After much consideration, the home owner has scrapped the idea of building a LEED-certified home to focus on using the best technologies available in energy efficiency, writes Ron Callis, Jr.

Since becoming increasingly frustrated with the certification process, Advanced Home Theatre co-owner Robin Bogle decided to “focus less on getting LEED certified and more on simply using the best technologies for an efficient home, inside and out”.

Last year, Robin and his wife began designing and building their dream ‘green’ home using a best-in-class design team, but soon came to the conclusion that there is no benefit to having a LEED Silver Status Home.

Developed by the US Green Building Council, LEED is an internationally-recognised green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building was designed and built using strategies to save energy, use water efficiently and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

It provides building owners and operators with a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

However, there are some amazing construction technologies that are going to give us a serious bang for the buck, such as the use of LoE (double glazed) glass from Cardinal Glass Industries. Robin says this advanced glass allows plenty of light in while reducing the heat transmission between the indoor and outdoor environment. And in Florida, where it stays warm year round, this is a major consideration.

Due to the decreased heat gain from windows and doors, he can reduce the size of the home’s heating and cooling system. When combined with intelligent HVAC and lighting dimming systems, he expects his energy bill to be minimal. Robin plans to use the LoE glass for all doors and windows in the home despite the 20% cost premium over standard products.

Another system that Robin has approved is a WeatherHawk weather station. This system will allow Robin to monitor weather conditions such as wind speed, wind direction, temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, solar radiation and rain. He plans to feed the rain information into conditional logic programming for the irrigation system.

The system will know if it has rained and will not trigger the irrigation system to run, saving water and money. He describes this as a superior solution to simply using internet data for Miami, where it might have rained two inches (50mm) that day in the area, but not a single raindrop at his house.

Project out to bid

Robin and I found it very interesting that every subcontractor refused to provide fixed pricing on anything that had to meet LEED criteria. They wanted to keep the bids ‘loose’ because they were unsure of how much extra time and energy would be required to provide products and services that would meet LEED requirements. Robin estimates that requiring LEED certification from his subs would have driven up costs a minimum of 15%.

As is typical with residential construction, the architect compiled the bidder list of subs that they had a working relationship with. The architect had a minimum of three contractors bid on all disciplines including electrical, HVAC, plumbing, painting, millwork, flooring etc.

Prices came in and by mid-January, all subs had been selected. Regarding the bidding process, Robin did find quite a few similarities to what he sees in the market a custom installer. He separated the bids into high, medium and low prices for each discipline. He reviewed all pricing with the architect and noticed that in almost every case the low bidder was missing necessary hardware and labour. When they were informed of the problem, their prices would generally come back closer to the medium and high bids.

Robin says this occurs frequently if he finds himself bidding against other integrators for a project. He prides himself on delivering accurate proposals that account for all hardware and labour required to complete the project to the highest standards.

This practice is appreciated by clients, as some integrators seem to always put out “low-ball” bids only to later change order the home owner to no end.

“It’s hard for a consumer to know the difference in many cases and they end up hiring the wrong firm and are often unhappy with the resulting system and the whole experience,” Robin says.

In most cases, Robin hired the more expensive contractor as long as he thought he would get more value for his money. He is following the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.

“In fact,” he states, “the high guy wasn’t really high, just more accurate. He deserves the business.”

The project has moved a little slower than expected. The final plans have been submitted to the City of Miami Beach and construction should begin in May. The first step will be to demolish the existing home and clear the site.

The next article will discuss Robin’s decision-making process about the home automation technologies he plans to use.

This article was originally published by CE Pro. Reproduced with permission.