Taking the LEED in energy efficient living

When Jack and Aileen Viorel outgrew their house in Leland and were looking to move, they assumed they wouldn’t be able to afford a genuinely green home, though they’d talked often about one. Somewhere they’d heard that above 2400 square feet or so, real energy efficiency was wildly expensive. With their second child arrived and Jack’s voracious appetite for garage-filling outdoor activities like surfing unabated, a house that was big enough to fit them but small enough to be genuinely efficient seemed unreachable.

But Jack’s surfing buddy Jeff Vanderwahl, an architect at Cisco Systems, told them about an initiative he was heading up at corporate sites around the country, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), that was just making its way into the residential market. In fact, Jeff said, the neighborhood where he lived in Pender County had a start on good environmental design. If Jack built a new home there using all the principles they could muster for energy efficiency within the home, proper materials selection and absolutely minimal building waste, the Viorels could take advantage of the forward-thinking site development and water savings regime the Sagewood area afforded. They could build not only the first LEED-certified home in the area, but in the county!

The LEED certification for homes is new but no less rigorous than the certifications for the older and more established LEED rating systems. As the home rating describes itself,

LEED for Homes is a rating system that promotes the design and construction of high-performance green homes. A green home uses less energy, water and natural resources; creates less waste; and is healthier and more comfortable for the occupants. Benefits of a LEED home include lower energy and water bills; reduced greenhouse gas emissions; and less exposure to mold, mildew and other indoor toxins. The net cost of owning a LEED home is comparable to that of owning a conventional home.

Among the features the Viorels used in their home and its construction to get to ceritifiable levels were:

• All of the building materials were produced within 500 miles.

  Local woods and other materials were used to save on transportation costs and impact.

• The construction process itself was efficient.

  Wherever possible the leftovers from one area of construction were reused in others (as when you pulp wood waste). The result, Jack said, was that in contrast to normal construction sites, where one or more full-size dumpsters are used to haul away mountains of wastefully unused and sometimes toxic materials, when construction was completed there was virtually nothing to take away

• Icynene, spray-on, environmentally healthy foam insulation favored in LEED development that can save up to 50% each month in energy costs, was used to insulate the whole house.

  

• The site captures and reuses water.

  At the Viorels’ house and at all the houses in Sagewood, there is no water run-off, and no catch basins in the neighborhood streets. Many of the houses, including the Viorels’, use water gardens to move water back into the ground in an attractive, no-impact way.

• In addition to efficient appliances and lighting throughout, the house uses distributed HVACs and thermostats to radically improve heating efficiency and lower costs.

  Additionally, the house uses a “just in time” heating system rather than a hot water tank, which means they only heat the water they need when they need it.

• A system of solar lighting and periscope-like lenses in the roof optimize lighting through out and reduce the need for artificial light.

Jack’s experience with the whole process supports what he heard from Jeff and others involved in LEED: If you were going to spend 300 thousand dollars to build a ‘regular’ home, for example, you might expect to pay something like 308 thousand dollars for a LEED certified version. Homeowners usually make back this up-front investment in less than a year, and then enjoy not only much lower energy and utility costs, but also the sense that they’ve rolled back environmental impacts, built something beautiful, healthful, and lasting, and created a model that others can follow.

All these are important to the Viorels. As Jack and Aileen investigated and then undertook the process for building a LEED home, Jack says he was as surprised by anyone by what a positive, economical, and exciting experience it has been. He’s happy to think that the new home — with its beautiful, spacious interiors and lush colors, its elegant extras, and its handsome, ‘normal’, exterior — overturns some misapprehensions about “green living”. Indeed it does.