Recently I learned that it is actually possible for the average person to attain certifications such as LEED or Greenbuilt. I looked into it and couldn't get very far with LEED without coughing up a LOT of money, and hiring an architecture firm to help me through the process, paying the full amount of consulting fees all the while - which was going to run into a lot of money and time.

I should probably note that I had gone on to the usgbc website and looked for leed providers, there is only one listed in michigan, and I had already spoken to him before talking to the architects, it was him that actually pointed me in their direction, he told me that it's largely a homeowner driven process, and I took his word for it. Then i wanted to gather information to show my builder, however I couldn't really find much that seemed to make sense as to what I actually needed to do? So i called the usgbc to ask them questions, well they basically said they don't answer questions, they just do the certification when you are ready. This was starting to seem pretty corporate to me... I had already set up an appointment with the architect for the next morning.

So after meeting with the architect, he said basically they are the only ones that were going to help me through the process, i found this surprising, I thought this was supposed to be a not for profit kind of thing, and here I would be shelling out a bare minimum of 5000 dollars for certification and assuming 20 hours of consulting. He said he had about 200 hours of documentation into the last one, I shuddered at the thought of not being able to do it all myself, especially with what seemed like a lack of support from anyone other than him wanting money.

With that in mind, I was looking for an alternative, we discussed another option, one that hopefully would be easier, he said he had never actually done one, but that he had taken the education courses for green built - and that it might be simpler. So I started to check that out. Green Built seems much more friendly, but after checking out the site I'm still pretty much lost. I'm wondering if there are people out there that can help in the process that don't want to make a huge amount of money off of someone too? Does anyone have any experience with the whole process? Of note is that I have very little time left before I have to start the project, which is a total gut/rehab, before it gets too cold. Many thanks to anyone who can shed some light.