We wanted a fireplace in our house.  Unfortunately LEED rules didn’t allow it.  We knew that a big, traditional fireplace wouldn’t have fit into our modern home, but we also knew that an open wood-burning fireplace was out of the question in a Green Home.  So, we looked at a couple of options, the most promising was the ecosmart fireplace.

They are beautiful and, at first look, Green!  They basically consist of an open flame burner that utilizes denatured alcohol (aka ethanol) as the fuel.  We were going to use ethanol from corn to make the fireplace even Greener.  Our architect designed an ecosmart fireplace into our living area.  It was going to be spectacularly beautiful.

Then we met with our LEED Home Provider that I mentioned in earlier blogs.  He quickly cited the LEED category EQ2 prerequisite that says “all fireplaces and woodstoves must have doors”.  EQ2 also states that space heating equipment that involves combusion must meet one of the following:

1. “…be designed and installed with closed combustion (i.e., sealed supply air and exhaust ducting.”
2. “…be designed and installed with power-vented exhaust.”
3. “…be located in a detached utility building or open-air facility.”

Obviously our idea of a sleek, modern ecosmart fireplace didn’t fit with these restrictions.  The whole point of these tremendously beautiful fireplaces is that they are freestanding and open.

Ecosmart touts their fireplaces as Green and clean, which they are – compared to a traditional wood-burning fireplace.  However, when we read the fine print, we saw that even ecosmart had a caveat that supported the LEED position.  In this page of their website, you’ll see the disclaimer about ventilation.  Their smallest burner shouldn’t be installed in (1) a house that is tightly sealed – which most LEED houses are, and (2) in a room less than 1000 square feet large – and that’s a pretty darn big room!  Our house is going to be sealed with icynene insulation, so strike three:  no fireplace.

One last note.  If you look at this website that showcases the first LEED Platinum home, you’ll see that it features an ecosmart fireplace (click on #s 4 & 8 in the diagram to see the fireplace).  Here’s the deal:  this home was built to the LEED for Homes pilot standards which were tightened up when the final regulations were published in January 2008.  The prerequisites in the Indoor Environmental Quality (EQ) section that did us in were added with the final regs.  Don’t think we didn’t fight our Home Provider over this!

Early-on we made a decision to keep our existing house foundation (pier & beam), but tear out the old garage foundation and create a new one (slab).

Because our house is on a left-to-right slope, the garage foundation challenges were somewhat unique.  A mistake was made by not getting a detailed topographical done on the property, and when we started the excavation for the garage the retaining wall ended up about 2+ feet higher than it was supposed to (note:  added cost).

We also had a set-back issue – the city looked at the courtyard retaining wall design and called it OK.  Then when the concrete forms were created the city changed its mind.  It was because they originally thought that there were two different structures:  the garage walls and the courtyard walls.  Turns out, the engineer made all of the walls fully integrated.  Long story short:  we had to shorten our courtyard a couple of feet (luckily the design still worked to allow me an outdoor bar area!).

Our foundation & concrete work features four Green elements:

• Recycling – we recycled all of the existing concrete, including the foundation under the old garage.  Either we’re tearing out the concrete and sending it to a recycler to make gravel, or we’re using the recycled concrete slabs in the landscape design for terracing (remember our property slope issue).  None of our concrete will end up in a landfill.
• Reuse – as noted above, we reused the house’s foundation and piers.  We had to add a front and back porch structure and a couple of new piers, but the existing foundation was deemed to be more than adequate for the new home.
• Durability – LEED gives extra points for durability features.  Our foundation was engineered with more steel structural support than typical.  The rebar support was created at 8″ on center rather than the typical 10-12″ on center.
• Content – we used 30% fly ash concrete.  Fly ash is a residue created from burning coal.  It’s either left to drift into the atmosphere as pollution or it’s captured.  However, 65% of what is captured ends up in landfills.  To learn more about 30% fly ash concrete and its ability to increase the strength of concrete and to help the environment, visit this link.

And finally, the last question:  how much extra did the Green elements cost?  The fly ash concrete is probably a 10% surcharge – which makes me wonder why every house doesn’t use this type of concrete.  The use of more steel reinforcements probably increased our metal cost by about 15% (non-inclusive of the higher price of steel).

Our overall foundation work went over budget significantly, but mostly due to the mistake in not understanding the extent of the foundation work required, the rework due to the city’s overly-zealous inspectors (and I say that mostly tongue-in-cheek), and the skyrocketing cost of metal caused by higher fuel prices to haul it.

I mentioned in earlier posts that we’re going to be harvesting our rainwater.  I wanted to do a small deep dive into this subject because it’s such a new Green concept.  Our contractor is [NAME OF CONTRACTOR DELETED ON 5/18/09] – they’re the premier rainwater harvesting company in North Texas.

I will touch on a couple of topics:

How much does it cost?  The quote we got from our rainwater harvesting contractor was about $8800, but keep in mind that includes not only the downspouts, plumbing and cisterns, but also a filter/purification system that will enable us to use the rainwater in our washing machine, too.  We’re paying for gutters separately.

How much will we save?  Our former yard was almost entirely Saint Augustine grass.  We were watering every second day during the summer and at least twice a week during the winter.  Our water bills were anywhere from $200-$300/month.  We expect to save anywhere between $100-$200/month between having a drought-friendly landscape and using rainwater.  With a fairly conservative guess of $150/month, the rainwater harvesting system will be paid off in about 5 (or less) years.  Not a bad Green investment!

How is it put together?  Basically the gutters are installed first.  Then our contractor places the 4″ downspouts.  The downspouts run from the roofline, into the ground, across the property and up into the cisterns.  As long as the cisterns are below the roofline, gravity will feed the water into the cisterns.  Of concern with these systems are leaves and other roof debris.  We’re using a foam insert in our gutters – the idea being that the water soaks into the gutter while the leaves, etc stay on top and get washed off.  There is a filter into the cistern, and another going out of the cistern.  There is a pump that we’re installing in our crawlspace that feeds both the irrigation system and the washing machine.  Before the water goes into the washing machine, it goes through a very fine filter and then through an ultraviolet purifier.  If the cistern gets too low, a valve opens to fill the cistern with city water.  Our washing machine will be set up to be able to switch between cistern and city water…so we’re not stuck without the ability to wash clothes!  The cisterns also have an overflow into the landscape in the event we get too much rain and the cisterns are full.

Aesthetics.  Our cisterns are being installed above ground.  Obviously having them installed below ground would solve the aesthetics problem.  However, in our installation we have a side of the house that is fully utility – it will house the two cisterns, two air conditioning units and the electrical box.  It will be fenced in and hidden from the entertainment portions of the house and the neighbors.  So, for us there’s no aesthetics issue.  There is a house outside of Dallas that has a 10,000 gallon cistern in the backyard.  Some designers see it as a Green architectural design feature while others have criticized it as too much exposed utility.  Decide for yourself here:

We’re told that maintenance on the system is infrequent and simple.  Does anyone with a rainwater harvesting system agree or disagree?

I posted a Deconstruction blog entry back on July 28th where I discussed how we took apart our former house for recycling and reuse versus just bulldozing it.

A question that I get asked is “how much does it cost to deconstruct versus demolish?”  I’ve got the answer.  Our house was roughly a 1450 square foot brick house.  Typically to demo a house that size it costs about $5,000, and it’s about a week process to set up, demo, clean up (although it can be done more quickly than that).  Ours took about 3 weeks, and here’s the reconciliation:

Cost – $15,000

• Received from selling the brick – $1200
• Received from selling the metal – $300
• Received from selling items on Craigs List (details? see my 7/28 blog entry) – $2,000
• Cost avoidance for mulch that we’re creating from the bare wood in the house – $1,500

Actual net cost – $10,000

So about twice as expensive, but not outrageously so.  The income from recycling the metal could have been more (and we’re still looking into it), but we didn’t separate our metal prior to sending it to be recycled (note to self: separate your metals before sending for recycling!).

What reaction do you have?  Still too expensive?  Worth it or not?

Just a short post here:  the original timeline given to us was 7-9 months from first hammer-swing to move-in.  If we calculate all of the issues we’ve had (and if we trust the current projected move-in date) the actual timeline from move-out to move-in date is just over 12 months.  However, to be clear, the delay doesn’t seem to have been caused by anything Green we’re doing – with the exception of having to wait 2 days for the delivery of some apparently very popular low VOC sealant used in the framing.

We had delays with bank appraisals, with city inspectors (yes, that retaining wall can be there….what?  you can’t put a retaining wall there!), and with rain.

Once we got past the foundation work, we’ve been mostly golden.  Right now we’re in the middle of framing, and because this house is engineered to the high heavens, it seems to have taken a day or two longer – especially getting the very large trusses on top of the second floor.

Has anyone had any delays or extended timelines caused directly by the Green aspects of their construction?

In the prior post I talked about the LEED for Homes program as a whole, so let me talk about how we got our specific project started.

When we first started we had no clue what level of certification we thought we could achieve.  I assumed that to get to Platinum I’d be spending a fortune…and that’s partially true!  But what surprised me is that getting to Certified or Silver can be done with minimal or no cost.  A lot of practices are alternative practices, not upgrades.

The LEED for Homes Rating System is represented in a 114 page document that at first is a bit daunting.  You’ll quickly become familiar with it.  It tells you exactly what you need to do to gain points.  But before you get into how to score the points, you need to know what points you’re going for.   There are a total of 136 points available.  The baseline number of points required by certification level are:

• Certified – 45 points
• Silver – 60 points
• Gold – 75 points
• Platinum – 90 points

To determine the threshold level specific to your project, you must calculate a “Home Size Adjustment”, which “compensates for the overarching effect of home size on resource consumption by adjusting the award level point thresholds….based on home size.”  The adjustment is based the square footage of the house and the number of bedrooms.  Our calculation added 3 points to all of the thresholds, so to obtain Platinum we need 93 points (we believe we’re currently at 97).  In LEED-speak, smaller homes and more bedrooms are better.  You can still achieve a Platinum with a larger home, but it just takes more points.

One more thing about getting started:  you need to be ready to document pretty much everything.  We have print-outs of maps of the property (showing how far we are from green space and public transportation), documentation of the fate of the old house’s pieces and parts (we recycled 90+% of that), technical specifications of our appliances to prove they’re Energy Star rated, etc, etc, etc.  It seems overwhelming at first, but as I learned very quickly, if you take it one requirement at a time it starts making sense and starts feeling very doable.

The image attached to this post is a 3′X3′ sign we have in front of the house (some of you may have gotten to this blog via our home’s website that’s listed on the sign).  That sign and this website/blog contribute to one of our points.

We hated the fact that we were going to have to tear down the old house.  Beyond the sentimental reasons (our first house together, 4 years living in it, etc), we just didn’t want the waste going directly to a landfill.  According to an article by Bradley Guy from the University of Florida, about 136 million tons of waste results from renovation and demolition of buildings per year.  Probably no more than 30% of it is recycled.  A great resource for deconstruction education and benefits calculation is the Deconstruction Institute.

• Asphalt: sold to recyler who turns it into tar and pot hole filler
• Brick: sold to recycler who cleans it and re-sells it
• Metal: including wiring, pipes, aluminum window – frames, etc were sold to a recycler.
• Concrete: sent to recycler who crushes it into gravel (we used some of it in our French Drain)
• Bare Wood: all bare wood in the house’s structure is being shredded and brought back to the site to be used as mulch in the yard.

The second step was to use what I now refer to as “God’s Little Helper”:  CraigsList!  We listed a lot of items and sold or gave away the vast, vast majority of them…making sure that we told the purchasers that they had to come and un-install the items themselves.  Here’s a sample of what we sold:

• Pink tile from the bathroom in the photo
• Attic stairs
• Attic insulation
• All appliances (except a leaky dishwasher)
• All kitchen cabinets
• Interior and exterior doors (including some door frames)
• The entire garage walls and structure
• Can/recessed lighting
• Sinks
• Bathtub
• Old gas bathroom wall heaters
• Shutters
• I even had someone pay me to remove and reuse the St. Augustine turf in the front yard!

We couldn’t or didn’t find a recycler or re-user for a couple of items:

• Other ceramic tile – although I sold one bathroom full of pink tile to one purchaser, CraigsList kept removing my other bathroom full of yellow tile saying that no one would want to buy it.
• Toilets – we went back and forth on this.  We had the old-style toilets that are not water efficient, so we finally decided to send them to the landfill, but not after I tried to get them recycled by EnviroGlass.  Unfortunately, there’s no local recycler of ceramic toilets that I could find.
• Insulation – although someone bought a chunk of it, we ended up having to send most of it to the landfill.
• Painted wood and sheetrock – because the house was built in 1955, the wood and sheetrock could have easily had lead paint hidden under their layers.  The best place for these items is not around people.  Note:  Unpainted sheetrock left over from new construction can be recycled!

We still have some recycling left to do from the old house (mainly more concrete and a chain link fence).  Once these items are added to the calculation, it looks like we’ll be able to provide detailed documentation that we have recycled almost 95% of our house by weight.  We will be applying for an “Innovation Point” (basically an extra credit item in the LEED system) based on our deconstruction.

So what does it cost?  For the ERI services, we haven’t gotten the final bill, but we think it won’t be any more expensive than waste services would cost otherwise.  The real cost is that it takes several more weeks to deconstruct a house versus about 2 days to wipe a lot clean.  You end up paying in time and in wages for the folks who are doing the deconstruction.  When we figure out that cost we’ll post it.

Does anyone have deconstruction experiences?  Was ours typical?

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a program administered by the United States Green Building Council.  According to the USGBC website:

“LEED is a third-party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.”

I was introduced to the LEED program by my employer, JPMorgan Chase, who has announced plans to take several of it’s buildings LEED Platinum.  There are currently 9 USGBC LEED programs, and when we first looked at LEED for Homes it was in it’s pilot phase, only becoming an officlal program in January 2008.  As of this post, there are no homes in Dallas that have been LEED-certified since the official program started.

Basically, the LEED for Homes program works like this – USGBC has a system that awards points in various categories, and depending on how many points you get you’re awarded nothing or you’re given a Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum LEED for Homes Certification.  The point categories cover pretty much everything about your house (with the exception of demolitioning the old one – but we’ll get to that in a later post).  The point categories are:

• Innovation and Design Process
• Location and Linkages
• Sustainable Sites
• Water Efficiency
• Energy and Atmosphere
• Materials and Resources
• Indoor Environmental Quality
• Awareness and Education

Something that we didn’t quite understand in the beginning is that you’re required to work with a Home Provider – basically a Green consultant who walks you through the LEED process, and provides good, valuable information.  We chose GWS from Oklahoma City, mostly because they are the closest to Dallas, but also we had heard better things about them than we had heard about other Home Providers.  We were pretty up-to-speed on the program, mostly due to Sean Garman our own Green consultant, so we used our Home Provider to bounce ideas off of and to provide insight to some of the subtleties of the LEED for Homes Checklist.  They also perform required analysis, like the HERS (Home Energy Rating System) rating.

Some of our Green choices resulted in higher cost than an alterate, non-Green choice (but we’ll get to those choices in later posts) and we’ll try to be as honest and up-front as possible about them.  However, the program itself has a cost as well.  So far we’ve paid around $1500, and we anticipate we’ll do one more round of HERS rating.  Several of these expenses are variable, so use this listing only as a guide:

• $250 to register with USGBC (it’s less if you are a USGBC member, more if you’re building a multifamily dwelling).
• $630 for the Plan Analysis (they review your entire building plan to estimate the LEED points you’ll get and provide valuable input about alternatives – this amount is based on the amount of square footage you’re building).
• $90 for the Modeling/Tax Credit Analysis.
• $450 for GWS’s fee, which includes the required inspections.
• Then you pay an hourly fee each time you want your HERS rating redone as you learn more and make choices ($45/hour), and there are additional fees if you need GWS to travel to provide consultation or when they do inspections (we don’t anticipate needing that).

I often get asked what I get for obtaining a LEED certification.  No, there is no monetary award (although many of the things you can do to earn points might also quality for utility, city, state or federal tax credits or rebates).   However, almost everything you do to get points will end up saving you money…either in your water bill, your gas bill, your electric bill….or because the house is so well-built it won’t need to be repaired or replaced anytime soon.

We bought this 1955 “small ranch” 1,450 square foot house in the Shorecrest neighborhood of Dallas in early 2004 for $315,000 knowing that we’d do a fairly significant remodel someday.  We put about $60,000 into it to make it liveable and to avoid most of the good-natured ribbing of our friends.  Today the house would probably sell for about $400-450,000.  We have almost half an acre…which is what really lead us to buy this property.

The remodel first looked like it was going to be a simple master suite addition and a studio for Robert (he’s an artist).  But upon further discussion with our architect and builder we decided that tearing the old house down actually made more fiscal sense, and could be done in an environmentally friendly way.

Environmental issues have always been important to Robert and me (Greg).  We recycle, limit our dry cleaning, use an organic lawn service, use natural cleaning supplies, buy local and organic produce when we can, and we use as much recycled paper and other consumables as possible.  We also subscribe to the all-wind plan from Green Mountain Energy.

Building Green was a natural progression for us.  And, probably like many of you, we didn’t know where to start and had little guidance along the way.  That’s what this blog is supposed to help with.  We’ll be publishing a posting at least weekly through the duration of this project that touches on our Green decision-making process, the LEED for Homes program, and ultimately the cost of making our home Green.  So come back, respond to the posts, and enjoy.

Welcome to our Green Labron blog.  Our intent with this blog is to track the design, construction, decision-making process of our home on Labron Avenue in Dallas, Texas.  We intend to build Green – meaning we’re targeting a Platinum LEED for Homes Certification from the US Green Building Council.  We’ll explain what that all means in future posts, but for now….Welcome and check out our links to learn more about USGBC and LEED.