Green Building

Project Planning and Cost Estimating

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• Publisher: RSMeans
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118030035
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Design

A unique cost reference, updated and expanded, for architects, engineers, contractors, building owners, and managers

Green building is no longer a trend. Since the publication of the widely read first edition of this book, green building has become a major advancement in design and construction. Building codes and standards have adopted much stricter energy efficiencies. Businesses, institutions, and communities have discovered huge savings, along with health and marketing advantages, in sustainable building. Private facilities, as well as public buildings for Federal, state, and local governments are increasingly required to design and build sustainably in both new construction and renovation.

This Third Edition has been updated with the latest in green building tech-nologies, design concepts, standards, and costs. The chapters, case studies, and resources give you practical guidance on green building, including the latest on:

• Green building approaches, materials, rating systems, standards, and guidelines
  
  

• Energy efficiencies, implementing energy modeling tools
  
  

• Designing and specifying, as well as commissioning, green building projects
  
  

• Often-specified products and materials, as well as a sample spec
  
  

• Goals and techniques for health, comfort, and productivity
  
  

• Evaluating the cost versus value of green products over their life cycle
  
  

• Low-cost green strategies, and special economic incentives and funding
  
  

• Building deconstruction and cost considerations
  
  

With a new chapter on greening of commercial real estate, this reference is a one-stop resource for the latest in green building approaches and implementation.

The contributors, all prominent leaders in green building, include:

• Mark Kalin, FAIA, FCSI, author of the original GreenSpec
  
  

• Andy Walker, Ph.D., PE, senior engineer with NREL
  
  

• Joseph Macaluso, AACE, certified cost consultant
  
  

Part 1
Green Building Concepts

Chapter 1
Green Building Approaches

Alexis Karolides, AIA

A common assumption in recent years is that the built environment will necessarily degrade the natural environment. But for most of Earth’s history, structures built for shelter have typically enhanced bio-diversity and benefited the surrounding community. Beaver dams, for instance, create pools where wetlands form, supporting a vast array of diverse life not possible in the original stream. Why should an office building be any different?

Green building is a way of enhancing the environment. Done right, it benefits human well-being, community, environmental health, and life cycle cost. This means tailoring a building and its placement on the site to the local climate, site conditions, culture, and community in order to reduce resource consumption, augment resource supply, and enhance the quality and diversity of life. More of a building philosophy than a building style, there is no characteristic “look” of a green building. While natural and resource-efficient features can be highlighted in a building, they can also be invisible within any architectural design aesthetic.

Green building is part of the larger concept of “sustainable development,” characterized by Sara Parkin of the British environmental initiative, Forum for the Future, as “a process that enables all people to realize their potential and improve their quality of life in ways that protect and enhance the Earth’s life support systems.” As the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) phrased it, “Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Ideally, green building is not just an assemblage of “environmental” components, nor a piecemeal modification of an already-designed, standard building. In some cases, these incremental approaches add to the building’s cost, while producing marginal resource savings. It is much more effective to take a holistic approach to programming, planning, designing, and constructing (or renovating) buildings and sites. This involves analyzing such interconnected issues as site and climate considerations, building orientation and form, lighting and thermal comfort, systems and materials, and optimizing all these aspects in an integrated design.

Figure 1.1 The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens Welcome Center in Pittsburgh, PA, was built targeting a LEED Silver rating. Photo courtesy IKM Incorporated - Architects (Photographer: Alexander Denmarsh Photography.)

To capture the multiple benefits of synergistic design elements, the “whole system” design process must begin early in the building’s conception and must involve interdisciplinary teamwork. In the conventional, linear development process, key people are often left out of decision-making or brought in too late to make a full contribution. Thorough collaboration, on the other hand, can reduce and sometimes eliminate both capital and operating costs, while at the same time meeting environmental and social goals. In addition, the process can anticipate and avoid technical difficulties that would have resulted in added expense to the project. Collaboration can also produce a “big picture” vision that goes beyond the original problem, permitting one solution to be leveraged to create many more solutions—often at no additional cost.

It is precisely the integrated approach described above and the multiple benefits thereby achieved that allow many green buildings to cost no more than standard buildings, even though some of their components may cost more. Green design elements may each serve several functions and allow other building components to be downsized. For example, better windows and insulation can allow for smaller heating systems; photovoltaic panels can double as shade for parking or can replace a building’s spandrel glazing.

The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) LEED^® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system for commercial, institutional, and high-rise residential buildings is an instrument used to evaluate environmental performance from a “whole building” perspective over a building’s life cycle, providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a green building. It should be used not just to “rate” a building, but as a tool to facilitate greening the building early in the design process. The USGBC has asserted that a LEED-certified or Silver-rated building should not cost more than a conventional building. (Gold- or Platinum-rated buildings may cost more, but they also may involve cutting-edge technologies or significant energy-generation capacity not found in standard buildings.)

Recent studies have corroborated that LEED buildings, in general, fall within the typical cost ranges of their conventional counterparts.¹ One study that did show up to a nominal 2% first cost premium for LEED buildings, demonstrated a tenfold return on this initial investment in operational savings over the life of the building.²

Many cities also have local green building guidelines or rating systems that are similarly useful and are sometimes associated with incentives (such as rebates, reduced fees or taxes, and/or an expedited permit process). Some cities require that LEED or their local green building guidelines be followed (typically for government buildings). (See Chapter 9 for more on the LEED rating system, and Chapter 10 for financial incentives.)

Players in the real estate market are realizing that green development is good business. Developers, builders, and buyers are discovering that green enhances not only health and quality of life, but also the bottom line.

Potential Benefits of Green Building

• Reduced capital cost
• Reduced operating costs
• Marketing benefits (free press and product differentiation)
• Valuation premiums and enhanced absorption rates
• In some cities, streamlined approvals by building and zoning departments
• Reduced liability risk
• Health and productivity gains
• Attracting and retaining employees
• Staying ahead of regulations
• New business opportunities
• Satisfaction from doing the right thing

Resource Efficiency

Buildings make up 40% of total U.S. energy consumption (including two-thirds of the country’s electricity) and 16% of total U.S. water consumption. They are responsible for 40% of all material flows and produce 15%- 40% of the waste in landfills, depending on the region.³ Clearly, large-scale improvements in resource productivity in buildings would have a profound effect on national resource consumption. According to Natural Capitalism, a book by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins, radical improvements in resource efficiency are readily possible—today’s off-the-shelf technologies can make existing buildings three to four times more resource-efficient, and new buildings up to ten times more efficient.⁴

Reducing energy use in buildings saves resources and money while reducing pollution and CO₂ in the atmosphere. It also leverages even greater savings at power plants. For instance, if electricity is coming from a 35%-efficient coal-fired power plant and experiencing 6% transmission line losses, saving a unit of electricity in a building saves three units of fuel at the power plant.⁵ Process losses exaggerate the problem. Take a typical industrial pumping system, for instance. Insert 100 units of fuel at the power plant to produce 30 units of electricity; 9% of this is lost in transmission...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Green Building Concepts
• Part 2: Designing, Specifying & Commissioning the Green Building
• Part 3: Analyzing Economic & Environmental Impacts
• Part 4: Case Studies
• Resources
• Glossary
• Index
• End User License Agreement