Green Building Elements

As I walked from booth to booth looking for something new and different at last month’s Greening the Heartland conference, I actually did a double take when I saw the words “Green Insurance” on one display.  Here was something new that I had to learn more about - was it another gimmick or attempt to force green into an unrelated industry?  I spoke to Stephen Horack, a ”Green Insurance Specialist” of St. Louis based Huntleigh McGehee, and I have to say that I was sold on the idea right away.  Green insurance is not just a good idea, it’s potentially a revolutionary idea.

Started in 2006 by Fireman’s Fund, a member of the United States Green Building council, green insurance protects owners of green commercial or residential buildings.  In the case of a loss, Fireman’s Fund would bring in a LEED-AP to oversee reconstruction of the building to its original LEED certification level, making sure that the building systems operate at peak performance and in alignment with one another.  If this seems like a no-brainer, consider submitting rebuilding plans to an insurance company that has no experience with green building.  Would you have to explain why every component of the building was built that way, rather than a less expensive non-green alternative?  Read the rest of this entry »

A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for the homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F).

The Drake Landing Solar Community collects solar energy in a heat storage fluid through an array of solar panels on the roof of each home and covering all of the garages at the back of each home. The heated fluid is transferred to a neighborhood energy center, and then into the ground beneath an insulated layer, where the heat is stored in the earth.

Combined together, the 52 home community is able to collect and store enough energy from the sun during the summer that the ground storage temperatures reach 80 degrees C (176 F). This heat is sufficiently insulated beneath the ground that it can be drawn from throughout the winter to provide heat and hot water.
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For three days this week, St. Louis was host to the US Green Building Council’s Greening the Heartland conference.  Focusing on green building and sustainability, this year’s conference theme was “Embracing Change ‘08.”  It featured a strong lineup of speakers and educational programs, workshops, a bike tour of sustainable buildings, a tour of the LEED gold certified St. Louis Community College Wildwood campus, a tour of the LEED platinum certified Alberici headquarters, and a hall for exhibitors.  Educational programs were grouped into government, corporate, green communities, and education tracks.

Though I was mainly interested in kitchen and bath products like IceStone, PaperStone, and Vetrazzo countertops and Koch & Co. cabinets, I found myself sitting down with exhibitors who had something new and interesting to present, like the guys from Huntleigh McGehee, who specialize in Green Insurance, which I plan to write more about next week.  Other exhibitors showed off windmill technology, natural insulation, SIPs panels, sustainable printing, green design/architecture firms, solar shades, green roofs, and much more. Read the rest of this entry »

According to a recent study by CoStar Group, LEED or Energy Star certified buildings have higher lease rates and lease for more dollars per square foot than similar buildings that are not certified.CoStar Group is a company that provides information services to the commercial real estate industry.

CoStar tracked the number of LEED or Energy Star certified buildings since 2006, and compared lease and occupancy rates to similar non-certified buildings.For example, LEED certified buildings had a 92% occupancy rate, and averaged a lease rate of $42.38 per square foot. In comparison, non-LEED buildings had an occupancy rate of 87.9%, and an average lease rate of $31.05 per square foot. In a building with 50,000 square feet of leasable space, that would mean a difference of over $500,000 in income.

Energy Star certified buildings, in comparison, had an average occupancy rate of 91.5%, with lease rates averaging $30.55 per square foot. Non-Energy Star buildings were at 87.9% occupancy, and leased at $28.15. While the difference here is smaller, it still means $160,000 in additional income in a 50,000 square foot building.

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Austin, Texas builder Clark Wilson has been in the homebuilding industry for over twenty five years, serving as president of Doyle Wilson Homebuilder, Inc. and then as CEO of Clark Wilson Homes, Inc. before retiring in 2002. Eager to get back into home building and aware of the growing demand for green homes, Mr. Wilson took over a small company named Green Builders, Inc. in 2007 with the goal of turning it into the largest builder and developer of green homes and communities in the United States. Only a year old, Green Builders, Inc. has already won the award for 2008 Single Family Affordable Home of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders.

When considering his return to home building in 2007, Mr. Wilson decided that the world did not need another behemoth home builder. “Austin is a hotbed of green,” said Mr. Wilson. “We’ve had green building programs since the 80s. With Green Builders, Inc., we wanted to bring green building to the masses.” By shifting building priorities toward saving money through energy and water savings, and by seeking out environmentally friendly products that don’t drive up the price of the home, green building has made traditional non-green building, in Mr. Wilson’s estimation, obsolete. “We’re priced competitively to non-green builders. They’re going to have to catch up. Green building needs to be widespread. We want to position ourselves as the Whole Foods of homes.” Read the rest of this entry »

I remember reading the little placard on the bathroom vanity advising me to hang my damp towels with curiosity. We were on vacation and it was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing. We did this at home, but it seemed more practical - a way to avoid doing laundry each night. There was also a note about turning the lights out when we left our room. Little things.

We discussed the hanging of the towels and the turning off of the lights over a shrimp dinner that night at some tourist trap. I remember my mom saying that if we all do a little, we can do a lot. So I thought it was great when I heard of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s new executive order that requires state agencies and departments to hold meetings and conferences at lodgings that meet the new Florida Green Lodging standards. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of my recent posts have touched upon the theme that the building industry cannot accomplish major advances in sustainability by itself; first its market must change.

But there is ample evidence that consumers are now driving a change in the market. The USGBC website has printed a report by CoStar Group which has found “that sustainable “green” buildings outperform their peer non-green assets in key areas such as occupancy, sale price and rental rates, sometimes by wide margins…. The results indicate a broader demand by property investors and tenants for buildings that have earned either LEED® certification or the Energy Star® label and strengthen the “business case” for green buildings, which proponents have increasingly cast as financially sound investments.” The report goes on to cite “constricted supply” as one reason for the premium prices associated with sustainable buildings, and many other experts have been making the case lately that consumers either cannot find the kind of sustainable housing that they are looking for, or cannot identify what makes a property sustainable.

Fortunately, The Cascadia Region Green Building Council and the Commercial Brokers Association (CBA) are about to provide a bridge between designers and consumers in the form of a new professional certification, Certified Green Broker®. Jason McLennan, CEO of Cascadia, says, “It is often the brokers and finance professionals, not the architects and builders, who directly interface with the end user: the owner, landlord, and/or tenant. Therefore they have great influence on how owners and users may perceive the affordability and overall value of green buildings.” Read the rest of this entry »

Relaxation!
Fashion!
Celebrity!
Botox!
Booze!
Interiors!
Green!

Yes, most of this list refers to the Brit series Ab Fab but if Eddy and Patsy turned in their smokes and cocktails for organic and sustainable munchies then they too would be excited for the opening of the Epi Center MedSpa, the first LEED certified MedSpa in the country. (Another LEED spa exists in D.C. but it isn’t a MedSpa). So, because fictional characters from a long ago Brit TV series couldn’t check out this just opened San Fran based spa, I decided that I had to do it. Read the rest of this entry »

Restaurants here in San Francisco open, and close, almost as often as the fog rolls in so we don’t usually pay an extreme amount of our precious attention to another restaurant du jour. Mixt Greens recently opened but they don’t qualify for new kid on the block status nonetheless they do deserve green props. Thus I direct my attention to their third installment of the Mixt Greens empire.

This third location, located in SoMa, just opened and used zero-VOC paints to improve the air quality, and I could definitely smell the food and not the fumes. They even used recycled paint to cover their ceiling. I didn’t find any bamboo or cork for the flooring but something better as they used an unfinished concrete floor with 50% flyash content. That high flyash content along with the fact that the floor will last a long time (plus it’s easy to clean) makes that choice a no-brainer. Read the rest of this entry »

For quite some time now, everyone’s been wondering if “green building” techniques will pay on the real estate market. These days, with the housing market in submarine status, the notion that some sort of green designation might help move empty houses is particularly attractive. This successful local realtor asks a national board:

The builder plans on offering variations of a design depending on the buyer’s price point. We are actively discussing what the buyer will pay for certain green features in this price range. Green has not become big in my Emerald Coast market yet. Suggestions as to what can be recouped and what will sell and what the buyers will pay?

We’re finally starting to get some data.

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