335 Maplewood Ave Renovation: Dual Flush Toilets

A Brief History

The project entails repairing the building at 335 Maplewood Ave in a manner that meets both preservation and sustainability goals. The building is the new location for Petersen Engineering, a firm that has been located in Portsmouth since 1992, and specializes in sustainable building engineering. We intend for this project to showcase techniques & materials that promote both preservation and sustainability and intend to share all aspects of the project locally and regionally through open houses, presentations, industry tradeshows, case studies and publications. We foresee this project being a valuable educational tool to demonstrate that preservation goals need not be compromised by sustainability goals. We have teamed with Bruss Construction who we know from past collaborations has exceptional experience and expertise on projects with the dual goal of preservation and sustainability.

The project received approval by the Historic District Commission on January 6, 2010 with construction scheduled to begin early February 2010.

The projected peak heat loss reduction is 85%.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Dual Flush Toilets

We replaced our archaic 3.6 gallon per flush toilets with a couple of new water efficient dual-flush toilets made by Toto. The dual flush has two buttons on the top that allow the user to either flush with 0.9 or 1.5 gallons depending on the "situation". They are really easy to use. There is nothing exotic or scary about these toilets, they just save a lot of water.