Sustainable Building Advisor: Greywater Uses & Project ROI

On the Sustainable Building Advisor discussion board…
Expert instructor Ann Edminster discusses greywater uses and the often intangible, but very important ‘non-energy’ returns on investments.

Student 1: Has anyone heard of greywater solutions for dust mitigation? It is common in construction to have a water truck drive around a few times a day spraying potable water on the ground […]

LEED Version 4 Details and Delay Consequences

In this article, Brenda Martens, LEED Fellow and Founder of aedify, outlines LEED Version 4. She discusses how v4 differs from v3 and the consequences of the delayed release of v4. Plagued with difficulties and delays, v4 has been the most controversial release of LEED to date, but it raises the baseline of what we consider a […]

How You Can Use Geothermal To Gain LEED Certification

Here is an excerpt from a white paper I just published on how and where a ground source heat pump can be utilized to gain LEED certification.

By now, nearly everyone has at least heard of LEED but not many understand what it means to be LEED-certified or how best to earn certification. Developed by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”. Simply put, LEED is a grading system for sustainable building design and construction.

The goal of the program is to encourage the construction of buildings that use less energy, water and natural resources in order to minimize the impact of a structure on the local environment during construction and throughout its useful life. Needless to say, geothermal heating and cooling systems can go a long way to supporting all of these goals.

The LEED rating system works by requiring a minimum level of performance through prerequisites organized under eight different categories. Once you are able to meet the minimum performance requirements in each category, any improvements above and beyond are rewarded through a points system. The eight categories are:

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