Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

Last night I had the opportunity to present an overview of our home and our experiences of building LEED to the Burlington Sustainable Development Committee. Steve Stipsits and myself had 20 minutes to cover subjects that could have been days worth of discussion but as an overview, I think it was informative. It was also a very good sign that there are people surrounding the city with progressive ideas. I applaud them.

There were some very good and telling questions – many of which were impossible to answer however in such a short time. For example, we are often asked “what does building LEED cost above building regularly?”. A good question but a philosophical one as I’ve highlighted in previous posts. See Rationalizing Building Sustainably or Sustainable Building is Upside Down.

Another great question was were there any hurdles or impedances with the city? Ikes. Again, the answer is deep but in short – some very small practical issues. Yes there were a couple of situations which were unusual and unreasonable. For example when we submitted our finished plans to the city for approval, we were told we couldn’t use cork flooring in the kitchen…

When we asked for a reason, we were told that it wasn’t durable enough for the kitchen — no further explanation. No consideration that it is recycled, recyclable or even that the subjective judgment didn’t take into account the user and their habits for wear. Never-the-less we adjusted the plans to not show cork and resubmitted. Now this seems like no big deal. But think this through. How much time did this cost us and how much money aside from time delay — Branthaven had to do the paperwork to submit twice, go down to the city twice, and have an architect redraw the plans for us and reprint multiple sets, twice. I would estimate that this arbitrary and uneducated off hand conclusion by the city cost us $1000 or more dollars.

So what. In the grand scheme of things this issue is tiny – compared to the mounds of paper and plans, compared to the overall budget. But, if you consider that every dollar we have to make has an exponential negative effect on the ecology and resources than it was more like tens of thousands or piles of carbon footprint. But I think the greater issue is in what the situation represents.

What it represents is a general lack of understanding or engagement by the city. That this person practices in the city without an education on sustainability in even a basic sense is challenging. That this person, independent of the standards within the city, can affect a project that is looking to make change and improve our community is addidng difficulty to an already tedious endeavor. And also that their is no process internally at the city to connect planning, engineering and permitting to understand the needs and differences in LEED or Green builds so that they can have a more communicative and proactive involvement with this leading form of construction within their own fence. This is the real issue – the city is not engaged and doesn’t yet have a process for change management with regard to LEED or sustainability. They suffer, like most of the industry, from ignorance and a passive resistance to change – leaving it for someone else to deal with, the next shift, on another day.

To reach sustainable goals, we all have to get involved, all absorb the R&D costs and do our part. This can’t exclude the city, or any of us.

Barry Imber and Leslie Akse are just a few weeks from moving into one of Canada’s first LEED homes. The Burlington couple’s house meets the stringent criteria of the new LEED Canada for Homes program, which was launched in early March. Built by Branthaven Homes, the Imber Akse house was part of the Canada Green Building Council’s (CaGBC) pilot project, to deliver a Canadian version of the standard for the low-rise residential market, a standard that is recognized as the pinnacle of green certification.

“When the clients approached us and described the sustainable home that they wanted, all of the features fell within the LEED standard,” says Steve Stipsits, president of Branthaven Homes. “We approached the CaGBC and the house became part of the pilot project. This house meets LEED Gold certification and it may even achieve Platinum, which is the highest certification you can receive.” The Imber Aske home replaces a dilapidated house, in an infill site in Burlington. Branthaven Homes had to first demolish the existing house and successfully divert 90% of materials for recycling. The home’s mechanical systems include geothermal heating and grey water recycling. For passive heating and cooling, windows have overhangs, to shield out the sun in summer and to attract heat in winter, when the sun is lower on the horizon. The house has ample windows for natural light and all windows open to allow breezes to flow through the home.

“The more breeze you have, the less need there is for air conditioning,” Stipsits says. “Even some of the interior walls have windows, so that a breeze can pass easily from room to room.” More stringent than the Energy Star for New Homes standard, LEED Canada for Homes takes into consideration criteria above and beyond a home’s energy efficiency. Materials used and percentages of waste, water efficiency, indoor air quality, innovation and design and the location of a home in relation to public transportation and accessibility to amenities all earn a project credits for LEED certification. Awareness and education is a key component, and the Imber Akse home even has a dedicated website (www.imberaskehouse.ca ), which chronicles details about the home’s construction and its small environmental footprint. The LEED Canada for Homes program applies to single-family homes and multi-family buildings of up to three stories. In Whitby,

Liza Communities’ Shorelands is Canada’s first LEED townhome community. A total of 227 homes feature a combination high-velocity natural gas heating systems, thermal fixed-glass low-E windows and living fences that have greenery growing against interwoven lattices.

“With the expansion of green certification programs, people have become a lot more inquisitive about the environmental features of their homes, and the community at large,” says Nargus Mansouri, director of sales and marketing for Liza Communities. “Shorelands showcases sustainable living in a townhome community. Purchasers love the LEED designation, but they are also impressed with the look of the community – its overall design, the architecture of the buildings and the layout of floor plans.” Various green certification programs, including Energy Star for New Homes and GreenHouse, provide builders with several options as they move to develop more sustainable communities in the new homes market. LEED Canada for Homes’ holistic approach to home construction delivers more than 30 to 40%savings in energy consumption, which saves homeowners in energy costs and improves the environment. As demand for the program grows and awareness increases, builders will be encouraged to offer this option to the home buying public.

“At the Chapter level, our members are green building specialists across southern Ontario, with a membership that is 1,700 strong,” says Lyle Shipley, executive director for the Greater Toronto Chapter of CaGBC. “For years, people have been looking to LEED, as the next logical step in green certification, and now Toronto homebuilders have that option.”

Most, if not all of the conversations we have about our home centres around the choice to go sustainable and inevitably the costs associated with this choice. How much extra does it cost to build sustainable or LEED?

Well, presuming those are both the same thing and I don’t believe they are entirely, you have to decide first on your philosophy around EXTRA cost. Oh no you say, here he goes. Wait. I’ll break the argument into multiple parts over a series of posts.

Part 1 – Quality vs. Sustainable

Really, this is a good question. I’ve known many people who’ve either had a custom home built for them or have purchased a new production home and have in all cases been at the helm of the selections of materials from the guts to the finishes. The burden of choice.

In all cases they had to come to terms with the level of perceived quality that they wished to balance — costs versus return of enjoyment. This can be apposing scales where you pay too little and there is product failure or you pay to much and there is buyer’s remorse. However, in most cases, they chose perceived quality and they paid. That said, and cynicism aside, was there a possibility that the products were actually of good quality? Of course. In any product is there a guarantee that it is of best quality? No. But chances are that the highest quality is also the most costly to produce and therefore the most costly in market. So if you combine perceived quality with price…

If anyone has been through the selections process, they’ll know that there is no shortage of choice out there. All choices come with differentiation; imported, efficient, trendy, inexpensive, beta, designer, sustainable etc. — all are attributes associated with the product or the buyer but not what defines its use. Sustainable is only an attribute in the end no matter how intrinsically important we may believe it is.

The long point I’m heading to is that one of the key features of a sustainable product is in its quality. Sure, measuring sustainability is a complex matrix that includes cost of manufacturing on the environment, human health, geographic location relative to build site, economic disparity and so on. But a big component is still quality in performance and longevity of use. So, if quality accounts for a large part of the cost of a product or material, how much of the cost of the material is locked up in the purely sustainable portion. As likely none as much as it may be all.

In all practicality, I’m guessing next to none. My guess and philosophy is that beyond quality, the cost impact on sustainable goods is being absorbed by the manufacturer and our economy for now, perhaps not purely altruistically but rather in a muddle of  R&D minus grants plus pollution controls less tax breaks plus worker safety and process reporting etc. minus cheap fuel and money. In the end, the most practical cost basis for pricing sustainable goods is cost of material in, plus, labour and overhead — the same as making any decent quality product in a domestic market.

So, to sum up, we believe that because our house is built of quality and long living products and materials first, with a focus on sustainable best practices as a decisive differentiator between a myriad of product choices, sustainability had little bearing on final cost. Choice and an open market based on competition regulates this naturally.