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History Repeats Itself
There are techniques we’ve used for the last 20 years that are being touted today as innovative and green. This doesn’t make green bad by any sense. In fact, we feel that the market has swung toward some of the core principles we’ve always had. It’s just they had a lot better marketing minds about what to name the concept.
Sustainable Buildings
Sustainability is a popular term today. This includes issues that are critical to the life of a building and quality and usefulness of it in the future. We used to use the terms of warranty and repair work and more importantly maintenance.
These issues are critical to the lifecycle cost. In todays economy, its not easy to throw money around to maintain the quality and value of your building. There are many techniques that simplify construction. In turn, maintenance and repair costs are reduced considerably.
Conservation of Resources
Conservation is commonly thrown around as a new idea. Well, using less material only makes sense. For the last two decades we’ve worked with subs to understand issues that reduce waste in the field.
Designing to reduce material waste will conserve in two areas: labor and material. You never hear about conservation of labor. Why, isn’t labor an important resource? Reducing labor and material will translate directly into cost savings on your project.
Energy Efficient Design
Energy efficiency has really maintained its name. Techniques and savings have been achieved over the years due to the study and testing of building sciences. Many ‘energy savings’ techniques of 30 years ago have been refuted today. It’s kind of scary to tell you the truth. Things that we though were really good like attic ventilation have shown to be detrimental to the cause of reducing energy consumption.
Liars Abound
It’s a little game called green washing. This is where companies package up ordinary construction as ‘green’. Who’s to say what they are doing is not green. There is nothing like the FDA to supervise these claims.
Then again were lucky. Imagine the cost incurred due to government regulation. Building green wouldn’t be feasible.
Flawed System
There are systems for evaluating your green building techniques, but they fall far short in being practical or realistic.
Which product is more green, granite from a quarry that’s 100 miles away from the project’s destination, shipping it to Europe to be finished and returning it back to its final destination or granite from a quarry in Europe where it is finished and shipped to your jobsite?
Logic dictates that the European granite is greener due to the overall length of travel from origination to installation. But, the local granite gets the points for being ‘green’.
Green for Green’s Sake
Now enters the opposite side of the spectrum, the ‘over-green’ consultant. This is the person that loves the principles so much that cost isn’t an overly considered issue. The idea of being tied to a project certified as green is more important.
This is a dead end path to enormous expense with benefits that don’t justify the costs. Many times this occurs through the use of proprietary materials and systems.
Today’s Best Solution
Evaluate every material and installation method’s cost against the benefit gained. If a product is energy efficient, how long is the pay back. If it’s projected as 20 years and 3 months to a break even, the product doesn’t make sense.
Now let’s think about a more challenging idea. How about providing natural light within the building? We are talking about creating a better working or living environment. Once again, money takes center stage. Diffused parabolic skylights can cost $1200 a piece. Not to mention the cost for automatic sensors that will turn the lights on when acceptable lighting levels are not achieved.
There are no clear-cut answers. What you need is a team that can help evaluate the real costs associated with building ‘green’. This is the only way to reasonably determine its viability in your project.
Fortunately, there are elements that you can incorporate that cost little to nothing at all. All it takes is paying attention to the details.
To learn more about the viability of green principles and your project, give us a call at 602.774.4560.