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


This website is for the climate zone that includes North Central Texas or the DFW area such as Plano, Keller, or Dallas-Fort Worth Texas.  Regardless of your climate zone, the first priority for green building or energy-efficient remodeling is to hire an energy consultant and a green builder who understand and use 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.

Do you need an energy consult
or energy audit or
green builder/remodeler
in North Central Texas
or the Dallas-Fort Worth area?
Contact Terry Jensen
Frugal Energy, LLC
817 443-2553 or 972 251-1532

Green Homes in DFW

 972 251-1532 or 
817 443-2553
Energy Consult
Green Build
Green Remodel

Are you looking for
 energy efficiency
and utility savings
in Dallas-Fort Worth
 or North Central Texas 
Contact Terry Jensen 
Frugal Energy, LLC
972 251-1532 or 817 443-2553

Renewable Energy
in North Texas

 

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Note: The opinions expressed herein are exclusively those of the writers or other participants and do not necessarily reflect the position of CyberParent,LLC. They are not intended to take the place of advice of a health, legal, or other professional whose expertise you might need to seek. This website explains green building and green remodeling for a climate zone comparable to North Central Texas or Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas,  It is important to hire a green builder and an energy consultant who are experts in energy-efficient building in your climate zone and who use the most up-to-date green building information.