or shoot you a message.

-Nick

Eric,

I couldn’t tell you how to do it using drop shadows, but I could offer some good advice on doing it manually in photoshop without creating numerous layer copies and keeping the file size down.

send me a message if you still need help with this and I’ll explain some simple tricks.

I also got this information from GBCI: If you area a LEED AP and you choose a specialty – there is no harm in keeping your enrollment and that if you do not report any continuing education hours at the end of the 2 years your LEED AP with Specialty credential will expire, however you will remain a LEED AP without specialty.

FYI: LEED Credentialing Maintenance Program (CMP) – read last sentence!!

Enrollment Options: LEED APs without specialty will be provided with an enrollment window, a 2-year period between fall 2009 and fall 2011. LEED APs without specialty can view their enrollment window through My Credentials at http://www.gbci.org. The last enrollment windows close…[Read more]

Its the pathogens. Greywater is almost as bad as sewer water. Getting people sick in the name of LEED does not seem to be the way to go.