Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

By the end of the year, a family of five will move into their own house in Crystal.

And with the help of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and its sustainable building partners, the purchase will actually come with some "LEED" savings.

The home, located in the 7000 block of 36th Avenue, is being built using Leadership in Environmental Design - or LEED - standards.

Created by the U.S. Green Building Council, this new set of standards has become the worldwide benchmark for creating sustainable structures. LEED provides a standardized system for the design and creation of "green" buildings.LEED-certified buildings must prove environmental sustainability in six major areas - sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design process.

Buildings can achieve LEED certification by meeting a set of prerequisites and achieving a variety of credits by improving sustainability in the six areas. The latest LEED certification allows for four levels of certification based on number of points awarded - certified, silver, gold and platinum.Habitat for Humanity, which is building the home for Fahami Jibril and Funa Omer and their siblings, is seeking gold certification for the four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Crystal. It marks the first time the nonprofit organization that builds homes for low-income families will go for the gold.

Habitat will use fly ash concrete, which contains power plant waste residue from chimneys, said Chad Bouley, the project manager for the Crystal house. The split-level home will also feature a roof made from recycled metals, and walls of a strap wall system that produces a tight seal so air leakage does not occur.The house will have an on-site water containment system; there will be no runoff to the street thanks to the planned installation of two rain gardens on the home's property.

All the lumber will come from within 500 miles of the house, cutting down on the energy necessary to haul it from further away.

Appliances in the home will be come with energy-star ratings.

LEED certifiers have been working with Habitat, and will be checking receipts and testing the home's construction before it officially gives the project gold certification.

Project savings will also come by way of sweat equity. Approximately 1,000 volunteers will take turns building the home.

Local leaders on LEED

Dan Katzenberger of Engineering, Energy and the Environment LLC is a consultant and leader in the growing field of "green collar" jobs. He has been promoting sustainable building designs since 1992 - long before going "green" became the phenomenon it is today.Green building techniques began cropping up during the first energy crisis in 1970, Katzenberger recalled. But energy again became relatively cheap in the decades after the crisis, and various energy-saving techniques went out of style. However, with energy prices back on the rise, Katzenberger said energy-efficient designs are making a comeback in a big way."It's bigger than I would have even expected when LEED first came about," he said. "It's becoming the standard of green building in the United States and around the world."

Before the LEED standards became available, Katzenberger said, very few professionals knew the ins and outs of building an environmentally friendly structure and, at best, could build a structure only 10 percent more energy efficient than a building built to standard code.

LEED standards have pushed the envelope to allow for 50 percent better energy efficiency than standard code.As energy prices continue to rise, Katzenberger said, he expects to see a growing demand for green buildings because of the heightened awareness LEED certification has brought to the industry."It transformed the whole green building industry," Katzenberger said of LEED. "It made options available that weren't available before."

Bouley says Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity typically shoots for LEED silver guidelines in homes the non-profit builds, but he hopes the Crystal home will become an example for future Habitat projects."This family is going to come out of this with a very nice energy efficient home so their utility bills will be substantially lower and this also gives us an opportunity to show the community what we can do and that we're engaged in green aspects of building," he said."Society is heading that direction, so we're trying to be at forefront."

Meghan Gutzwiller and Boa Lee
Sun Newspapers
September 17, 2008