Third party verification is required for National Green Building Standard. The detail and verification on our house will be more extensive then what most houses require.
This Friday, November 6th we will be meeting our verifier, Bruce Chyka, of Performance Plus Homes, to go over line by line all the criteria needed to build a NGBS Emerald level home. This meeting will ensure all the criteria will be met, and that we understand every section.
Most of the criteria is easy to understand and straight forward, examples are, low or no VOC paints and adhesives, properly sized Heating and Air ducts and Energy Star Appliances. Some of the criteria that gets more complicated or detailed are, a Continuous physical foundation termite barrier, I believe this can be just plastic, but how the plastic is used I do not know, a minimum of 85% of material within a product group (i.e., wood structural panels, countertops, composite trim/doors, custom woodwork, and/or component closet shelving) is manufactured in accordance with the following.
- 901.4(2)Enter number of product groups where particle board and MDF (medium density fiber board) is manufactured and labeled in accordance with CPA A208.1 and CPA A208.2, respectively – 2 items
- 901.4(3)Enter number of product groups where hardwood plywood is in accordance with HPVA HP-1 and HUD Title 24, Part 3280. – 1 item.
This may/or may not sound confusing, but there is a lot time spent documenting and researching criteria like this one. This is where a good verifier comes in. After talking with Bruce, he assured my that any question would be resolved with our first meeting.
We are very excited about this meeting, it is the next step toward us becoming a more green company. It would be great to build all of our homes to this level of green, but we also know that the customers goals and objectives are also important, they may want a theater room instead of better insulation. This is where we will have an advantage over our competition. We will understand how green products work, the cost of implementing them and future return on investment. This way we could show them that the money they might save on Heating and Air bills will pay for that theater room equipment, over time of course.
Though I believe using a standard like the NGBS is very important to green building, using a verifier to simply test air leakage, should be done on every new and existing home. Doing this will not only save the enviroment, it will save you money.
