Please Note:This website explains green building for a climate zone comparable to North Texas or Central Texas, such as the climate of Waco or Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. It is important to hire a green builder who is an expert in energy-efficient building in your climate zone.

Properties of Water for Green Building

Understanding Water


Note: Although this website is for the climate zone that includes North Texas and Central Texas, it will apply to many areas of the country. Regardless of your climate zone, the first priority for green building or energy-efficient remodeling is to hire a green builder or architect who understands and uses up-to-date green building practices for your area.
Water is a substance that is important not only as a source of moisture, but also as a means of transferring energy in the atmosphere.

Water is the only common substance that is liquid at ordinary temperatures on the earth, but it is also found in all three physical states, solid, liquid, and vapor, sometimes in the same place at the same time such as ice cubes floating in a glass of tea on a muggy summer day. Unlike any other material in the home, we encounter water in all of its forms on a daily basis. 

A water molecule is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Because it has one side that is positively charged and one side that is negatively charged, it is a polar molecule. When two water molecules get close together, the polar forces work like a small magnet to draw the molecules together. The hydrogen of one molecule attracts the oxygen of another and causes the water to cluster together: cohesion.

Although we think of water as ice, snow, liquid water, steam, and the underlying reason for hot, humid days, the four forms or states of water are:

  • Solid.
  • Liquid.
  • Vapor
  • Adsorped--Many surfaces in contact with water vapor molecules have the tendency to capture and hold water molecules in a process called adsorption. 

Water moves in 5 ways:

1. Water runs downhill (gravity).

2. Vapor moves from warmer to cooler.

3. Vapor moves from higher to lower air pressure.
 
4. Vapor diffuses from more vapor to less vapor.

5. Capillary action: Adsorbed water in a porous material can move as capillary water in any direction including up and sideways. Jim Sargent graphically explains this by saying that porous materials "suck."

Hydrogen bonding makes capillary action or the ability of water to pull itself upward through small openings against the pull of gravity possible.

Water has a specific heat that is much higher than the specific heat of most other substances. This means that water can absorb more solar energy with a slow increase in temperature, then hold that temperature. A large body of water has a moderating influence on climate.

Although most substances become denser and contract when they are cooled, then expand when they are heated, water is one of the few substances that expands when it freezes. Water is less dense when it is frozen, so its solid form is lighter than its liquid form;. In other words, ice floats. 

Water molecules attract ions, or charged particles. This makes water able to dissolve other substances easily for a good solvent.

Need a green builder or remodeler
in the North Central Texas 
or Dallas-Fort Worth area? 
Contact Terry Jensen 
972 251-1532 or 817 545-0140

Green Homes in DFW

 972 251-1532 or 
817 545-0140
Green Building

Are you looking for
 a green builder 
or a green remodeler
in Dallas-Fort Worth
 or North Central Texas 

Contact Terry Jensen 
972 251-1532 or 817 545-0140

 

Contact
Copyright © 2007-2008 Dallas-Fort Worth Green Building. All rights reserved.