What does it mean to be a certified green building professional?
Connie: Green certification is handled by Build it Green, a non-profit that started out as a materials supply council and then started looking at green building. They developed the Green Building Guidelines with Alameda County's Stopwaste.org, and built an education curriculum that invited any building professionals in California to join. They provide the third party certification to ensure that people complete the training program.
Dennis: The Green Building Professionals Guild grew out of Build It Green. It's made up of people who have completed the training but decided they wanted to have more information than they could get from a one-time class. So they've set up a year-round curriculum that looks at specific areas like indoor air quality, air exchange, and HVAC systems. They bring in industry experts to talk about these subjects and attendees get education credits toward their recertification. So Build it Green has developed this incredible education system that not only reaches out to contractors, but also to public utility commissions, city governments, and realtors. They're trying to engage the whole community.
Give me an example of how working with a green builder is different for a client.
Connie: Ideally we like to work with clients very early in the process. A major remodeling job we did for a client in Napa is a great example. To start the process, we asked her to come into our office with a file that included all the pictures and articles and ideas she had collected from magazines and other publications. She came in with all these materials and we set up a charrette where she worked through ideas with Dennis and I, along with our staff designer and an estimator. We spent 3-4 hours putting all of these ideas up on a board where we organized it all. Then we said, what about this, what about that, do you want that…and we talked about her green budget.
You can't be 100% green, so the client had decisions to make. We started the process during that session. 'OK, this is what you want your finished project to look like and this is how we're going to get to it. Let's start from the beginning. First we need a foundation with fly ash concrete.' We just started with the green products and worked her through each step.
Dennis: This particular client was very excited about being part of the process. She's always researching products. She's learned a lot from us, but we've also learned from her. A lot of people know more than most contractors about healthy buildings because it's the focus of so many magazine articles. We need to constantly educate everybody who works for us so they understand what's going on.
Connie: We coined a term, 'green budget,' because you can't be 100% green, so you have to focus on what's important to you. A young couple about to have their first baby will focus on the baby and indoor air quality. An older couple that has been waiting 20 years to remodel their kitchen might be worried about a different aspect of their budget. But that's what we do in those first meetings. We ask really basic, but often overlooked questions like, 'Who are you?' and 'What do you want?'
Dennis: We had an issue with the project in Napa because the client really wanted us to build the house. And I told her that if she really wanted to be green she wouldn't hire us. We're based in Berkeley and it's 48 miles to her house. We'll have to drive, drive, drive, and use all that gasoline. We needed to figure out a way to deal with this.
Connie: Our first step was to move a motor home up to the site to use as an office and for crews to stay overnight. The crews agreed to work four 10-hour days, which means less setup and take down, and less travel time. But we still had to find some way to offset the gasoline and emissions caused by the travel. After a bit of research we found a web site carbonbankusa.com, that provides a formula for offsetting CO2 emissions. We went back to the client and said, 'OK we need to plant 38 trees to offset the CO2'. We offered to split the cost with her, and she was ecstatic that we had found a way to offset what was going to happen. So we'll plant 38 native trees at the end of the project.
How big of a remodel is this?
Dennis: The couple is retired and live in a cottage that their grandparents had built many years ago. The cottage has many levels and she has a bad hip, so they wanted everything on one level. And they had a vision of what they'd like to see. They have this beautiful redwood grove right out in front of the existing house, but the existing windows and walls don't let you see it from inside. They spend a lot of time in the redwood grove, but in the winter time when the weather is cold and rainy, they wanted to be able to sit in the house and still enjoy the grove. We designed a remodel so they could do that. Then there were certain things they wanted like a Finnish fireplace. Even though it came all the way from Finnland, it was really, really important to them so we included the fireplace that they've always wanted. We've gone through their wish list and evaluated the costs. They've thrown some things out because they were too expensive, and added other things in until now we have the perfect remodel for them.
Connie: They've opted for metal siding and a metal roof so we can do water catchments for their landscape. We even added a storage tank for the local rural fire department to use as a backup water supply. They've done some radiant heat in the floors. So we've built a space that's going to last. It's going to be warm, they're going to be able to see their redwood trees, their energy efficiency factor has gone up exponentially because they're all on one level and we've got air exchanges going on. It is a very comfortable design, a great collaboration of what they wanted and what we needed to build it.
Dennis: For the windows we had to have Title 24 calculations. The building has a lot of glass but it's low E and dual glazed so we're meeting all of the state's requirements. We actually had to add radiant heat because the county requires a certain level of heat at certain heights throughout the house, and it had to be maintained. So we've met all of the rules and regulations for energy efficiency.