The green roof at Seattle hotel-condo project Olive 8 is being installed this week. It is one of the largest green roofs in Seattle at 8,355 square feet.

The roof is actually two green roofs so the developer, R.C. Hedreen, can test out which system it likes best. Above the chillers there is a sod-based green roof. On the actual fourth floor ground level, there is a tray-based sedum system. There is a lasting argument between which one of these techniques is better, which I will discuss in a later post at greater detail. For more on this project, or to learn about R.C. Hedreen’s conversion to being a green developer, read the story in the DJC here.

R.C. Hedreen is also considering a second green roof on the 39th floor of Olive 8, though if it pursues that option it will need to be sod-based as David Thyer, president of the company, said the city is afraid the green roof trays will blow away at such a great height.

On Tuesday, I was fortunate enough to see part of the tray installation. Here are photos I took of the process:

Trays on the ground

Workers pick up a tray...

And load the tray into a pattern

The green roof from behind

Both green roofs

A close up of the sod-based green roof

For more on Olive 8, see the official page here. To see more photos, visit Eco Friendly Mag here.

A LEED platinum project is still a pretty rare thing to see. But as of today, Seattle gets to add another LEED platinum project to the grand tally sheet. 

The project is called Kenyon House and is a supportive community with 18 studio apartments for people with HIV/AIDS. It is certified under LEED for Homes and the organization says it is the first of its kind (affordable multifamily) to receive the platinum certification in the state. It was done by Building Changes and Housing

Courtesy William Wright

Resources Group.

The first thing to understand is that LEED for homes is different than just plain ole’ LEED. The other LEED ratings (new construction, commercial interiors) are all lumped together on the USGBC’s registry. According to that registry, there are three LEED platinum projects in Washington: WPUDA headquarters, the Shoreline Recycling and Transfer Station and the Perkins + Will Seattle office’s interior.

But LEED for homes, what Kenyon is certified under, is a whole other (some might say easier) ballgame. That’s listed in a separate document here. According to that document, in Washington there are six LEED platinum homes. They are all in Seattle and turns out, I’ve written about all of them. For more on the other LEED platinum homes, click here for Ashworth Cottages, here for the Alley House and here for Michael K. Mastro’s home. Or read past blog entries here and here for Alley House.

The second thing to understand is that the other LEED platinum homes are are single family market rate projects. This is the first LEED platinum home in Washington (again according to the USGBC document) that is affordable. It’s a pretty important milestone.

“Green theory” (if you will) or the large ideas behind living in an eco-conscious way says people in affordable housing complexes are often the ones who most need the benefits of green design but also are the least likely to get them. Green buildings and affordable housing, they say, need to be linked together otherwise green is just providing a better quality of living for those who can afford to pay for it.

But green buildings are also seen as being tremendously more expensive than the cost of typical affordable housing. The fact that this group has done platinum, for $5 million, is quite something.

The team used efficient gas-fired boilers which provide baseboard hydronic heat in all units, high insulation, high efficiency windows, 100 percent fluorescent lighting. It focused on air quality due to the health of the residents and had a pre-occupancy flush of the project. There is water-resistant flooring in potential wet areas to reduce the chance of mold or rot.

For more info on the project, read the DJC’s entry on it here.

This is a monthly post by different representatives of the Northwest Building Efficiency Center. This post was written by Margaret Thomas. 

As a librarian for several years at a library specializing in the area of energy, I responded to questions about energy-efficiency from homeowners, and those responsible for building, renovating or maintaining commercial buildings.

Often, what they wanted to know is: are there any rebates or other financial incentives to help me pay for energy-efficiency improvements? Of course there are, but they are as scattered and unpredictable as mercury on a marble floor.

A variety of utility, local, state and federal organizations offer help. But their programs are buffeted by budget cycles and political whims—they come and go with the seasons. Who keeps up? The Database for State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency.

The Web site comes with a dangerous URL: dsireusa.org. Get it wrong and you may be in for a shock. Get it right and you are connected to the single most useful and up-to-date source I know of for information about financial incentives.

DSIRE has been around for more than a decade and established itself as a central clearinghouse for information about financial incentives from every source. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the database is managed by the North Carolina Solar Center and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. They contact program managers regularly and update the database daily.

Posted on the front page is a clickable map of the United States. Choose any state and you get a menu including applicable grants, rebates, tax exemptions, and loan programs. The site also keeps track of relevant rules, regulations and policies.

If you don’t have time to clip coupons or shop around for energy incentives, bookmark DSIREUSA. It’s sites like this that can make a librarian feel as useless as the Maytag Repairman.

There’s a lot of news out there people. But possibly the most entertaining thing in my in-box doesn’t have to do with green materials or green buildings…. it revolves around a penguin.

The Environmental News Network reports that Norway has knighted a king penguin named Niles Olav. Sir Niles Olav is the third penguin to serve as the mascot of the King’s Guard. The first mascot penguin was chosen in 1972, and named after then-King Olav V. Sir Niles Olav (the penguin) lives in the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland and was promoted from regimental sergeant major to honorary colonel-in-chief in 2005. Just think, I never knew a penguin could be a knight! For more on this, click here.

In other (green building) news, Portland Architecture reports that Houston developer Hines has withdrawn from the competition for the San Diego city hall project, leaving the door wide open for Gerding Edlen and ZGF, though it doesn’t guarantee them the job. For more on the project, click tag ‘Gerding Edlen’ below or click here.

Jetson Green reports on a Yale grad school student who built her own tiny house that is off the grid. The home will cost about $11,000, is 8′ x 18′, and has a sleeping loft, storage loft, study nook, kitchen area, living area and bathroom.  For more, click here.

And Landscape + Urbanism has some awesome photos of green rooftops in NYC. For more, click here.

Happy news hunting! (penguin photo courtesy of ENN. Tiny house courtesy of Stephen Dunn, via Jetson Green). 

My recent post called “Is green building dangerous?” raised a number of comments. In the post, I mentioned a project that had won a significant green award but was “poisoning” its inhabitants. One commenter asked for more information on the subject, so I went to Dan Morris, the indoor air quality specialist mentioned, for specifics on the project. Here is his response (WARNING, may be overly technical):

Morris said the problem with the green house in question was the location of things. It had a large gas water heater used to heat the hydronic infloor heating and domestic hot water that was in a small laundry room with a washer, dryer, an exhaust fan and a fixed window. The occupants were not “poisoned” (as I originally stated) but were exposed to somewhat elevated levels of carbon monoxide over long periods in the house (either way though, it’s not good for you). 

Morris said the carbon monoxide and other trace pollutants found in the flue gasses from gas combustion were drawn into the house whenever the dryer or exhaust fan was operated when the water/space heater was operating. The dryer or exhaust fan took air out of the laundry room with no provision for make-up air from outdoors. The only open hole to the outdoors was the water heater flue. The make-up air was drawn down the flue pipe and back drafted the water heater. In short, it was out of balance and pressure.

In Morris’ words: “What was so disturbing about this house was that no one understood the basics of building science, or were not paying attention. This includes the: architect or building designer, builder, homeowners, code officials/inspectors, green building award people.”

Obviously, this isn’t every green designer or builder or award program… but how common is it? And whose responsibility was it to notice that all those things should not have been in the same room?

Another commenter, SteamboatEcoBroker, said with newer green buildings, air quality and ventilation systems are a must because they are much tighter than older buildings. So should more attention be paid to the air quality systems in a green building? Do green building systems focus too much on energy and not enough on other important aspects?

If you have any insights, please share them with me below.

Wondering what that LEED platinum home looked like? Here are some photos for your entertainment:

That’s Sloan Ritchie, the project’s developer, walking into the house.

That’s the pretty green roof outside the master bedroom.

That’s open house visitors enjoying the living room.

This is kirei board, an engineered panel product made from the leftover stalks of the sorghum plant, which is used for food.

Here’s Ritchie with a SIP - a structural insulated panel or polystyrene panel that combines framing, insulation and exterior sheathing in one system. They can be used for roofing, walls or floors over crawl spaces.

For those of you not from the Pacific Northwest, Gerding Edlen Development Co. is widely regarded here as one of the best role models for sustainable project development. People want to know what they’re working on - and what they think is the next big thing in sustainability, as evidenced by my story on their Casey Condominium project being the DJC’s most read and most e-mailed story on Friday. 

So when I spoke with Mark Edlen, Gerding Edlen’s managing partner last week, and he said within a year LEED platinum would be “an absolute yawner” in his office, you better believe my ears perked up. Instead, he said it’s on to net zero buildings that consume more trash than they produce!

We were talking about the platinum rating because The Casey (at right), a $60 million, 61-unit building, is supposedly the first LEED platinum multifamily high rise in the world.  

It’s also the firm’s first foray into “eco-luxury”  - a combination of ultimate ecological consciousness and luxury (something not often associated with green buildings).

In fact, it is widely agreed upon that the green building movement has done a particularly bad job of combining function and beauty, something that most agree must become a stronger focus. But Mark’s focus behind developing green projects is that a project should not compromise anything from site to construction to occupancy comfort, just to be sustainable.

So why not go after green luxury, the same way you’d go after green office or hospital space?  What do you think? Can a building be both?

To read a local perspective, click here or here. For real estate stats, go here. For more go here. If you’re interested in Gerding Edlen, you can read about another one of their project’s in a December story I wrote here.

But if you want to learn more about the Casey, its green features, the difficulty of building green multifamily to such a high level, and the building’s art component, there’s only one place to look: the story in the DJC. Check it out here.

What’s the point of green awards? I asked that question in a post last week and during an AIA panel discussion the following day,  a number of Seattle architects tried to answer the question (see the post for a list of architects on the panel).

But answers ranged across the board. So I asked, ”If you could boil what you want out of the green awards down to one thing, what would it be?” (One of this year’s award winners is at left - the planned Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma by Perkins + Will).

The response was that you really couldn’t boil it down to one thing. Green awards are supposed to: inspire, train people, get people interested in green buildings, share project information, elevate Seattle’s green building reputation, honor people equally that are pushing the envelope and just beginning to do green work, and change the way design is done.

Whew. Those are a lot of goals for one award program. But OK, assuming one program can achieve it all… how do you do it?

Here are some of the panel’s ideas for making AIA Seattle’s What Makes it Green Awards better, and for extending it’s breadth so that next year, you, Seattle-area-architect-who-is-only-kind-of-interested-in-green-building, will want to go to the event, and begin designing green: (more…)

Did you ever hear about an interesting project, wonder how it would  work and then forget about it?

To avoid that situation the Weber Thompson team at the Terry Avenue Office Building (at left) is blogging about what it’s like to work in a LEED gold (for core and shell), naturally ventilated building. To check it out, go here. (For more on the building, my colleague Shawna Gamache wrote about it in her blog here).

The blog’s most recent post talks about cooling the building on a hot day … and opening all 248 of the building’s windows. The post before that discusses how the building SOUNDS different…. and what it’s like getting used to that.

What a novel idea. To share with the public the water cooler discussions of how people like their new surroundings. 

(Just for the record the building we work in here at the DJC also has no air conditioning. It gets warm a couple days in the summer but it’s very doable).  (more…)

Green awards, green awards. There’s lots of them out there but what’s the point? And what’s the responsibility of people doling them out?

That is the topic, to some extent, of an AIA Seattle forum I’m presenting at tomorrow. I am a guest panelist - the token architectural outsider - along with Lucia Athens of Seattle’s Green Building Team and a host of locally known architects including Marc Jenefsky, Anne Schopf, Peter Steinbrueck, Dan Williams and Rick Zieve. Jerome Diepenbrock, chair of the AIA ethics and practice committee will moderate. (more…)