Tag Archives: LEED/green design

What is “green design” ?

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What is included in “gPlatinum LEED signreen design”? Green design (also known as sustainable design or environmental design) is the concept of construction built with principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability.  The most well-known green design, by far, is the LEED green building certification process of the US Green Building Council.

Yesterday, I had a chance to attend Phil Kabza (“SpecGuy”)’s presentation “Specifying LEED Requirements: The Best of Green from Masterspec” at the GreenNC trade show.

According to Phil, there are 4  general LEED credit requirements for construction, including:

1.  Refrigerant & clean agent removal

2.  Construction waste management

3.  Construction indoor air quality management

4.  Measurement & verification (post construction)

As Phil emphasized, LEED specs must be project specific, and should not simply be cut and pasted from previous projects.

Want to see a LEED specification in action?  Check out an example of a LEED Spec on Sustainable Design Requirements (01 81 13) here.

Interested in learning more about LEED and its requirements?  Check out the mother of LEED, the USGBC .

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Photo “Platinum LEED” by Seth Anderson via Flickr/Creative Commons License. 

Tues Tip: Two upcoming NC Building Expos

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Two Building Expos are coming to North Carolina.  If you want to increase your knowledge of building issues, consider checking one or both of the expos out!

First up, is GreenNC’s North Carolina Building Industry 6th Annual Tradeshow,  scheduled for September 9, 2010, at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh.  The event is free to attend.  There will also be a keynote luncheon ($35) by Bill Reed, AIA, LEED, Integrative Design Collaborative.

21stlogoGreenNC

Second, the 21st Century Building Expo & Conference will be held September 15-17, 2010 at the Charlotte Convention Center.  Conference passes start at $75 and increase if you want CE credit. The Expo promises over 50 general session seminars, North Carolina Builder Institute courses and NAHB Education classes.

If you plan to attend either or both of these events, let me know and we can try to meet up in real time.  Secondly, I’d love to know your thoughts about these conferences.  What were the valuable things you learned?

 

LEED Credibility Challenged– UPDATE

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 A group of local citizens, designers, and school board Building Committee members in Eagle Ridge, Wisconsin has issued a statement expressing their belief that LEED certifications are now suspect, following the failure of the USGBC to withdraw LEED Certification from the Northland Pines High School.  The group had appealed a decision to dismiss their claims that the LEED Gold certification for the school should be revoked, despite clear evidence which, they claim, shows that the building did not meet specific ASHRAE Standards, which are prerequisites to getting a LEED (green) building certification.

 They call into question the value of LEED certification if there is no verification of a purported building’s “green” credentials.

 You can download their statement of concern “USGBC and LEED Credibility Destroyed”.

 For more information relating to the case, Stephen Del Percio’s article “Wild Week for Green Real Estate Law” is an excellent summary.

 As previously mentioned on this blog, there is no clear idea of how the Courts would treat any LEED-specific claims.  Yet.  Stay tuned.

 UPDATE:  This afternoon, the USGBC has issued a statement standing by their findings:

LEED’s intent, and USGBC’s mission, is about helping people learn about and understand how to design, build and operate better buildings.  Buildings are complex systems of systems and any of the 100,000 of decisions associated with design, construction and operation can always be second-guessed. We are confident that our due diligence has been more than sufficient to put these issues to rest, and we are moving forward to focus our efforts where they do the most good — advancing the market uptake of green buildings and communities that is at the heart of our work

The full statement and commentary can be reviewed at Chris Cheatam’s article “Breaking: USGBC Stands by Its LEED Challenge Decision.”

Model Green Hotel—Putting the “Green” in Greensboro

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This Sunday’s N&O featured a piece on the Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, NC.  Developer Dennis Quaintance is the man behind the hotel, which is the first hotel in the country to obtain a Platinum LEED rating.  According to its website,  the Hotel was built to use 40% less energy and 30% less water than a comparable hotel.  Innovations include  a unique elevator design which captures and reutilizes the system’s energy expenditure as well as 100 rooftop solar panels to generate hot water.

In stark contrast to the recent Town of Cary decision  to forego LEED certification for its new fire department building, the Proximity Hotel has spent approximately 3% extra to obtain its certification.  Developer Quaintance expects to make the money back, through a combination of energy efficiency and state and federal tax credits, as early as 2012.

If more developers calculate that they can make more money through the LEED program, expect to see more LEED certified buildings in the future.  For now, however, two years after the Proximity Hotel first opened, there is only one other platinum hotel in the U.S.

 

Green Design—is it for the cache or the environment?

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A building can be designed to meet energy efficiency and sustainability goals, without actually obtaining LEED certification.  However, LEED certification is becoming one of the most recognized ways of demonstrating your commitment to green building.  It does not come, however, without a cost.  In addition to the registration fee to the Green Building Certification Institute, costs depend on the square footage of the building, ranging from $1,750 to $17,500 for GBCI members to $2,250 to $22,500 for non-members.  There are also commissioning fees and the soft costs associated with a green design.

Enter the Town of Cary and the new fire station.  While meeting many green goals, the Town has elected to forego getting it LEED certified because of the estimated $41,000 costs involved in doing so.  Is this the next trend in green building?  If not LEED certified, what is to stop unscrupulous builders from unilaterally declaring their work to be green without actually making it environmentally friendly?  Is the cache of being green worth multiple thousands of dollars in these lean economic times?  Is this a way to avoid risks associated with failing to meet LEED certification?

For more on this issue, check out Matt DeVrie’s article on this same subject, “What are the benefits of Leed Certification?”