Regreening the home

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If you're even just barely paying attention to green topics these days, you have at least heard about LEED, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. But I'd wager you haven't yet heard about Regreen, which was unveiled only last month. You could think of Regreen as "LEED for home renovations and design," if not for several big reasons that you can't. The first one is that although it was produced, in concert with the American Society of Interior Designers, by the US Green Building Council, which is the organization behind LEED, it is pretty different. The several flavors of LEED (for new buildings, for existing buildings, for commercial interiors, for homes, etc.) are all point-based rating systems that project energy usage based on choices made for materials, techniques, and systems. Regreen has no point system at all. LEED also offers several certification levels that you've no doubt heard of — silver, or gold, or platinum — and Regreen doesn't go there, either. Instead, said Penny Bonda, who presented the new program to a session at the Residential Design and Construction trade show last week, the team that sped the program to market in about a year was only trying to establish guidelines for best practices in this corner of the business. "The focus is on whole-house-systems thinking," she said, explaining that the program seeks to bring together the architects, designers, engineers, builders, and trades working on a project. That way, for example, the painter knows from the designer that he can't sub in, say, a caulk that wasn't specified, or use a standard paint when low-VOC was specified. "Regreen doesn't suggest professional integration, it requires it." Another facet that separates Regreen from LEED is that it was written for homeowners as well as remodeling contractors and home goods suppliers. In contrast, Leed for Homes only for the builder. But Regreen does dovetail with LEED for Homes, as well as with Energy Star, Watersense, and others. Bonda said the "heart and soul of Regreen" is the strategy lists, almost 200 of them, that address a broad range of home-renovation issues. After choosing from among 10 project types (kitchen rehab, for example), you can explore the library for potential issues or find related strategies, references or resources. The program urges comprehensive discovery of customer needs and project planning that is then implemented by a "goal keeper" armed with high-quality construction documents. You can see the program and peruse the libraries at regreenprogram.org

Comments

Thanks for the info on Regreen. The Guideline book is very informative. I am pretty familiar with LEED because I work on brownfields and some new construction on brownfield sites follows LEED.

We remodeled our home and put on an addition last year and I struggled with the green vs practical. We used a recommended reasonably priced builder who was not very green. It was an effort to get him to incorporate green practices but we did some and I think it made a difference. All the green building ideas were sort of theoretical for me until I started actually trying to do it.

The biggest challenge was time, we wanted the project to get done quickly so that my family could move in the house before we were kicked out of our old house. I did not have months to research green windows and green paint, etc.

One little thing I was proud of myself for was reuse of things that came out of the house. My builder was going to throw all this stuff in the dumpster but I brought over much and had the habitat Restore pick up many things which are hopefully now in someone else’s home. One thing I feel bad about is all the wood, while we did put in a bamboo floor for one room, the rest of the project used a large quantity of regular old non-sustainable wood for trim, etc.

from - Michael Prager (I thought to check your blog because of this NYT article today: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/us/10names.html?hp)


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