When it comes to green building standards, Sonoma County was already well ahead of the curve when the state’s California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen) went into effect on January 1, 2011.
Builders, architects and building officials in many of Sonoma County’s cities have been using energy-efficient building standards for years, and some have been building “green” long before the often over-used label was invented. Still, when California adopted California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen), the nation’s first mandatory statewide standards for green construction in January 2010, industry officials launched an effort to bring everyone, from contractors to architects, up to speed on the details of new building standards.
“Injecting predictability into the process was our goal; it was instrumental to a successful program across the region,” says Doug Hilberman, president of Santa Rosa-based AXIA Architects and chair of the Construction Coalition, an organization formed in 2008 by the North Coast Builders Exchange (NCBE) and the Building Industry Association (BIA) to represent to construction industry’s interests at the local government level. “If we have predictability and uniformity in the process, we don’t end up with a situation where one jurisdiction is trying to be greener than another. Everybody understands it’s better to have the rising tide lift all the boats.”
Spelling it out
The CALGreen code requires that every new building constructed in California reduce indoor water consumption by 20 percent (versus existing structures), separate water meters for indoor and outdoor water use in nonresidential buildings, divert 50 percent of construction material from landfills and use low-pollutant emitting materials such as paints, carpet, vinyl flooring and particle board. The code also requires mandatory inspections of energy systems in nonresidential buildings of more than 10,000 square feet to ensure they’re working at maximum efficiency.
It’s estimated by the California Air Resources Board that CALGreen provisions will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state by the CO2 equivalent of 3 million metric tons in 2020 (imagine taking 573,614 passenger cars off the road). It is also anticipated that the new code will make for better buildings and a better environment. In an April 2010 interview with the U.S. Green Building Council, Dave Walls, executive director of California’s Building Standards Commission, said, “Consumers will be the beneficiaries of smarter, healthier, more sustainable buildings, including reducing operating costs for building occupants, improving indoor air quality, reducing the strain on restricted water and energy supplies, and improving the overall quality of life for Californians.”
The CALGreen code itself is contained within the California Code of Regulations, Title 24, Part 11, adopted by the California Building Standards Commission, and is a 193-page document that spells out the nuts and bolts of the new building standards in meticulous (if not always fluid) detail. Fortunately for local developers, architects, planners, engineers, plan checkers, inspectors and building officials who must be conversant in CALGreen, the NCBE has been hosting training sessions on the requirements of the new code.
Michael Whitaker, the chief building official for the city of Santa Rosa, has conducted numerous trainings and is considered a local expert on CALGreen and its implications for the construction industry. During a session in December, an audience of 70 contractors, architects and building officials received a crash course on CALGreen. The four-hour class includes a 200-slide PowerPoint presentation and a history of CALGreen and a very technical review of the new codes and how they apply to residential and nonresidential buildings. “I’ve gotten really good responses from people,” says Whitaker, who proudly points out that the aforementioned Dave Walls attended the December training.
Gaining clarity
Whitaker was instrumental in transitioning Santa Rosa’s voluntary green building program in 2005 to the city’s mandatory program that was adopted in 2007-2008. Before the mandatory program could pick up much steam, “the housing market dumped, so there were very few houses built under that program. In the end, we’ll have 50 to 100 buildings built that were permitted under that program,” he says.
When developing its early programs, the city of Santa Rosa adopted a point system using Build It Green, one of the two primary third-party systems used to certify green buildings. Build It Green is used mainly with residential construction, while the LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) system has been used more with nonresidential construction. Other Sonoma County cities, meanwhile, devised similar systems using the certification programs.
Then, says Whitaker, word came down that the state of California was devising its own set of green building standards—CALGreen. “We had all our jurisdictions on different levels,” he says. “It was kind of crazy; nobody knew what they were doing. If you were a contractor or designer, it was very confusing.”
So Whitaker and members of the Redwood Empire Association of Code Officials (REACO) developed a position paper that recommended all Sonoma County cities adopt CALGreen as their primary green building code at a Tier 1 level. CALGreen spells out mandatory requirements for residential and nonresidential buildings, along with enhanced measures that can be adopted for higher levels of energy efficiency. Tier 1 calls for enhancements that are 15 percent above the basic mandatory requirements. Whitaker says recommending a Tier 1 level wasn’t done lightly: “As a building official, you don’t want to set standards too high, because then people don’t want to build it.”
Axia’s Hilberman was part of the group effort to get all Sonoma County cities to adopt the Tier 1 CALGreen standards. That group included REACO, the local American Institute of Architects (AIA) chapter, the Construction Coalition and the Sonoma County Conservation Action. “We all felt very strongly that this was an opportunity to find an agreeable level of green building that would raise the bar across the region and to have uniformity across the region. We came together to agree on the message we wanted to give each of the city councils and building departments.”
Building officials can now conduct joint training efforts, based on uniformity in terms of plan implementation and shared best management practices. As of January 2011, the cities of Santa Rosa, Sonoma, Sebastopol, Petaluma and the County of Sonoma have adopted the Tier 1 standards. Hilberman says Rohnert Park, Cotati and Cloverdale are in the process of adoption, and there’s an ongoing dialog with the city of Healdsburg. “We’re very close to achieving our goals,” he says.
Ready for action
Dave Leff, owner of Leff Construction in Sebastopol, is a member of the NCBE board and chairs that organization’s Green Building Committee. He explains the benefits of cities adopting identical green building standards: “It means there’s consistency within this county,” he says, “which makes it easier for plan development, the [plan] submittal process and the expectations for plan checking and building inspections.”
Leff acknowledges meeting the requirements of CALGreen, “will be a bit confusing until people get used to looking at it. This is a pretty big deal, and it’s going to take a while for the jurisdictions and the building community to figure how it’s going to work. This is something brand new.”
But the benefits of so-called “green” building have long been apparent to Leff, who built the county’s first solar, multifamily project in Cotati in the early 1980s. “We’ve been building green since Jerry Brown was governor the first time,” he says. “The point isn’t so much that Jerry Brown was governor, but that there were incentives for building solar and an emphasis on energy conservation. At that time, green had more to do with energy use. Since then, air quality and other environmental issues have joined up with energy to make up a list of what green building is all about.”
While CALGreen may be relatively new, Leff and others point out that Sonoma County builders have been on the leading edge of green building practices. “Sonoma County is a little different than a lot of the counties in the state,” he says. “This county has been way in front of the wave. The changes with CALGreen will be less difficult here than it will be for other counties and cities across the state that have been ignoring the whole ‘green’ issue.”
Hilberman makes the point that, “Adoption of CALGreen doesn’t make us more green. Many Sonoma County jurisdictions were at the forefront of green building ordinances a couple years ago. What we did was come up with an approximate conversion of what the existing programs were and then placed them in the new CALGreen format. We’re not trying to establish a green building standards program, we’re trying to transition to the new state building codes. I think local builders and architects have been the early adopters of green building programs. Both designers and builders see the value of sustainable design and green building.”
NCBE’s Green Resource Project
The NCBE has been working on a Green Resource Project at its offices in Santa Rosa. Leff says the project will showcase the latest in green building techniques and technologies. “We want it to be an educational center,” he says. “It will be a place for our members and the public to come and learn about green building through displays, literature and computer monitors linked to websites. We’ll have a model to display all the components of a well-constructed, green house. The Green Building Committee was created with the intent to provide training to our members.”
The majority of NCBE members are small residential contractors, many of whom are supportive of the green building movement. “I think, across the board, there’s support for green building,” Leff says. “I haven’t talked to anyone on the NCBE board or staff who’s not a fan of the creation of the Green Resource Project.”
Initially, the Green Resource Project was envisioned as a way for NCBE members to understand LEED and Build It Green and to meet existing codes, but now it will deal more with the new CALGreen standards. But, Leff says, the bigger picture is about green building.
“The Green Resource Project is bigger than CALGreen, it’s about green building in general,” he continues. “We want this to be about more than what you have to do to meet CALGreen standards. This is to help our members understand what it means to build green—to understand the science behind it. We want our members to not only learn the code but to understand why the code is the way it is.”
Green building is more than meeting standards and putting a green label on your building, says Leff, it’s about taking responsibility for meeting the challenge of global warming. “When you’re building green, you’re doing a number of things,” he explains. “It’s taking responsibility in terms of your carbon footprint. It is also building a structure that will last longer, be healthier and consume less energy. If you believe the science of global warming, there’s a real cost of carbon energy that’s not factored into the economic equation.”
The cost of building green
One of the unknowns with CALGreen is the additional cost involved with meeting the green building standards. Leff believes the cost of construction will increase due to the additional testing and inspections required. Santa Rosa Chief Building Official Michael Whitaker called the cost question “a big topic.” He listed a number of areas where a building could cost more to build to meet CALGreen requirements: “You have to pay an architect more to design it, you have to pay building inspectors more to review plans, you have to pay special inspectors, and then you have to pay for the green measures you’re including—the cost of indoor water fixtures, paints. You have the direct costs of the building measures and you have all the indirect costs.”
On the flip side, Whitaker says, “An environmentally conscious person would say those are the direct costs, but what’s the net cost? You end up with a much more comfortable house that uses less energy, less water, has a longer life span, is healthier and has a greater resale value. And the carbon footprint is smaller. How do you put a price on that?”
It’s also changing the way his office does business when it comes to building standards. “Green building was never in our codes, so it’s a difficult process to fold it into the building codes,” says Whitaker. “Now, we’re evaluating the paints, com-pounds, adhesives and the type of carpet you’re using. Those are big deals as far as indoor air quality. These are regulations we’re going to enforce that we’ve never had to enforce before—so it’s going to be a big deal.”
Hilberman doesn’t believe the overall cost of building will increase greatly. “I think CALGreen with a Tier 1 doesn’t provide too much additional burden on the development of a project,” he says. “Most products and application processes have adapted to the green building process at this point. We’re really talking about a design and construction approval process that’s starting to become more mainstream.”
Going above the mandatory requirements to Tier 1 “does start to add a little bit of cost, but in the grand scheme of things, the benefits that occur because of that are significant to the region and the state,” Hilberman continues. “The cost of energy isn’t going to go down anytime in the near future. By creating a more energy-efficient building—or by creating an additional source of energy—you can approach development from a more holistic standpoint, which can provide better returns for the owner and for the environment.”
Another benefit Hilberman sees in the adoption of CALGreen is that it returns the green building code to the state level and a public arena, where it will be updated every three years with public input. And what of the third-party certifications programs, namely LEED and Build It Green, that many jurisdictions have been using? Those standards have been incorporated into building codes, and now those codes can be administered by the state, which leaves the pioneering groups to discover the next green frontier. “In my opinion, LEED wasn’t meant to be used as a minimum building standard, which is the role of a building code,” Hilberman says. “By shifting that role to CALGreen, it frees up Build It Green and LEED to help push the envelope and provide leadership in energy efficient design.”
At Santa Rosa City Hall, preparation for the January 2011 implementation of CALGreen involved screening and approving special inspectors, a new 12-page checklist that must be part of the building plans, supporting documentation that has to be provided concerning construction waste management and a commissioning plan for nonresidential buildings that verifies operating efficiencies for all appliances. As a side benefit, Whitaker notes that these additional requirements could create a new niche for inspectors and others to help builders comply with CALGreen standards. “We’re creating green jobs,” he asserts.
The CALGreen code and guide are available online at www.bsc.ca.gov. You may also send questions via email to cbsctraining@dgs.ca.gov or call the CBSC office at (916) 263-0916.
Napa gives its own name to CALGreen standards
By Barry Dugan
California may have adopted the nation’s first-ever statewide Green Building Standards Code, but city leaders in Napa decided on a more accurate description for their local version of sustainable building standards. Nearly seven months before the CALGreen Code went into effect in January 2011, the city of Napa adopted its own building standards that require energy efficiencies, improvements in indoor air quality and reductions in water and materials use. Not only did it get the jump on the state-mandated efficiency standards, but it came up with a different name.
The ordinance, adopted in June 2010, is known as the High Performance Building Regulations and was put together by a coalition made up of representatives from the construction trades, builders, developers, architects, engineers, interior designers and landscapers, says Jeri Gill, CEO of Sustainable Napa County, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that advocates for sustainability, economic vitality, environmental health and social equity.
“We felt it better described the intent and content of the ordinance and what it sought to accomplish,” says Gill, who was part of the 20-member High Performance Building Ordinance Task Force (originally known a the Green Building Task Force). “Green is a word that can mean a lot of different things to different people. ‘High Performance Building Ordinance’ is much more specific and focused on the performance of the building and how that matters for the environment and the community.”
The Task Force began meeting in 2008 at the direction of the Napa City Council and is now in what Gill refers to as phase three of its work.
“With direction from the City Council, our task force started out with a mission statement and a vision plan and laid out our strategies and goals—just like a business plan,” she says. Taking CALGreen as a foundation, the group adjusted standards “based on our own resource issues and programs that were in place,” says Gill, citing the city’s successful water conservation efforts, diversion and recycling programs, and construction and demolition goals.
Napa’s regulations aren’t tied to any certification programs (such as LEED or Build It Green), but “this ordinance will help applicants get their projects there. We were careful to make sure the city’s ordinance aligned wherever possible with third-party certification programs, so applicants wouldn’t have the burden of duplicative or competing measures. They could get closer to third-party certification simply by being in compliance.”
Gil says the city’s regulations on water conservation go beyond CALGreen requirements, including strict water budgets for landscaping of 2,500 square feet or more; and low water use dishwashers, icemakers, commercial clothes washers and food steamers. She adds that the city of Napa has made great strides in its water conservation programs, as evidenced by its receipt of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Water Conservation Achievement Award, which carries a $10,000 cash prize. In the past 10 years, the city has achieved a 33 gallons per capita, per day reduction in water consumption.
Like its Sonoma County neighbors, local builders and others in the development industry received training on the ins and outs of CALGreen through the local builders exchange—in their case, the Solano Napa Builders Exchange. That training is ongoing, says Gil.
“I think the reception [among those affected by the CALGreen code] has been positive and without controversy,” says Gil. “We also did a very careful job of public outreach. We took the time to really bring in people from the trades and the building and construction industries. We made sure all the stakeholders had a chance to see how it would affect them. The result is an ordinance that’s balanced and flexible, and that gets us to what’s best for the environment, makes sense economically and enhances our community.”
