We'd like to welcome Ari Meisel, LEED AP, as a guest contributor for GreenBuildingTalk! Ari started his fist company, Liontex, when he was 12 and never stopped. Now he's 25 and has just started his fifth company, LEED Pro. You can visit The LEED Pro here.
"I have always been interested in historic preservation and technology, a combo that consequently threw me into the green movement when I bought 8 turn of the century buildings in Binghamton, NY and rehabilitated them into luxury loft condos. Working with an old building and trying to make it energy efficient made me have to be green without even realizing it. Now I am a LEED AP and consult on projects around the country in addition to my own development projects. I'm currently working on an office/affordable housing complex in the Hamptons that will hopefully be the second LEED Platinum certified building in the state." - Ari Meisel, LEED AP
I am the developer- along with my father Louis and uncle Elliott - and green consultant for a mixed use project in Water Mill, NY. The Water Mill Ateliers (www.hamptonsleed.com) consists of 8,000 sf of class “a” office space and 6 affordable apartments. We are attempting to achieve LEED Platinum certification with 53 points out of the possible 69. Everyone you talk to tends to think building green will end up costing them more money and unfortunately that's a major deterrent for most builders and developers. We've been working on this project for since March and are planning to be completed by the end of November. There have been many decisions where it seemed like the green option would cost a lot of money but in reality many of the solutions we chose ended up saving us money.
All of the insulation is recycled denim cotton. On a per square foot basis, this material IS more expensive but when you account for labor it ends up being the same or less then traditional fiberglass batting. I have personally installed this product and the fact that you don't need to wear a mask or gloves and can tear the rolls apart with your hands to fit any space means that you work at least twice as fast as you would with the itchy stuff and you can work longer because it doesn't contain any irritants.
The biggest savings we realized in terms of a green decision was the parking lot surface. The original plan called for an asphalt parking lot. This has all of the issues we don't want with a green parking lot. You get a heat island effect, stormwater can't permeate the surface so it runs off into municipal storm drains or onto neighbors properties, and asphalt is is a very carbon intensive manufacturing process. The cost to do the parking lot in asphalt was budgeted at $40,000.
We decided to go with a crushed pea stone which is the typical lights white and gray pebbles you would find on any residential driveway in the area. With one fell swoop we achieved several LEED credits, namely, Heat Island Effect:Non-Roof, Stormwater Design: Quantity Control, Stormwater Design: Quality Control, and Regional Materials. The best part, total cost including actually putting it down is going to be around $2,000. So now try telling me that green has to cost more.
While our Geoexchange heating and cooling system was significantly more expensive than a traditional force hot air system, the savings from the parking lot surface more than made up for it. In the end it looks like we may achieve LEED Platinum status with a for a 1% premium. Over the life of the building we will make that back many times over and the value of our project increases exponentially.