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Author Message Peggy White, CSI, CCS, CCCA, LEED AP (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 11:50 am:    Hello For those of you who are looking for the answers to those deep green questions, you might want to sign up and participate in the BigGreen Discussion Group. http://www.biggreen.org People with a high level of sustainable design expertise from around the world participate in this e-list, and will readily respond to technical questions. As with all e-lists, the discussions get quite lively sometimes, and there are a few crankypants who like to pipe up now and again, but for the most part the topics are in depth and interesting and the discussions and ideas are very helpful. Lisa Goodwin Robbins, RA, CCS, LEED Junior Member Username: lgoodrob Post Number: 2 Registered: 08-2004 Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:11 am:    Thank you Peggy for your suggestion. I subscribe to the Big Green list, but I hesitate to recommend it to other Architects and Specifiers. There is very little content on architectural materials. Most postings appear to be about alternative fuels and energy sources. Many people post without signatures and clearly are not experts in anything other than self-promotion. The "quite lively" discussions often degenerate into name-calling and temper tantrums, without moderation. Don't let your children read these postings, although the Brits seem to name call with more elaborate prose. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 593 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 12:41 pm:    I would agree with Lisa -- I subscribed to that list for quite a while and found lots of opinions, backed up by vituperative writing; there was very little that was substantive or useful to someone who was actually trying to get a project out the door. Don Harris CSI, CCS, CCCA, AIA Senior Member Username: don_harris Post Number: 147 Registered: 03-2003 Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 03:18 pm:    I went there this morning to check it out and I agree with both Lisa and Anne. Peggy White, CSI, CCS, CCCA, LEED AP (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 11:40 am:    My goodness! Were you on 4specs during the governance debacle and subsequent food fight? My experience with BigGreen has been quite the opposite. Having subscribed to it since it first began years ago I haven't found that to be the case, except in a few instances and those are typically dealt with by the moderators very quickly. I've found much more negativity, ego, and uninformed opinions expressed on the topic of sustainability on 4specs, and sadly, not much substantial information so far - perhaps that will change in the future. Thus the suggestion to those who might have an interest in learning more. What I like about BigGreen is that the focus is on all aspects of sustainable design, which feeds my own interest in integrated sustainable design. After all, sustainability is not just about materials. While 4specs is interesting for the most part and it provides a great service to our community, for green I rely more on BigGreen. Joel McKellar, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP Advanced Member Username: joelmckellar Post Number: 5 Registered: 02-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 26, 2007 - 10:08 am:    Two other options: www.designcommunity.com/forums/ This one has a "Green Building Forum" for general sustainability topics and a "LEED and Green Certification" forum for topics specifically related to LEED certification (or potentially green globes) topics. The responses can go both ways on the informed/crazy scale (and you'll see the occasional "Paris Hilton Nude" post), but for the most part people are just trying to help and the moderators do clean things periodically, if not instantaneously. The USGBC now has a "Member to Member Exchange" that can be found through the www.usgbc.org website. You must be working for a member company and registered to access it. They started this fairly recently, and like all things USGBC, the follow through is pretty bad though the intent is noble. They have it organized by user group (architect, realtor, contractor, engineer, etc.) which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (what happened to integrated design?!). Theres not a huge population checking the questions either, but sometimes you get lucky. I'm still searching for a forum that can help answer some of the detail oriented questions for LEED projects. I hate to think I need to spend $250 on a CIR just to answer a simple question. I trust 4specs more than most, but haven't really used it much so far. Walter James EageR New member Username: eagerwj Post Number: 1 Registered: 09-2007 Posted on Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 12:51 pm:    My primary interest at this time is in minimizing the temperatures of materials that underlie standing seam metal roofing. Unisolar photovoltaic laminate will be bonded to the bottom of the pans. The efficiencies of photovoltaic systems are related inversely to their cell operating temperatures. There appears to be nothing reported on the best type of roofing underlayment material to contribute to this objective. I thought that we could get some experts to present their opinions and possibly applicable research results in your forum to resolve this question.