After LEED: The Next Generation of Green Building (Part II)
By Kevin Brooks Part two in a two part series In Part two, we’ll look at how the Living Building Challenge differs from LEED, as well as the necessary requirements for the Living Building Challenge. How It Differs From LEED As compared to LEED’s five core categories (sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality), the Living Building Challenge has seven categories, known as “petals:” site, water, energy, health, materials, equity, and beauty. The petal reference comes from the vision that the built...
Read MoreAfter LEED: The Next Generation of Green Building (Part I)
By Kevin Brooks Part one in a two part series By now, we are all familiar with the USGBC’s LEED® rating system. Since its founding in 1993, the USGBC has grown close to 20,000 members and has a presence in more than 30 countries. Indeed, the fundamental LEED Version 2.0 launched in the early 2000s has evolved into nine different rating systems covering all building types, including not only commercial construction but also homes, neighborhood development, schools, healthcare, and retail space. With more than 22,000 LEED certified projects, including over 12,000 homes and comprising in...
Read MoreHMH Builders Becomes A Sacramento Area Sustainable Business
By Angelo Purpura HMH Builders In April of 2011 the Green Team began the process of making HMH Builders a Sacramento Area Sustainable Business (SASB). The program is led by the Business Environmental Resource Center (BERC). The purpose of the program is to promote businesses that take voluntary actions to prevent pollution and conserve resources. There are six Categories: Water Conservation, Energy Conservation, Pollution Prevention, Solid Waste Reduction, Green Building Practices, and Transportation and Air Quality. After a few months of listing and verifying our company’s...
Read MoreInch by Inch, Row by Row…Green Landscaping Considerations Part II
By Kevin Brooks Part II of this series discusses a rain garden and it’s benefits to reduce water costs. We’ll also cover the best plants to use in landscaping! Rain Garden An alternate to this concrete box technology is a bioswale. A bioswale, sometimes also referred to as a rain garden, is simply a shallow depression or trough with a gentle slope, cut into the earth (swale) to collect the surface water and channel it to its desired location combined with biological filter media to treat the water. The biofilter media is simply selected plantings and organic material that is used...
Read MoreNASA Takes Off With Sustainability Base
Sustainability Base, one of NASA’s greenest buildings, was recently featured in a video interview segment of the Silicon Vally Buzz. Dr. Steve Zornetzer, NASA Ames Associate Center Director, talks about the innovation behind Sustainability Base. Located at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley, California, Sustainability Base was designed by William McDonough + Partners, in partnership with AECOM. Swinerton Builders was the General Contractor. Sustainability Base will be seeking LEED Platinum certification through the USGBC. While this video is a bit...
Read MoreInch by Inch, Row by Row…Green Landscaping Considerations Part I
By Kevin Brooks Anyone who has found themselves in the backyard with their toddler has most likely come across the Garden Song, a children’s classic sung by the late John Denver on the Muppet Show. The song’s lyrics speak to planting a garden while caring for Mother Earth. Many of the projects we build have some landscaping and irrigation component to them that we also “plant” at the end of the project. Often, the details of this scope of work get overlooked as we rush across the finish line towards the coveted certificate of substantial completion and close-out of the job. There can,...
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