Hello all - we are in the design phase of our new home. I am committed to green building (my husband is less so, but not against it). I'm curious about getting LEED certification. Most of what we plan to do we would do anyway - my question is whether going through the LEED process is worth the effort/expense. I'd appreciate your thoughts!

LEED requires a lot of record keeping and doesn't necessarily mean it's a great design, just that it met a long and detailed list of prescriptive measures with weighted values (which can be played with to improve the LEED "brownie point" numbers even when it doesn't improve the performance of the building.) A LEED certification may add resale value to the place, but SFAIK that hasn't been amply demonstrated.

True performance counts more in my book than certification, but there are aspects to getting the performance in cost effective, sustainable ways. Eg, closed cell polyurethane foam and XPS have a bad rap these days due to the fact that as insulation the lifecycle greenhouse potential of the blowing agents used can be greater than the energy use that it offsets. (Not so for open cell foam, polyisocyanurate, or EPS.) Yet there are still appropriate places to use closed cell foam or XPS for moisture control or air sealing, aspects that won't always show up clearly in a LEED evaluation, and often ignored by designers with performance-only agendas.

Some LEED brownie points are well deserved such use of reclaimed materials, particularly those with a lot of embodied energy or greenhouse gas footprints. (One of my favorites is reclaimed roofing foam from commercial re-roofing or demolition employed as insulating sheathing on walls or roofs of homes.) Others, not so much- such as counting the thermal mass of concrete used in a semi-conditioned garage. Use of fly ash in concrete to displace portland cement is a well-founded aspect though. The list is endless. But spending the money on a good design (and modeling the energy use as-sited & oriented) using reasonable parameters on materials trade-offs trumps LEED certification in my book. YMMV.

A LEED certification may add resale value to the place, but SFAIK that hasn't been amply demonstrated.

I've probably got Silver, but I'm going for Gold. It just sounds better, don't you think? :-)

As an alternative to LEED, you may try Green Globes. Just not sure if they do resi certification.

http://www.greenglobes.com/about.asp

Another alternative to LEED is NAHB
http://www.nahbgreen.org/
http://www.nahbgreen.org/NGBS/default.aspx

Posted By andry on 16 May 2012 05:36 PM
Hello all - we are in the design phase of our new home. I am committed to green building (my husband is less so, but not against it). I'm curious about getting LEED certification. Most of what we plan to do we would do anyway - my question is whether going through the LEED process is worth the effort/expense. I'd appreciate your thoughts!

Have you considered zero energy versus LEED?

Posted By ICFHybrid on 16 May 2012 06:37 PM

A LEED certification may add resale value to the place, but SFAIK that hasn't been amply demonstrated.

I've probably got Silver, but I'm going for Gold. It just sounds better, don't you think? :-)

I dunno, howzabout Platinum?

Most certifications like these have more to do with bragging rights for the architects and builders than realizable benefits to the owners/occupants.

Net Zero Energy and PassiveHouse have clearer quantifiable benefit metrics to the owners & occupants, but are probably beyond the scope of this project where one spouse is very taken with the concept of green building, and the other merely going along, so long as it isn't breaking the bank.  But even in those cases I'd rather live in a Net Zero or Passive house (or something close to it) than certify it to the standard.  True Net Zero or PassiveHouse performance has as much to do with the behavior as the occupants as it does with the building itself.

There's a house near me going for a PassiveHouse certification, but might not make it because it's using too much air-conditioning power even in winter to shed the heat of the multiple large screen televisions attached to game systems.  It's a cool house and all, but I don't really care if it meets the PassiveHouse spec or gets the cert- the occupants are comfortable and happy, and the utility bills are extremely low, and when the teenagers leave for college it'll probably make the grade, if they still care.

For anyone who is new to the subject I'd caution them against paying extra for eco-bling (which can include solar panels or ground source heat pumps) without doing the math and even energy-use modeling of the building envelope.  A $2000 porch overhang can sometimes provide more in cooling load or energy use reduction than $10,000 more in highest-efficiency HVAC or photovoltaic panels.  A $20,000 upgrade in air sealing, insulation & window performance trumps a lot if spent carefully, which is where energy use modeling is very useful.  It's not that HVAC efficiency and site-capture/production don't matter, but reducing the loads to the cost-effectiveness limits provides more creature comfort.  What's cost effective or not can take a sharp pencil  to determine, and even then the lines get fuzzy, often skewed by federal/state/local subsidies- it's a moving target.  Don't become too enamored of any construction methodology or HVAC technology- it's all good, but what makes the most sense in any particular circumstance climate or site will vary widely.

Dana1,

I agree.  Well stated.

I dunno, howzabout Platinum?

There's a Platinum? :->

Sounds so good, it should probably boost your appraisal by at least 10%, right?

I wonder if anyone has studied the subset of green homes that sell for a premium in order to determine what factors boost value the most.

Riiiiiggghhhht!


But on my amp the numbers all go to eleven- look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven ...

...that's got to be worth at least 10% more too! :-)